Beauty norms come and go. As a byproduct of the cultural atmosphere, standards of beauty are bound to change as the culture changes.
Yesterday, Myra Mendible posted an interesting article on racial and sexual stereotypes and how the culture’s changing attitude and affinity for the backside is indicative of diversity and acceptance.
It may well be that America’s butt fling signals a growing acceptance of difference—a desire to broaden the repertoire of acceptable body types and beauty myths. If this celebration of fulsome booty helps women move beyond the self-hatred and anxiety attached to body fat or encourages ethnic pride in women whose bodies have historically been pathologized and denigrated—then power to the butt, indeed. But then again, in a consumer society, fashion trends are short-lived and the demand for novelty fuels profit. Will the buttocks be relegated to the margins of culture once more, disavowed and disowned by a fickle mainstream culture? Either way, I’ll still be dreaming of a time when (to loosely paraphrase Martin Luther King), women will be judged by the content of their character and not the size of their butts. Now that would be truly bootyful.
In light of the recent facebook controversy regarding photographs of breast feeding, I wanted to post an article from 2006.
NEW YORK - “I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,” one person wrote. “I immediately turned the magazine face down,” wrote another. “Gross,” said a third.
These readers weren’t complaining about a sexually explicit cover, but rather one of a baby nursing, on a wholesome parenting magazine — yet another sign that Americans are squeamish over the sight of a nursing breast, even as breast-feeding itself gains greater support from the government and medical community.
Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo — a baby and part of a woman’s breast, in profile — inappropriate.
One mother who didn’t like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.
“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast — it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.”
It’s the same reason that Ash, 41, who nursed all three of her children, is cautious about breast-feeding in public — a subject of enormous debate among women, which has even spawned a new term: “lactivists,” meaning those who advocate for a woman’s right to nurse wherever she needs to.
“I’m totally supportive of it — I just don’t like the flashing,” she says. “I don’t want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn’t want to see.”
Another mother, Kelly Wheatley, wrote Babytalk to applaud the cover, precisely because, she says, it helps educate people that breasts are more than sex objects. And yet Wheatley, 40, who’s still nursing her 3-year-old daughter, rarely breast-feeds in public, partly because it’s more comfortable in the car, and partly because her husband is uncomfortable with other men seeing her breast.
“Men are very visual,” says Wheatley, 40, of Amarillo, Texas. “When they see a woman’s breast, they see a breast — regardless of what it’s being used for.”
Babytalk editor Susan Kane says the mixed response to the cover clearly echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public. “There’s a huge Puritanical streak in Americans,” she says, “and there’s a squeamishness about seeing a body part — even part of a body part.”
The facebook ban isn’t as surprising as the controversy ignited by this 2006 cover of a parenting magazine.
It’s always amusing to hear people cite the “protection” of children and teenagers as a defense for banning images and actual breastfeeding. I see more breast walking down the street, at a club, at the beach or in the media than I ever see on nursing mothers.
Lisa Latham, in Bitchfest, writes a great article (Double Life: Everyone Wants to See Your Breasts-Until Your Baby Needs Them) on the disjuncture and conflict between the sexual and “working” breast, the public and private breast.
In the end, whether the breast is feeding a baby, as nature intended, or pushed up in a bra, the female body has been and is concerned public domain.
A website that encourages girls as young as 9 to embrace plastic surgery and extreme dieting in the search for the perfect figure was condemned as lethal by parents’ groups and healthcare experts yesterday.
The Miss Bimbo internet game has attracted prepubescent girls who are told to buy their virtual characters breast enlargement surgery and to keep them “waif thin” with diet pills.
Healthcare professionals, a parents’ group and an organisation representing people suffering anorexia and bulimia criticised the website for sending a dangerous message to impressionable children.
In the month since it opened the site, which is aimed at girls aged from 9 to 16, has attracted 200,000 members. Players keep a constant watch on the weight, wardrobe, wealth and happiness of their character to create “the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world”. Competing against other children they earn “bimbo dollars” to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, facelifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits.
The website sparked controversy when it was introduced in France, where it attracted 1.2 million players.
Dee Dawson, the medical director of Rhodes Farm Clinic, which treats girls aged from 8 to 18 who suffer eating disorders, said: “This is as lethal as pro-anorexia websites. A lot of children will get caught up with the extremely damaging and appalling messages.”
Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of Beat, an organisation that supports those suffering eating disorders, said that the website could make girls believe that weight and body size manipulation were acceptable.
