Over at Teen Vogue, advice columnist Rachel Simmons fields a question from a 17-year-old boy who was summarily shut down by his love interest after he complimented her on her “hourglass figure”:
I commented that she had a “really nice, hourglass figure”. I thought she would take it as a compliment but instead she became deeply offended. I went into damage control mode and tried to clarify my comments but I think I only made things worse when I used the term “healthy”. With a look of complete disgust, WHAP!, she slapped my face and departed. She had a classic hourglass figure–very busty, narrow waist, shapely hips/legs. I guess she had interpreted “hourglass” as meaning big/overweight/full figured. Why can’t girls embrace their curves?
"Why can't you take a compliment?"
Rachel responds rather disappointingly. She drops some great facts (81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat, over 50% of women age 18-25 would rather be hit by a truck than be fat—WHAT?) but then gives this advice:
Even if having curves used to be something women wanted, the rules are different now. Girls aspire to size zero, and plenty of them think anything bigger than that is porky. Which is—just to be clear—completely cracked. … You ask if hitting you amounts to a rejection. Who cares, really? More importantly, it’s a big bad red flag about the kind of girl she likely is (insert cuckoo clock noise here).
Everyone here is assuming that this girl reacted the way she did because she is insecure with her body. Not only is that offensive to the girl, but it’s offensive to girls everywhere, because it paints them as unable to stand up for themselves for any reason other than insecurity. It makes all girls sound like image-obsessed, eating-disordered, painfully insecure figures just waiting for the approval and rescue of a male. (more…)
March 4th, 2010
I cringe every year when Sports Illustrated releases its swimsuit edition—it’s page after page of half-naked women in a sports magazine that rarely features females otherwise. So, in early February, when this perennial athletic publication decided to include women winter Olympians in this particular edition, there was no lack of sexism. The women athletes, like all the other models, are photographed in overly sexualized positions and in skimpy swimsuits (even though they’re not swimmers).
Four American women in the 2010 Winter Olympics—snowboarders Claire Bidez and Hannah Teter and skiers Lindsey Vonn and Lacy Schnoor—appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. In doing so, the women seem to be showing off their hot bods for a male audience that already values women’s sports less than men’s. These talented women have dozens of reasons to be admired, and none of them should have to do with their physiques in bikinis.
Check out these photos of Vonn, Bidez, and Schnoor and really think about what these images are saying about women athletes to a readership that is dominantly male.
Notice how the women’s sports equipment is secondary. Vonn is in bed, wrapped around her ski jacket—in a swimsuit. Bidez walks in the snow with her boots, snowboard and even goggles—in a swimsuit. With her skis strategically crossing in between her legs and donned in a bikini, Schnoor seems to be saying, “Yes, this is my body, which you can ogle. Oh, these skis? I use them for winning medals. But really, check out these legs!” What are these images telling male readers? And what are they telling young girls who look up to these Olympians? (more…)
March 1st, 2010
Hey y’all! We here at About-Face have some exciting news!
First of all, we’ve fixed our comments! If you tried to comment on recent entries and found yourself being asked to log in or register, don’t worry, we’ve gotten rid of that ridiculous rule. If there’s anything you wanted to say but couldn’t, now’s the time!
Second, come hang out with us this Sunday! Author and activist Marilyn Wann is going to be hosting a Yay Scale event at the San Francisco Ferry Building, and we’re going to be there to help her out and show support. Meet us at the front entrance at 11:30 am to group up, gear up, and put a positive spin on our culture’s obsession with scales! When you stand on a Yay Scale, it doesn’t tell you how much you weigh–instead, it tells you how awesome, fly, beautiful, brilliant, creative, fantastic, and wonderful you are. Check out some photos from past Yay Scale actions:
We hope to see you there!
February 25th, 2010
Jillian Michaels, the in-your-face trainer from NBC’s extreme weight-loss competition “The Biggest Loser,” is facing not one, not two, but three lawsuits over the “Maximum Strength Calorie Control” diet supplement she endorses. Three separate women have filed lawsuits claiming that the pills are ineffective and potentially dangerous.
