Jezebel very recently covered Whole Foods Market’s announcement of their new “Team Member Healthy Discount Incentive Program.” They addressed the most important bases: Whole Foods is asking its employees to reveal their health information in order to recieve a higher discount, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is refusing to acknowledge why that’s problematic, and employees with a BMI over 30 are totally getting the shaft on a potential discount.
There are a million reasons why this “incentive” program is creepy and invasive, and the commenters at Jezebel do an awesome job at pointing them out: this program tries to turn employers into doctors, it very narrowly defines an idea of health, and it blatantly discriminates against larger employees.
I’m here to throw my voice into this as a former Whole Foods Market employee. I left the company about a month and a half ago for a number of reasons, one among them being this Orwellian nightmare.
I remember hearing late last summer the rumors that our company would soon be implementing a reward system based on weight. “Did you hear?” a coworker asked me as we were walking through the café to our respective workstations. “They’re trying to give skinny people a bigger discount.”
I found this hard to believe and I was pretty immediately outraged. I’m certainly not what the world considers “skinny”–was I going to lose something in this situation? As I investigated out of concern, I found out more things: the discount incentive program would be based on BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking status.
The program was being developed more or less behind closed doorsby the secret board of shadowy figures over in Texas, where Whole Foods’ headquarters is located.Employees, my in-store educator informed me regretfully, had no input on this. I couldn’t believe it. They wanted to police my body, but they didn’t want to hear my opinions about it.
It’s been six weeks since I left that company, and when news of the incentive program broke a few days ago, it was worse than I might have imagined. I could write for days about how unnecessary a program like this is—does my naturally low blood pressure make me less worthy of an employee? All of my super-positive customer feedback says no—but mostly I want to focus on the ridiculous use of BMI in this program.
Whole Foods lays out the groundwork of their new discount program
The graduated discount level says one thing: thinner is better. It leaves no room for people with higher BMIs to be viewed as fully functional, and reinforces the very much untrue cultural notion that fat automatically equals unhealthy. It creates a hierarchy based nearly entirely on BMI—the lower your BMI, the higher your discount. And there’s no minimum BMI, either, so individuals who are categorized as “underweight” are rewarded despite the potential health risks of having a very low BMI.
I can’t even begin to address how triggering this environment could be for somebody with an eating disorder or somebody at risk for developing one. And the contradictory message this sends to fat employees is ridiculous: if somebody with a BMI over 30 doesn’t smoke and has good blood pressure and cholesterol levels—and trust me, this happens waymore than people like CEO John Mackey and his “Whole Foods Market Scientific and Medical Advisory Board” care to admit—they still don’t get that extra discount. In the end, this is much less about health and much more about the enforcement of acceptable body types.
In his letter to employees, John Mackey said he thought that this program was “empowering and fun for team members who enjoy a challenge,” but what’s empowering about being told that you are less worthy than fellow employees? What’s great about feeling like you have to fit a very narrow, very specific mold of ideal health? And what’s fun about realizing that your contributions to your workplace mean less because of the inner workings (and outer appearance) of your body?
In my eyes, nothing, which is why I left. For a company that claims to promote “team member happiness and excellence,” Whole Foods sure gets a lot of things wrong.
When you look at today’s pop music scene, it’s easy to become discouraged. Women in song, in music videos, and on stage are expected to be oversexualized and Barbie-doll beautiful, and it seems as though talent has taken a backseat to sex appeal.
But in this gloomy musical landscape, a few bright lights stand out. One of these is the brilliant Marian Call, an Alaskan singer-songwriter who describes her style as “acoustic folk funk with a twist of jazz.”
Others, like the memorable nerd anthem “I’ll Still Be A Geek”, deal with being a female geek in a society that expects women to care more about sororities than sci-fi.
Quite a few of Marian Call’s songs express the joys and frustrations of being a woman who is passionately unique, and unwilling to conform to society’s image of what a woman “ought” to be like. The title track of her recent album, “Vanilla” is a good example.
She sings:
I’m not sexy, but I really want to be
I hear that’s normal for my demographic
I don’t look good in skirts, and even wedges hurt my feet
And I can’t keep a straight face and say ‘orgasmic’
Oh, I’m not hip, but I really want to be
All the bands I like you’ve heard of, and I watch too much TV
And I’m not cute, and I think too hard to be sweet
But not enough to get a real job or converse insightfully –
This is the part where you politely disagree.
My virtues are vanilla at best, but you can always call on me.
When asked about the meaning of the song, Call wrote, “I’m grappling with a very narrow definition of sexy here, the shallowest imaginable MTV bad girl diva dancer definition. Have no fears for my self-image; it’s just fine.”
