Recently in Body Image Category

What a sad state of affairs. Well, I disagree Kate! But then again, I don't make millions off of being thin, so I guess starving does feel good for her, since she is paid to do it. Seriously, sad! Food is good and we need it to survive.

This makes me feel sad for Kate Moss, I mean, even though I know she is rich and famous and got to make out with Johnny Depp, but she is the product of a system that values thinness over her other attributes. And a pretty high value at that, since she is one of the top paid super models. It would be nice to think that maybe privately her self worth is not also based on what she looks like, but if her motto is, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," one would think the opposite. I also can't believe she is so detached from reality that she doesn't realize that young women that are already plagued with eating disorders look up to her and has no sense of public responsibility. Young women don't need to hear that eating less will make them skinny and therefore a super model. Bad. Bad!

As community blogger minerva put it,

Moss may or may not be intelligent, I neither know nor care. But at some level, she must realize that young women aspire to be like her. It saddens me that she truly believes that her motto is something to be emulated.

Food is good. These types of comments do have implications for young women since we are already inundated with the self hating culture of starvation to attain absurd levels of thinness instead of being taught to love ourselves. And then, often women are rewarded for their self hating behavior. It is an endless cycle that must stop and we need role models to help us.

Transcript available at Shakesville.

They would probably say, "Fuck You Reebok." Outside of the idea that ladies like to buy sneakers not to run and be active but to make their ass smaller - the talking titties really have to go. Presenting women as no more than disembodied body parts (most often sexualized body parts) is Feminism 101 - it's dehumanizing and sexist. Also, it's not clever or original. Remember this one?

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Dear Professor Foxy,

Thank you!
Tired of Being Anxious

Hi TOBA -

As a sexuality educator, most of the questions I get fall into one large category: "what is normal? Am I normal?" The answer is that there is no normal and that applies here.

People's naturally occurring lubricant varies widely: some folks become very wet very easily and stay wet, others produce very little and don't stay wet, most are some place in between. The amount you produce will also change depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle and in your life (postmenopausal women tend to produce much less). What matters in almost the entire "am I normal" category of questions is how the person feels about whatever they are asking. With the amount of wondrous variation we all have, there is no normal, there is only acceptance.

You do not have an abnormal lack of wetness, you have wet is normal for you. The most important thing to do is to get to a place of acceptance about yourself and your body. I am not saying this is easy or an overnight process, but once you are there potential partners tend to follow. On the flip side, potential partners who are not accepting are rarely partners worth having.

Artificial lubricant has moved fully into mainstream sexual practice. Hell, even Wal-Mart carries it. I would suggest buying a bottle (not from Wal-Mart) and trying it out by yourself. See how it feels different to masturbate with lube and without. Which experience do you like better? Or do you like both and can now switch it up to keep things interesting. Babeland offers a sampler pack.

When you do have sexual experiences with others, I do not think there is a need to have a conversation with partners. Simply pull your bottle out and use the lube as necessary. Think of how sexy it will look when you apply it to yourself or your partner's fingers, toys, or penis.

This can become natural to you as you begin to incorporate the lube. Many, many people use lube and even more people find it incredibly hot when their sexual partners have a bottle(s) ready. There are a plethora of lubes out there, find one that you can claim as your own. Love your body for what it does and does not do, others will follow.

Best,
Professor Foxy

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

And we're trying to get them taken down, FYI.

And in fact, let me tell you a lil' something that I often tell audiences when I speak on my book, Perfect Girls. The diet industry is a $30 billion enterprise in this country and it fails 95% of the time. Would you shell out for an iPod if it turned out to be a lemon 95% of the time? No, because you're not stupid. So don't diet. Ever. Okay, done.

Oh, wait, not done. Here's a picture of a little girl that I think is awesome. So not on a diet.

The New York Times Magazine that made Precious actress Gabourey Sidibe a cover girl was almost a too-good-to-be-true moment. All at once, the world was a more inclusive place for people of dark complexions, ample body sizes and for people living in the shadows of the less visible differences her Precious character embodies. It's crazy how powerful representation can be. I am a dark-complected, Harlem girl who has survived violence. And while it's on the self indulgent side, I must admit: seeing that chocolate girl on that measly little cover with her pride held high made all the difference to me.

A few days remain until Precious debuts across the country on Nov. 6th. The story, originally told by Sapphire through the novel Push, is an ode to negotiating inclusion and exclusion in the media. It's about much more than the New York Times' account: a "Harlem girl raped and impregnated by her abusive father." (That's practically all the ink dedicated to Precious the character despite an accompanying a column that extends for 5 pages.) It's about inclusion and what it says about who is valuable in our society. That's best captured in Push, when Precious explores this:

I am comp'tant. I was comp'tant enough for her [Precious' mother] husband to fuck. She ain' come in here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones--thas wrong! Git off Precious like that! Can't you see Precious is a beautiful chile like white chile in magazines or on toilet paper wrappers. Precious is a blue-eye skinny chile whose hair is long braids, long long braids. Git off Precious fool! It time for Precious to go to the gym like Janet Jackson. It time for Precious hair to braided.(64)

But what I love about the book is that Precious is not a defenseless subject. She is a survivor who resists against her exclusion by striving for her own inclusion. She does this by learning how to read. She then uses her literacy to read about the lives of Black women through writers such as Alice Walker, Ann Petry, Ann McGovern and others. The story ends with her literally penning her own story fully epitomizing the agency she had all along despite sexual trauma and despair.