Despite the claims on the box, these pills will not make you look like this woman.
That the pills don’t work is no surprise—have diet pills ever worked?—but a lot of Michaels’ fans have been expressing disappointment that she would endorse such a product in the first place. Michaels has always claimed to be anti-pill, instead insisting that diet and exercise alone should be enough to make any body into, well, her body.
To those who have lost faith in their fitness hero, I can only say this: if you are surprised, you are not paying attention. Someone who endorses The Biggest Loser’s wildly unhealthy combination of undereating and overexercising (contestants would often intentionally dehydrate themselves to shed pounds) pretty obviously doesn’t have anyone’s best health interests in mind. But because the narrative spun around The Biggest Loser is one of hope and change and reinvention and finally being the person you always wanted to be and blah blah blah, it’s understandable how audiences, especially those with their own body concerns, eventually come to put trust in a figure like Michaels. (more…)
February 25th, 2010
The media pays a lot of attention to violence in kids’ video games. But when we’re looking at messages in games, I’m also concerned about the troubling signals in games designed for tween girls. In an article in WIRED magazine, Tracey John asks whether games that encourage girls to be pretty and liked above all else could be just as damaging as games like Grand Theft Auto.
What is Carrie the Caregiver teaching our daughters?
John mainly deals with console games, but I also looked at a variety of PC games and noticed similar lessons and messages. Mostly I tried time-management games where the player takes on the role of a young woman running a business, including Carrie the Caregiver, Pet Show Craze, Sally’s Salon, and Fix-It-Up: Kate’s Adventure. (more…)
February 22nd, 2010
As you’ve probably heard, actor/director/writer/producer/fat guy Kevin Smith was recently booted off of a Southwest flight for being too fat to fly. The internet has been ablaze with commentary on both sides, but Kate Harding’s input over at Salon’s Broadsheet blog does a fantastic job of pointing out the problems with sizeist airline seating policies:
I think of the thousand humiliations, small and large, most fat people have already endured in their lives — the insults from family and “friends,” the cow-calls on the street, the discrimination, the bullying, the news every day that their bodies constitute a horrifying crisis for the American public. I think of how dreadfully uncomfortable it is, physically and emotionally, to fly in a fat body that isn’t bruised by the armrests and doesn’t require a seatbelt extender, and how much worse it would be if I weighed significantly more, like some of my family members and dearest friends do. I think of how few people would be willing to raise the kind of fuss Kevin Smith has (let alone how few fat folks could get so many people to listen) because they would automatically be too ashamed of themselves if a flight attendant made a public spectacle of removing them from an aircraft.
I’d love to add my commentary to this, but honestly, Kate’s pretty much got it covered. What seems to be getting lost in all of this discussion of whether or not fat people are obligated to pay more, emotionally and financially, to exist in a thin-centric world, is just that: fat people are people. Larger bodied people deserve the same respect as thinner people, period. We all need to keep this in mind as we discuss the questions and controversies that will arise in this conversation.
–Melissa
February 18th, 2010
I recently saw Alien at a local cinema. I hadn’t seen it since I was a little girl (and I’m not sure why my parents let me watch Alien when I was a little girl). Anyway, I had forgotten about Ellen Ripley. Ellen Ripley seems impossible: a female lead in a sci-fi film with a mullet, loose-fitting clothes and no noticeable makeup. A human being! A strong, rational (yet also feeling), ass-kicking woman who we follow in awe not for her body, but because she is the hero of our movie. As Zoe Saldana put it at a recent Comic-Con conference, “Ellen Ripley could have been a man. … Objectives would have been the same. … but [she] happened to be a woman, thank God.”
Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in "Alien"
Much has been written about the importance of Ellen Ripley to female characters in sci-fi. As John Scalzi put it on the AMC SciFi-Scanner blog, “In a nutshell—Before Ripley: Barbarella. After Ripley: Sarah Connor.” As Scalzi also notes, Ripley only gets better in Aliens (although I disagree wih his view that Ripley is “unsympathetic and unlikeable” in Alien and doesn’t actually become that “pivotal, iconic” character until Aliens). Point is, in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, Ripley is extremely competent, kicks even more alien ass, and isn’t sexualized at all (in the first film, there is a gratuitous nude scene).