Marian Call is a highly intelligent and talented woman, and she doesn’t have to perform in tiny leather outfits to prove it.
Support talented women in the arts! Visit www.mariancall.com to find out more about Marian’s music and lyrics; you can also follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mariancall.
Are you tired of your baby girl’s androgyny? Can’t wait for gender roles to really take a hold on your child and tell her what’s what? Well don’t worry, now you can do more than dress her in pink and hope for the best! With Baby Bangs, the hairpiece for baby girls, you can get a jump start on enforcing beauty norms and make sure your daughter knows from the youngest age that her femininity is tangled up in her hair.
I bet this baby is way happier now that she's got this empowering new hairpiece that differentiates her from the boys in her playgroup. Oh wait...
I really want Baby Bangs to be satirical, like those cat wigs that took the internet by storm a few years ago, and who knows—maybe it is. The web site appears to be down (that, or they can sense my feminist rage from across the internet and have thrown up that “403: forbidden” message just for me), but I’m not letting myself get my hopes up. In a world where a woman’s sexiness is determined at least in part by the length, shine, and silkiness of her hair, I can totally see a product like this finding a dedicated audience.
This is disturbing because it literally turns these baby girls into playthings. It transforms a living, breathing person into a doll to play dress-up with. When you think about it, the foreshadowing is absolutely epic: a girl raised on fake hair seamlessly gives way to a teenager obsessed with her makeup seamlessly gives way to a woman who can’t feel comfortable in her own body because she has never once had the chance to really own it. Her beauty has always been in the hands of somebody else. Even as a baby her natural state needed improvement. Are these really the messages we want to be sending our daughters?
A child is not an accessory, so let’s please stop treating her like she is.
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Melissa is About-Face’s newest blog editor. She likes sass, feminism, and tattoos, and gets weirded out by dogs in sweaters.
The other morning I was chatting with Alli, my friend and colleague at the American Association of University Women (AAUW), about a recent posting she read on Feministing about female comic book and graphic novel characters.
The post mentioned that while some argue that strides are being made for better representation of women in this particular medium, many comics and graphic novels still lag behind.
The Feministing post highlighted Power Girl, a female superhero with powers that rival Superman’s, with an alter ego who works as a female CEO. While this all sounds well and good, comments on the post discussed other issues such as the extreme sexualization of the character:
Panels from a Power Girl comic book
Alli pointed out that the author makes an interesting note at the beginning of her post about the “women in refrigerators” syndrome, which refers to the de-powering of female superheroes. Generally speaking, when a female character loses her powers or is injured or attacked, she is less likely to bounce back.
Oracle
Being a Batman comic fan, I thought of Barbara Gordon: After being paralyzed from the waist down, she gives up going out on the streets to fight crime as Batgirl and takes up the role of Oracle instead (whereas in Knightfall, Batman recovers from a broken back and continues fighting crime as Batman).
But how does this all relate to gender violence, specifically?
An image that comes immediately to my mind is the attempted rape scene in Watchmen. (It is present in both the graphic novel and the movie, but I’ll just discuss the graphic novel depiction here.) While the sequence does not glamorize rape, it does contain victim-blaming language.
The Comedian (a.k.a. the perpetrator) justifies his attack by saying,
“C’mon, baby. I know what you need. You gotta have some reason for wearin’ an outfit like this, huh?”
Of course, he is referring to the Silk Spectre’s revealing costume.
Another member of the superhero group walks in after the Silk Spectre has been beaten to the ground and stops the attack. Even though he helps her out, he says to her as she’s bleeding on the floor,
“Get up … and, for God’s sake, cover yourself.”
This solidifies the victim-blaming justification used earlier and reinforces the notion that, even though she’s a crime fighter, she can still be degraded, overpowered, and controlled by men.
Even though she is strong, her power as a superhero — and as a woman — is taken away.
What do these depictions of female superheroes and comic book characters say about our society? How do they influence how the audience perceives women in real life?
Even if these women are powerful in fighting crime and in their personal lives, they are objectified. Even when they are a contributing member of the team, they are sexually violated and abused.
When there’s room for so much growth and better representation for women in this medium, why are these recurring themes and plot devices still prevalent? Perhaps the answer is that with all the sexual violence that exists across the globe, these themes just mirror real life.
Do these American Apparel models convey similar messages despite their age difference?
When it comes to children, it can be very difficult to distinguish what is exploitative from what is innocent. If a certain pose signifies sexual provocation amongst adults, must that pose have the same meaning when created by a child? And how does this increasingly blurry territory affect how the judicial system defines child pornography?
