1) I do not hate men.
2) My shaving habits have nothing to do with my views on feminism, they have to do with the fact that I forget and I'm lazy. To lazy/can't remember to run a razor over my armpits more then twice a month? Yes.
3) I wish you would forget whatever stigmas you have about the word "feminism" for just a sec, and read this post without all that junk in your brain.
4) I do not represent all feminists, and no one person who claims the feminist label represents me.
5) I live by this basic definition of feminism: Feminism is a movement to end sexism and oppression.
So that's quick and dirty of that, now lets move on to what this post is really about.
It's about this picture that I have seen around the vast interwebs on blogs, FB pages and Zines.
This picture:
Basically, I have a beef with this message.
I think that the intention is pure, but misguided. I believe people are posting this in an effort to bring to light the outbreak of body-image and self-esteem issues that are consuming women and girls today. This is a noble intention, one that I wish more people were involved in. Anorexia, eating disorders, and self-mutilation are problems that almost every girl in America grapples with daily. But the above image doesn't really coincide with the 'love your body as it is' notion.
Bettie, Shirley, Elizabeth, and Marilyn are from a different time, but they are practicing the same method of torture that Heidi, Nicole, Keira, and Kristen are. They still sit, stand or lounge around looking sensual and demand that there is an 'ideal' woman, and that they are them. Everything about them says that if we do not look like them, or aspire to be like them, we are not the best women. The most desirable, delicate, mysterious, virtuous, whatever! It doesn't matter if it's 1960 or 2010, if we allow the media to take one body type and present it as the Ideal Female, we all suffer. We all suffer, because we spend our time trying to squeeze something into a shape it was never meant to be instead of trying to solve global warming, or provide education to girls who have escaped trafficking, or tackle any giant world issue.
And another thing! I find it kind of upsetting that both my roommate and my little sister are basically being attacked by this image. By kind of upsetting, I mean rock-me-to-my-core upsetting. I’ll start with my sister, who is very skinny. She's just built that way; tall, ivory skin, and not an ounce of meat on her. She is that ‘ideal’ presented in a lot of mainstream media. Do I think people should aspire to look like her? Hell no. But whoever captioned the above picture would seem to believe that my sister is not 'hot'. It would seem that they think she should not look the way she does, but instead like Bettie Page. Um, no. Fuck no! No, my sister doesn't need big boobs or wider hips. BECAUSE SHE WASN'T BORN THAT WAY. She is naturally very slender, and I will always think that she is beautiful. Speaking of beautiful people: Clara. She is this beautiful young woman with an extraordinary mind. She's just fantastic all around. But I don't see her body type celebrated in any fashion magazines today, or any other time period for that matter. Sure, she has large breasts and a small waist, but she doesn't look anything like Marilyn Munroe or Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t want her to; she’s perfect just as she is.
It all comes back to that idea of an "Ideal Woman" or an "Ideal Figure". It's something that the media does to control and manipulate people, and I could go on for hours about who's really controlling who and all of that, but I won't.
The fact of the matter is, more people need to look at that picture and say: I will never look like ANY OF THESE WOMEN. I will always look like me. I love looking like me.
Yibbsy out.
P.S. Also, I have two other siblings, another sister and a brother, and I hope they know that I think they also just beautiful, wonderful, talented, intelligent people. I love them!
Amen.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I saw this image I too thought it was very thought provoking. After reading this and waiting a few days I finally got around to thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteMy initial thought was that "boys would never have this argument." Kinda a dumb thought it seemed at first. Is it because boys are better, or just because they are a gender of MTV watchers, football watchers, sexually excessive minded gender that just shrugs everything off. Eventually I realized that the same reasons boys join fraternities is not in fact the reason they don't have this argument (in person or over the web).
Bear with me, the issue of attraction is what the image invokes. Who is hotter? I actually don't know, but I believe that being hot matters to the person who created it because it is what we, boys and girls, associate heavily with attraction. When dissecting the basics of attraction it becomes clear that part of attraction involves being dependent on the person who is attracted to you. Finding the right attractor to your attraction. Whether the person is attractive or not attractive (or somewhere higher on the attractive scale than another person) is what this image critiques because the more attractive person will be at an advantage at finding an attractor that approves of them.
Who is more worthy of the affection? The thick or the thin? (Or in this case, the thin or the thinner?) It matters because one will have a better chance of earning the other sexes approval. However, it is known that in Western society the female has been much more dependent to the male than the male has been to the female. The ancient civilizations that ours is a descendent from were extremely hierarchical. At the top of the food chain were "civilized males." Ahead of women, ahead of children, ahead of slaves.
Now we come back to the present times and in this picture it is evident that this person had a problem with who she believes guys have become attracted to. And at the same time, a viral image is not circulating about boys complaining about who girls are attracted it. This is because males, historically, have been on top. We have an exceptional amount of faults. One thing we don't have is a preoccupation for winning the other genders approval through looks. Attraction certainly matters to males just as much as it does to females, but females dominate the playing field when it comes to begging to be attractive. And this amounts to needing some sort of approval from the opposite sex (that thicker girls just can't get anymore) and thus puts that opposite gender above your own.
So much has been done since ancient times to create a level society. The world is beginning to be a place above the "natural" hierarchies. What this image asks "when did this become hotter than this" is still stuck inside of an old framework of excessive dependence on the other sex and truly neither side is feminist. What the question that should be getting asked is not "when did this become hotter" but simply, "when is that hardly going to matter?"