So, Ripley made Sarah Connor possible. And Sarah Connor, at least in Terminator 2, would have made Ripley proud. But after that? Let’s take a look at where we are today. We’ve maintained the tradition of interesting, strong and intelligent female sci-fi leads. (more…)
February 18th, 2010
What does an ideal girl look like? Is she blonde, with a perfect figure and a Chihuahua in her purse? Or is she the brunette with the looks of Megan Fox? Is her favorite physical activity shopping? Media outlets are busy promoting such stereotypes about girlhood. The logic is simple: when girlhood is mainly about looking good, companies that cater to such a “need” will profit.
For instance, toy companies seem to be selling social identities rather than just toys. Girl toys in the Toys R Us online catalog for 2-year-olds include play houses, oven makers and newborn doll strollers–but boy toys include trains, walker pianos and fire engines. Neurobiologist and author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain Lise Eliot argues that the brains of boys and girls are not different at birth. Yet, Toys R Us and the plethora of toy companies would rather defy science and create such gender differences in an attempt to maximize sales. The message they give to our girls is that decorative and homemaking skills must become a priority very early on in life.
It all started in the 1980s when marketing expert James McNeal suggested that targeting products to children at birth would improve customer loyalty. Basically, the idea was that a consumer at birth would be a consumer for life. Companies have faithfully taken his advice. Juliet Schor, author of the book Born to Buy, explains that marketers are eager to target children under age 8 because they cannot spot the commercial intent of advertisements. Instead, kids consider ads information outlets! (more…)
February 11th, 2010
A few months ago, comedian Chris Rock released a documentary that investigates the fanatical preoccupation with “good hair” in the black community. It’s a film that takes the viewers from neighborhood salons in Atlanta to rural villages of India, investigating the multibillion-dollar haircare industry. I’m a big fan of any documentary that examines the media and its influence on young women, and “Good Hair” was insightful, provocative and entertaining.
Just as Darryl Roberts’ documentary “America the Beautiful” comically tackled America’s obsession with bodily perfection, Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” comically tackles the black community’s obsession with impeccable locks. Rock talks to a wide variety of people, from celebrities like Raven Symone and Maya Angelou to everyday men, women, and high schoolers—none of whom think twice about getting a thousand-dollar weave or using relaxer in their hair. According to the documentary, worrying incessantly to make your ‘do “less black” is not just common in contemporary African-American culture—it’s expected.
The film focuses its attention on relaxer, the chemical used to make curly hair flawlessly straight. Celebs, like rap duo Salt ‘n Pepa and even the Reverend Al Sharpton, openly admit to using it. Relaxer has so much sodium hydroxide in it that it could potentially burn through one’s scalp, yet people continue to use it to achieve stick-straight hair. The documentary also explores the industry of weaves—wigs made of real hair that cost upwards of several thousands of dollars. These hair pieces, as the film points out, overwhelmingly come from Indian women who sacrifice their hair for religious purposes. The women who admit to wearing weaves show no shame around spending a month’s paycheck (or more) on a vanity item. (more…)
February 9th, 2010
Bud Light commercial: some women are sitting around in a living room having a book club meeting. A man, presumably a husband or boyfriend, enters with beer. He sits down, starts handing out beer, and dominates the conversation, cutting off his presumed girlfriend/wife and telling one of the other participants that “I’d love to hear you read sometime.”
One: CREEPY. Two: why can’t boys read? Seriously, Budweiser. Making one of your dudes respond to the question “Do you like Little Women” with “I’m not picky” is just offensive to everyone. Three: the commercial says that Bud is a sure sign of a good time, as though a book club can’t actually be a good time? Four: why can’t boys read?
This commercial isn’t nice to anyone. It makes guys look bad, it makes girls look bad, and it pretty seriously makes me never want to drink Bud Light (not that I would anyway).
–Melissa
February 7th, 2010
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