This issue came up while I was searching for a scandalous, though not X-rated, photo on the American Apparel web site to include in our Gallery of Offenders. While there, I noticed that the web site had a children’s section, and out of curiosity, I decided to see how their children’s photos compared.
Most of the children’s photos were age-appropriate, cute, racially diverse, and positive overall, but there were a few that caused alarm. If I had seen any of the questionable photos in another context, I wouldn’t have given them a second thought. However, because they were from American Apparel, a company notorious for their pornographic advertising, I deemed them inappropriate.
Some of the children’s photos were disturbingly familiar. Here’s what I mean:
All photos were found on American Apparel's web site and pasted together.
In context, they look pretty bad. Whether the children were posed that way, mimicked the adult models, or were simply caught in a random position that we have given a sexual meaning to–does it really change the fact that these photos are the ones used to advertise clothing?
What complicates the situation is that adult women often mimic the innocence and playfulness of young girls as a way to flirt or behave in a sexual manner.
These American Apparel ads each show models in childish poses.
Basically, women are imitating girls in order to look young and innocent, and girls are in turn imitating women in order to look more adult and sexual.
This issue reaches far greater than fashion advertisements. Pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children are serious problems that are no doubt getting worse, due to the increased sexualization of little girls. But are we unable to separate the harmless from the harmful?
A photo from the parents' alleged collection of child pornography
A few months ago I ran across the San Francisco Chronicle story Are bath-time photos child pornography?, and was shocked to learn that parents faced child-abuse charges for the bathtime photos’ “sexual exploitation” of their daughters.
In more recent news, the U.S. Army charged a soldier serving in Afghanistan with child pornography possession after the soldier’s mother sent him photos of a young relative playing in her swimsuit.
Why does our culture both try to protect children from sexual abuse (sometimes without reason), yet recklessly perpetuate pedophilia by sexualizing childhood? Why can’t we just act our ages and treat and view others in an age-appropriate manner? Or is the concept of “age appropriate” too ambiguous to define?
A Heineken ad featuring a blonde, female robot serving beer
I drink beer. I’m a woman.
According to the Beer Institute, I’m not alone: women make up 25 percent of the beer market.
Hmmm. Strange. Because most beer commercials I’ve seen recently either a) don’t include any women at all;
or b) depict women solely as Barbie cheerleader types who serve men beverages.
In a 2001 USA Today article, Benj Steinmen, president of Beer Marketer’s Insights, gives a little insight into this paradox: “Brewers have been reluctant to market to women for fear of alienating their core audience: men. But beer consumption among women is growing. And they like light beer.” The USA Today article goes on to cite TV ads for Amstel Light, Miller Lite, and Bud Lite as examples of a shift towards advertising beer to women.
Well, it’s almost 9 years later, and beer advertisers are still doing just that: marketing light beer to women. But most ad campaigns for beer are still eye-rollingly, ridiculously sexist.
Heineken Commercial:
Miller Light Commercial:
Bud Light Commercial:
But who cares, right? We should celebrate. We’ve been invited into the old boys’ club–as long as we stick with light and leave the real stuff to men.
In a 2008 post on the topic, a blogger at Jezebel asked:
If women already drink beer, do brewers even need to bother directing ads toward them? Or it is high time advertisers stopping ignoring half the market? And do women drink beer despite the lack of women-centered advertising, or because it’s a “manly” choice?
I drink beer because I like the taste. I like the carbonation. I like the way it compliments certain foods. I’d like to give other female beer-drinkers the benefit of the doubt and say they drink beer because they like the taste, too. And as a female beer-drinker, I’m sick of the boys-will-be-boys crap of beer advertisements. I say it’s high time advertisers stop ignoring half the market.
As a whopping 25 percent of their customer base, women have the economic power to create change. There are many ways to take action:
1. Support brands that don’t use sexist advertising, such as Corona, which runs ads that appeal to both men and women (although their common theme of attractive white people enjoying beers on a sunny island somewhere raises another set of issues.)
2. Read and support initiatives such as Women Enjoying Beer, an organization that encourages breweries to better market to women and has a blog with posts on women-friendly breweries.
3. And last but not least, when you see beer ads that offend you, file an advertising complaint with the Beer Institute.
Will any of this actually help? I don’t know—beer advertisers seem convinced that gendering beer is the best strategy. But maybe, little by little, we can help them realize that alienating half the market just doesn’t make economic sense.
Katherine Leyton is a freelance writer and poet from Toronto, Canada. She has a B.A. in English Literature from McGill University and an MsC in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her work focuses on the construction of gender and has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Feathertale Review, The Globe and Mail, and The South China Morning Post. She believes writing can create positive change in women’s lives and is involved with Sister Writes, a non-profit organization in Toronto that runs creative writing workshops for marginalized women.