The Miss Bimbo site was set up by Nicholas Jacquart, a French entrepreneur. He moved to Tooting, South London, recently and with a 30-year-old businessman called Chris Evans set up Ouza Ltd to promote the website in Britain.
From the way it looks, the site has managed to maintain it’s 1.2 million registered users or “Bimbos.” In fact, the site is offering several special promotions for 2009. Upon registering for the site, you can become a trendsetter, a socialite and find the perfect boyfriend. This allows you to become “Queen of the Bimbos.”
Jacquie O’Godless is an atheist, feminist, queer living in Los Angeles. She is a passionate activist heavily involved in politics and has spent time working on and off as a writer for local campaigns. She currently blogs for The Daily Profaner, a news blog for the godless and irreligious.
My click moment: My true understanding of feminism came after ending my monogamous relationship of four years. At this time, I came to understand the connection between hetero-normative society, patriarchal oppression and monogamy as the contractual ownership of another person. Since then, I have been a passionate advocate of polyamory as a feminist practice.
My issues/concerns: Atheist visibility, exposing the relationship between judeo-christian religion and patriarchy, destroying class privilege and hetero-normative society, dissecting gender, and fighting for equal status for feminist men within the movement.
Favorite quote: “…the most intense pleasures occur in deep despair…” Fyodor Dostoevsky
To celebrate, I’d like to quote an excerpt from Anne Waldman, performance artist, poet and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. Her 31 page poem, “Fast Speaking Woman” from the book by that name is a lengthy mantra and tribute to every kind of woman and the many facets of each woman.
…still won’t be good enough, as Us Magazine reminds readers with it’s first 2009 cover proclaiming “2009’s Diets That Work!” This is followed with captions that announce the disappearance of Britney’s “belly fat” and the fifteen pounds Beyonce dropped. But, it’s not just about celebrities.
It’s about YOU!
“How stars get instant results” which means that you can, too, if you buy these products and behave the insane ways described in this “special” issue with a “28 page bonus.” Some of the advice? Don’t eat carbs after 6. Leave half of everything on the plate (and, what, throw the rest away?). Do leg lunges while you brush your teeth.
2009’s first cover strikes an eerie resemble to, yup, 2008’s diets that work and it’s 23 page bonus. In fact, when I looked at all the covers of Us Magazine for 2008 via their slide show I found almost 20 covers that mentioned dieting, make-overs, and body image at least once. Note: the slides are not complete images and may not show the diet/body reference For complete images of all 2008 covers click on the slide show link above.
I have not seen Revolutionary Road yet but Melisa Silverstein’s piece has me more excited than ever.
Revolutionary Road is a tough movie for a woman who grew up after the women’s movement of the 1970s to watch, but after watching it a couple of times I actually think that it should be required watching for all young women who think that feminism is irrelevant. (Disclaimer, I am a consultant to the studio and organized a blogger screening for the film.)
The film tells the story of April and Frank Wheeler living the post World War Two “American dream” that morphs into the American nightmare. It is the era described in the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan the book that articulated for women the “problem with no name” which Kate Winslet read while preparing for her role as April. She stated in an interview: “It was the era of prescription medication, you know, and women really starting to believe …Maybe I’m crazy, because I don’t want this life, I think there’s something wrong with me.’” (The Guardian)
April and Frank were was supposed to be different. But they weren’t. They were exactly the same as everyone on their boring suburban street and that’s what was driving them both crazy. But the thing is that Frank had options and choices and given the fact that it is 1955, April did not. Frank went into the city everyday on the train with lots of other men to their boring jobs and April was stuck at home.
She had no choices, no options.
A scene that really shows April’s suffocation is when she takes out the garbage cans and positions them perfectly on the curb. She then looks up and sees all the other garbage cans perfectly positioned on the curbs up and down the street. Her face at seeing all the cans, the disbelief that this has become her life is palpable. Juxtapose that with the scene of Frank standing on the train smoking and breathing in the fresh air and the suburbs fly by. He’s free, she’s in a box.
As Silverstein points out, films that can accurately portray the conditions that led to the second wave of feminism, or the Women’s Liberation Movement, are important for young women AND men today that often believe that feminism is unimportant or outmoded. The haze of collective amnesia is thick. It is always striking to me when young women don’t have a sense of their own history as women and lack a working knowledge of the women and men that paved the way for their own choices. The women and men that do acknowledge gender issues usually proclaim the ever popular phrase, “I’m not a feminist but…”
While I maintain a critical eye on the fabric of popular culture, I am the first to acknowledge and utilize popular culture as a relevant learning tool. Films like Iron Jawed Angels, North Country, Far From HeavenThe Hours and , shows like Mad Men and Sex and the City provide points of analysis that resonate with many young people and provide opportunities to move beyond their preconceived notions. These films and shows often provide the first puncture mark in the bubbled reality many people have about women, men, gender, feminism’s place historically and in the future. That’s saying a lot. I have no doubt that I’ll incorporate this film into my own curriculum.
