Posts filed under 'body image'
I don’t know about you, but it really annoys me when ’80s cartoon characters are revamped using today’s technology. Take Alvin and the Chipmunks the movie. Modern day technology took the “cuteness” out of Alvin, Simon and Theodore and made them look all real and chipmunk-like. Yah yah, maybe its more “realistic” but I prefer them the 80’s way.
Of course nothing — and I mean nothing — takes the cake (pun intended) after what I saw yesterday. American Greetings has made a new version of Strawberry Shortcake. I’ve got a personal attachment to Ms. Shortcake. After all, I have her old lunchpail and my best friend’s mom called me Strawberry Shortcake for being short. How dare they make this new version of Ms. Shortcake with straight hair, a thinner body, and make-up? She’s more like Strawberry Short Tart! And then we wonder why we see nude pictures of teen idols like Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus. Ms. Nuevo Shortcake is targeted to a whole new generation of young girls. I can see it now. Little girls playing with their Disney Princess Collection dolls, except the threat is no longer a wicked witch, but Strawberry Short Tart threatening to take away their handsome prince and ruin their fairy-tale romance. You think I am exaggerating, but honestly, girls either have dolls that are frail and fragile waiting to be saved to play with or overly sexualized characters like Strawberry Shortcake (gosh, I never thought I’d say that!) or a Bratz doll. So is it any wonder that by the time they are teenagers they want to be sexy?
And what’s the rumour I hear about getting rid of Custard, her beloved cat? Apparently, Custard is being replaced by a cell phone. What?? That’s like making Theodore get rid of his cupcake pan for a machine gun! Okay maybe that is a bit of an exxageration, but Custard is an intregal part of Strawberry’s life (as the cupcake pan is to Theodore’s).
What’s next? I shudder to think.
– A.J.Per rendere piu avvincente la sfida, il blackjack casino online gratis e collegato ad una classifica online che funziona quando il giocatore inizia la partita con 100 crediti/ punti.
June 16th, 2008
It is appalling — yet not surprising at all — that middle and high school girls are sending nude pictures of themselves to their boyfriends. What I wonder is: Who started this trend? Was it Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical)?
Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana)? Is it simply a product of technological advances and exhibitionism, as a recent CNN article proposes? Or is it a combination of the two? I’m thinking it’s a combination, supplemented by the fact that girls and women are continually sexualized in today’s media culture and feel that their worth is based on how sexy they are or can be.
Though the show Sex and the City is controversial amongst people who fight for gender equity, I keep thinking about the episode “Hot Child In The City,” in which the character Samantha plans a Bat Mitzvah for an uber-wealthy, Upper East Side girl, Jenny Brier. The girl tries to act “grown-up” by buying Samantha and her friends $100 bottles of alcohol, dressing in tight, high-end clothes, and (this is the appalling part) talking about all the boys she’s either been with or pleasured with oral sex. Samantha, who is at first very envious of Jenny’s fortunes, later realizes that the one thing she had that Jenny Brier and her friends don’t have is a childhood.
And that is the end result of the oversexualization frenzy we are in — the loss of childhood and innocence. There isn’t anything wrong with expressing your sexual desires or feeling sexy, but who and what contributes to healthy sexuality is really in question, as well as the extent to which sexiness defines our self-worth. Girls learn from an early age what is desirable and “hot.” They also learn that “sexiness” is a source of power. Therefore, they become defined — and maybe even define themselves — by it. Generations before the past few had less media exposure and a chance to define their sexuality on their own and probably at a later age.
What do you think about the article? About this latest “trend”? What can we do to stop it? Please share your thoughts with us below.
-A.J.
June 11th, 2008
THIS is the model who won America’s Next Top Model last night.
Well, imagine my surprise when I tuned in to America’s Next Top Model (a Tyra Banks vehicle) to see which of the three finalists would win, only to see Whitney, a “full-figured” model, take the prize. It’s quite an accomplishment for the show, since Tyra gets all kind of flack for being size-positive on the Tyra Banks Show, her daytime talk show, but not supporting full-figured models enough on America’s Next Top Model. So finally Tyra reconciled her two TV pursuits a bit better.
We at About-Face are pretty pleased, though Whitney is not actually “plus-sized” by any stretch of the imagination. She’s pretty normal. But you know, the modeling and fashion industry needs this right now.
Watch and see more on the America’s Next Top Model web site.
If you’re unfamiliar with the show, here’s a good recap of last night’s episode (the web site makes you install a Java applet, and the best bits are from 1:23 to 2:00).
Great quotes from the episode: Es gibt aber auch ein paar deutsprächige online Kasinos , wo man internet Kasino poker spielen kann.
Tyra: “She’s not big, J. [Alexander, a judge]! This is the modeling industry — she’s considered big, but walking down the street, she’s just a hot chick.”