The other day my friend and I were flipping through a recent Cosmopolitan magazine, and I was shocked by the comments coming out of my mouth:
“She’s so skinny!”
“Ew, what is she wearing?!”
“Her eyes look weird!”
With these exclamations,I was actually morphing into the person I despise–the person I imagine beauty magazines make you become: she who judges other women.
Magazines seem to always pit woman against woman, or at least encourage it. “Who Wore it Best?” articles in some publications call on readers to vote on which woman celebrity looks better in identical outfits.
Other magazines regularly ask readers to vote thumbs up or down on a celeb’s look—like, “Are these stripes flattering on Kim?” and “Does Eva Look Hot or Boring?”.
Around Oscar season, some magazines completely dedicate issues to Best and Worst Dressed lists, where we scrutinize the dresses and accessories famous women have worn.
It doesn’t stop with magazines. Reality shows, soap operas, romantic comedies–even kids’ movies (think the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen franchise)–often idealize competition between women, usually over men.
In shows like The Bachelor, Gossip Girl, and The Hills, there always seems to be an immediate enemy inherent in any other woman–often over a prospective boyfriend.
The Bachelor popularized reality shows in which many women compete against each other for one man's attention
But as my friend and I were scrutinizing the obviously-airbrushed Cosmo cover model, I was appalled by the other comments coming out of my mouth: hateful comments about the actress herself.
What was first a critique of the model’s impossibly clear under-eye area and unnatural waistline (thank you, Photoshop) became critiques of her eyebrows, her hair, and even what she said in her interview.
We should not only strive to resist becoming influenced by media messages, but resist becoming the women who judge one another, who compete with one another, who rip on one another’s hairstyles and career choices, and who compete for the opposite sex.
And sure, maybe certain actresses themselves share different values than we, and perhaps the women on The Bachelor DO need to chill out with all the competition over one guy.
But that still doesn’t permit us to pass nasty judgment about anybody. Because what starts as a simple vote on who looks better can easily translate into real life. And who wants to become that woman?
A previous version of this blog was originally posted at tallanna.com.
Naked and un-airbrushed Jennifer Hawkins on the cover of Australian Marie Claire
In 2009, a light bulb turned on. (I sure hope it was a CFL.) Someone in mainstream media — new or old, internationally or nationally — an editor, an assistant, maybe it was a PR rep, realized that “Oh hey! Not everyone is a size 2, huh? All the other ‘beautiful’ people in this industry deserve a chance.”
Dove was way ahead of the game with their Campaign for Real Beauty (launched in 2004). But last I heard, Dove doesn’t drive home magazine sales. Sexy things do. And naked sexy things will sell even more magazines.
And suddenly, we embraced the body — naked (or nearly so) and often un-airbrushed — while we also further embraced the plus-sized.
A couple months before that, model Natalia Vodianova bared all on the cover of British Vogue’s June 2009 Body Issue, an issue that vowed to look at how women — yes, even women thinner and more famous than you — felt about their bodies and how they, too, obsessively watch their weight and wished their butts were perkier. (But wait, if even the “perfect” feel insecure, is there hope left for the rest of us?)
If all bodies are beautiful, shouldn’t we focus equally on the thin and not so thin? The short and tall? The curvy and boxy? Despite the valiant efforts, we can’t assume that occasionally swapping out rail-thin models for those with some meat on their bones will, on its own, make 2010 the year the fashion, beauty and advertising industries suddenly changed their minds.
These women — underweight or slightly overweight — are still models. The images we digest are the results of teams of makeup artists, hairstylists, wardrobe assistants, lighting specialists and creative photographers that none of us “real” people have at our disposal.
Fashion spreads, despite the model and her size, are still perpetuating parts of a beauty myth — the glowing, perfect skin, the undimpled thighs — and the message that you are not good enough the way you are. (And that products have all the answers!)
Designers’ samples are still size 4 … or smaller. Runway models are still hired as emaciated hangers that catch your eye and on which designers can hang their art.
Shedding light on the fact that different body types exist — sure, it’s a step in the right direction. But for maximum impact, to make the change that communicates my body and my self are awesome just the way they are, we have to be able to prove that a different message and image will make the industries more money than what they’re making now.
What sells the most — whether it’s putting women down or lifting women up — will eventually win in the end.
As one of the few successful female writers, directors, and producers in Hollywood, Nancy Meyers has been making movies for over 30 years. Her movies include many romantic comedies featuring middle-aged couples, such as Father of the Bride, Something’s Gotta Give, and the recent release, It’s Complicated.