Bitch Magazine featured a recent article on the abstinence message in the Twilight series and the uproar that followed the inevitable consummation (after marriage, of course!).
Abstinence has never been sexier than it is in Stephenie Meyer’s young adult four-book Twilight series. Fans are super hot for Edward, a century-old vampire in a 17-year-old body, who sweeps teenaged Bella, your average human girl, off her feet in a thrilling love story that spans more than 2,000 pages. Fans are enthralled by their tale, which begins when Edward becomes intoxicated by Bella’s sweet-smelling blood. By the middle of the first book, Edward and Bella are deeply in love and working hard to keep their pants on, a story line that has captured the attention of a devoted group of fans who obsess over the relationship and delight in Edward’s superhuman strength to just say no.
The Twilight series has created a surprising new sub-genre of teen romance: It’s abstinence porn, sensational, erotic, and titillating. And in light of all the recent real-world attention on abstinence-only education, it’s surprising how successful this new genre is. Twilight actually convinces us that self-denial is hot. Fan reaction suggests that in the beginning, Edward and Bella’s chaste but sexually charged relationship was steamy precisely because it was unconsummated—kind of like Cheers, but with fangs. Despite all the hot “virtue,” however, we feminist readers have to ask ourselves if abstinence porn is as uplifting as some of its proponents seem to believe.
Given that teens are apparently still having sex—in spite of virginity rings, abstinence pledges, and black-tie “purity balls”—it might seem that remaining pure isn’t doing much for the kids these days anyway. Still, the Twilight series is so popular it has done the unthinkable: knocked Harry Potter off his pedestal as prince of the young adult genre. The series has sold more than 50 million copies, and Twilight fan fiction, fan sites, and fan blogs crowd the Internet. Scores of fans have made the trek to real-life Forks, Wash., where the series is set. The first of a trilogy of film adaptations of the books, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, was scheduled to hit theaters in time for Christmas.
Another study just confirmed that purity pledges and abstinence-only education (surprise, surprise!) doesn’t work.
Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.
Instead of wasting money on failed “sex education” programs and “sexy” movie propaganda selling the sex of no sex, let’s face reality (people have always fucked, they like to fuck and will continue to do so) and offer some real education, guidance and protection.
Here’s a great take on the latest comic book film, The Spirit, from Bitch Magazine:
The Spirit is Frank Miller’s tribute to Will Eisner’s classic comic book series from the 1940s, and it features quite a line-up of female characters: Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) and Lorelei Rox (Jaime King). But don’t get too excited about this - after all, what we’ve really got here is a sexy jewel thief, a sexy surgeon-next-door, a sexy secretary (Silken Floss was actually demoted from scientist to secretary in the film adaptation), a sexy exotic dancer, and a sexy siren (yes, a siren!). Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned that there’s also a sexy female cop in the film, too. Kudos to the actresses who play these roles, as they really do make something out of their characters (Scarlett Johansson actively lobbied Miller for more to do in the film). And it’s worth noting that these women are not helpless: Paulson commented in a recent interview, “The thing I liked about the part was just that there’s not a single woman in this movie who’s a damsel in distress. There’s not a single woman in this movie who isn’t a strong woman.” The Spirit and Sin City pretty clearly show us that Frank Miller knows how to write tough women. The central problem with The Spirit isn’t so much the female characters or the cleavage shots, but the fact that they’re entirely deployed in the service of a dumb, juvenile fantasy of malehood.
Here’s Miller on the film: “I wanted to recapture some of the glory of manlihood that I feel the
world has lost. I wanted to bring it back through the Spirit.” Comic book adaptations took some leaps and bounds this year with their more thoughtful representations of masculinity and it’s a bummer to see Frank Miller close out the year by wasting so many talented actresses on a completely adolescent fantasy. And it’s not great news for men, either. Miller basically flushes The Spirit and his nemesis the Octopus, played by Samuel L. Jackson, down the toilet - yes, they even get a fight scene in sewage. Crazy, sexy babes and toilet humor: is this a comic book masterpiece?
Women, Action and the Media is opening registration for their 2009 conference in Cambridge, MA. This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in the media and activism.