Paulina Porizkova [former supermodel]: “[Whitney] should not be called ‘plus-sized’ or ‘full-figured.’ [She] should just be called ‘beautiful.’ ”
Whitney: “I’m here because I do feel good about myself, and I want other women in America to feel better about themselves.”
Whitney: “[I realized] I can do that [be a model]. I don’t have to starve myself or have cosmetic surgery.”
It was all rather touching.
Is this a step in the right direction? Does it matter that there’s a larger-than-model-sized model who won? And what will it do for (or to) the fashion and modeling industries, if anything?
- J. B.
May 15th, 2008
[Update 5/9/08: An article in AdAge today reports on a statement from Dove and the retoucher mentioned in the New Yorker article discussed below. See updates throughout this item. -J.B.]
Ah, Photoshop retouching, how you pain us, how you confuse us all. Reading a very amazing (and very long) article in the New Yorker (May 12, 2008 issue) today, I learned about the techniques and life of master photo retoucher Pascal Dangin. I encourage About-Face visitors to take the time to read the entire article, either online or in the magazine itself.
[The Dove ads: Lots of retouching? Really? Did you have to break our hearts?]
[Update: Phew -- turns out there may not have been much retouching after all.]Â
My rose-colored glasses were cracked by this statement about his work on the Dove campaigns. From the article:
I [the article's author] mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women†in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?†he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.â€
Retouchers, subjected to endless epistemological debates—are they simple conduits for social expectations of beauty, or shapers of such?—often resort to a don’t-shoot-the-messenger defense of their craft, familiar to repo guys and bail bondsmen. When I asked Dangin if the steroidal advantage that retouching gives to celebrities was unfair to ordinary people, he admitted that he was complicit in perpetuating unrealistic images of the human body, but said, “I’m just giving the supply to the demand.†(Fashion advertisements are not public-service announcements.)
Of course they had some retouching done — but a LOT of retouching? Wait a minute. Aren’t they supposed to be “real” women?
[Update: Dangin says he did not work on the "women in their undergarments" ad, said, "In my experienced opinion, based upon what I have seen, it does not appear that the women had been retouched."
Turns out that he did work on the Dove Pro-Age ads, which were photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Per the AdAge article mentioned above:
In her statement, provided by Unilever, Ms. Leibovitz said, "Let's be perfectly clear -- Pascal does all kinds of work ... and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching, and there was not."]
In the article, Dangin comes across as an artist, but he’s still manipulating the public image. Then there are tons of other photo retouchers out there who, at the urging of their advertising and magazine clients, shave off too much hip, remove too much bulge, and create a Frankenstein’s monster. Case in point:
[Some bad image manipulation.]
The resulting image can have one of two effects: Girls, boys, women, and men can see the image and 1) perceive it as real, assuming that it is the way a beautiful woman should look, or 2) see it as a grotesque, malformed person. We make the choice, and the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty makes the point well: we often can’t tell whether an image is retouched. (See the irony here?) Will we continue to believe our eyes and try to get ever more “perfect”?
I don’t believe that photographers should never use Photoshop on their photos — everyone wants a pimple removed in their family picture for posterity or their MySpace or Facebook page — but completely changing a body to within a centimeter of its former self? And selling us a literally unattainable form of beauty we are told we must fit into? That’s where I draw the line.
- J.B.
May 8th, 2008
Speaking of body image and stereotypes of women, it’s not all about thinness/fatness, is it? Take the Tyra Banks Show from today, April 24.
Black women of various skin shades were on the show talking about whether light-skinned black women have things easier, and the answer seemed to be “yes.” Adding her very sensationalistic viewpoint, one medium-skinned woman said, “I don’t want my son dating dark-skinned girls because I don’t want him bringing home any dark-skinned grandbabies.” Luckily, her 12-year-old son said he hates when she says that, because she comes off as “prejudiced.” And another darker-skinned woman finally told her lighter-skinned sister (and I mean sister, by blood) that she feels her lighter-skinned sister has had the advantage during her life. She asked “When is it my turn to be called pretty?”
These two women are sisters. That’s Tyra on the left.
You can see clips on Tyra’s web site.
And while you’re at it,
here’s an ad that illustrates the skin-color issue pretty clearly, albeit with some ad-speak mixed messages thrown in. We show this ad to teenagers in our workshops and ask, “How does this advertiser want you to feel?” So tell us all, what do you think?
(click to enlarge)
Now, I’m not black, so I have no right to make judgments about how black women treat each other, and I can’t see it from their perspective. Maybe our black women readers won’t want to comment because they don’t want to discuss their community’s “dirty laundry.” But we can all learn something from this struggle. So if you’ve checked out the videos of the show, or you have anything to say on this issue, please post below so we can open up the conversation.
- J. B.
April 24th, 2008
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