I’d always just thought of these movies as fun holiday diversions, but a recent piece in the New York Times by Daphne Merkin, called “Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?”, made me think perhaps more was at stake.
Merkin argues:
“[Meyers] rushed in where angels fear to tread to rescue the middle-aged and manless woman from her lonely plight. She has taken this sorry creature, who is bombarded with reminders of her vanished youthfulness everywhere she turns, and placed her in an alternate universe, where she is…desirable just the way she is.”
Even though I know how much women are pressured to look and act youthful, I was disheartened to read this belief. Merkin seems to think there’s an age between 30 and 40 where women reach their best before dates and instantly become saggy, wrinkly, undesirable hags.
If that idea is out there, then Meyers’ movies might play a more important role than I thought. Her movies tell older women it’s okay to be happy and competent, while also subtly telling younger women not to worry so much, because love can happen later.
Nancy Meyers at work
In It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep plays Jane, a divorced mother of three who runs a bakery in Santa Barbara. One drunken night, she begins an affair with her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), who is remarried to a much younger woman. Meanwhile, Jane is also pursued by her architect (Steve Martin).
During the movie, I noticed Jane’s relative security. While she worries about a sagging eyelid, you get the impression that she’s been getting along fine with her work, girlfriends, and kids.
Seeing her happy despite her single status, we get a different message from the traditional one that older women without men are pitiful “spinsters”. Instead, we see an example of how older women don’t need to rely on having men to be happy.
There were things that irked me, though, like how Jane and her friends demonize Jake’s wife and other younger women for “stealing” their men, and I didn’t notice a single important non-white character. Also, the characters’ happiness seemed partly due to their immense wealth.
But at the end of the day, as someone who’s feeling societal pressure to settle down and have kids at age 24, I felt like the movie gave me some license to relax and live my own life without worrying about hitting an arbitrary age where I will be doomed to live a lonely, miserable, single life. As far as fantasies go, I can definitely buy into one where I get to be myself and pursue my career goals, and when I’m pushing 60 maybe have a fling with a paunchy yet charming lawyer.
Do you think the focus on middle-aged women in movies like It’s Complicated is refreshing, or do you think these movies still tell women they’re incomplete without men? What do you think young women take home from watching these movies? Do you think the fact that the characters are usually really rich increases the pressure on women for financial and career success as well as romantic success?
Are the beauty products you use hazardous to your health? The answer is, most likely, “yes”.
When it comes to personal care products in the United States, the FDA does little to protect consumers from harmful chemicals. But we can protect ourselves by researching the products that we purchase and use.
Here are some alarming facts from the Environmental Working Group’s study of toxicity in personal care products:
More than one-third of all personal care products have at least one ingredient connected to cancer;
57 percent of all products include “penetration enhancer” chemicals that can push other ingredients faster and deeper into the skin and into the blood flow; and
79 percent of all products contain ingredients that may have harmful impurities like known human carcinogens, according to FDA or industry reviews. Impurities are legal and unrestricted for the personal care product industry.
Skin Deep is an online database where you easily get an idea of how hazardous the products you use may be by performing a simple search. This database can also be used to find products with lower toxicity.
I looked up each of the personal care products that I use regularly, and was surprised to learn that my shampoo received a 9 (out of ten) rating on the hazard scale! I also learned the following about the substance I’ve been regularly massaging into my scalp:
Luckily, Skin Deep, as well as other websites like Best in Beauty, can help us find safer personal care products to switch to.
I’m glad that resources like these exist, but the fact that cosmetics consumers have so little protection is ridiculous. Why has the government cracked down on lead in paint, but not in lead in lipstick? Why do companies have to prove that chemicals are safe before being sold in Europe, while in the U.S., the responsibility falls on the consumers to prove that chemicals are unsafe before they have a chance of being pulled from the shelves?
Your beauty products go more than skin deep.
If you want to make cosmetics safer for consumers, or simply learn more information on this issue, check out The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. A summary of important info can be found in Unmasked: The 10 Ugly Truths Behind the Myth of Cosmetic Safety[PDF]. Here are some shocking facts from Unmasked:
INGREDIENTS BANNED FROM COSMETICS United States: 10 European Union: 1,100+
Ingredients in personal care products in the U.S.: 10,500
Portion of chemical ingredients in cosmetics that have been assessed for health and safety by the industry’s self-policing safety panel: 11%
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics also produced a short video, which introduces some of their concerns.
What do you think about cosmetics safety? Will you change the way you choose and use personal care products in the future? Join the conversation by posting a comment. Feel free to share links to other helpful resources, and if you find these resources helpful, please share them with everyone you know!