Last month, the announcement that Marge Simpson, everyone's favorite overworked and underappreciated cartoon mom, would grace the cover of the November issue of Playboy, caught some observers by surprise. I was not one of them. After all, Playboy has always depicted women as cartoonish and two-dimensional: the only thing that really sets this particular cover girl apart is that she has blue hair and eight fingers.

Women with cartoonish proportions and features are and have long been Playboy's bread and butter. When you open up a copy of Playboy, or of any other mainstream soft core porn magazine, the images of women you're likely to find there are a far cry from reality. Surgically augmented breasts, topiaried pubic hair, uncomfortable-looking poses and often-overzealous airbrushing are porn industry standards and the result is that flipping through a copy of Playboy can leave you with a sneaking suspicion that the women staring seductively back at you aren't quite real. Given its long-standing tradition of printing photos of women whose bodies look like cartoonish exaggerations of the female form, it was only a matter of time before Playboy gave up on human women altogether, and started putting actual cartoons in the centerfold.

Perception, a British scholarly journal, has conducted a new study suggesting that heterosexual men are more attracted to curvier women than to thin women.

The study asked a gaggle of male students from St Andrews University to look at photos of women's faces and rate them by health and attractiveness. These young, virile men found women with more facial adiposity, or with curvier, rounder faces, were more healthy and more attractive. Then, Telegraph.co.uk and The Daily Mail then took this study to prove that all men find curvier women more attractive than thinner women.

Better bust out the champagne now! But wait--

This neglects certain facts. First, the polling sample was a group of men from St Andrews University, the alma mater of Prince William. Race data about the student body is unavailable, but the UK now sees growing inequality in retention and graduation rates between white and nonwhite university students, and St Andrews boasts a 98% graduation rate. The university's secret society, the Kate Kennedy Club, advertises itself as "Penises only." It is irresponsible for British news sources to extrapolate these findings to all men.

Second, the study really was about health, and the variable of facial adiposity to predict body composition.

"We often remark on how healthy or unhealthy someone looks, but it can be very difficult to say precisely how we know this," said lead researcher Vinet Coetzee.

"Scientists have been trying to answer this question for decades, and have made many breakthroughs in our understanding of health and attractiveness, but until now they have tended to overlook the influence of weight."

This is not the first time Perceptions Journal has condoned objectification via research study.

Photograph credit: "Excessive," from the amazing Sara Heart Bacon.

Christian Louboutin is set to release Barbies made over with his stylings over the coming months, but the luxury shoe designer "reshaped the dolls' figures," as he didn't find their existing shapes appealing.

A Louboutin spokesperson said, "He found her ankles were too fat."

Charming.

Via RH Reality Check.

Lately, Europe seems to be eons ahead of us regarding their recognition that the fashion and media having a significantly unhealthy effect on women's body image. The latest is Germany's most popular women's magazine's announcement of their intention to omit professional models from their pages in an effort to combat unrealistic social beauty standards:

The editor-in-chief of Germany's bimonthly Brigitte told reporters that, starting next year, the magazine will feature a mix of prominent women and regular readers in photo spreads for everything from beauty to fashion to fitness.

Andreas Lebert said the move is a response to readers increasingly saying that they are tired of seeing "protruding bones" from models who weigh far less than the average woman.

"We will show women who have an identity -- the 18-year-old student, the head of the board, the musician, the football player," Andreas Leberts said in Hamburg, where the magazine, published by Gruner+Jahr, is based.

I like this sentiment; we should humanize models not just as "more realistic" subjects of voyeurism. I just worry these kinds of efforts (cough, Dove, cough) often end up having some contradicting issues to contend with - like if the new magazine's campaign consists of shaming underweight women, that's not very productive either.

Either way, it's interesting to see how fast the efforts to combat body image issues and eating disorders are spreading among the fashion and media industries on one continent, while others (ahem) seem to be at a standstill.

Not long after UK government officials suggested that airbrushed ads have disclaimers in a national effort to improve women's lives in the UK, French members of Parliament are not just pushing hard for a disclaimer, but are calling it a government "health warning." Love it:

A group of 50 politicians want a new law stating published images have bold printed notice stating they have been digitally enhanced.

Campaigning MP Valerie Boyer, of President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party, said the wording should read, 'Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person's physical appearance'.

Mrs Boyer, who has also written a government report on anorexia and obesity, added: 'We want to combat the stereotypical image that all women are young and slim.

'These photos can lead people to believe in a reality that does not actually exist, and have a detrimental effect on adolescents."

I'll hold my breath for the U.S. to catch on.

Because the only way to get people to care about women dying of breast cancer is to remind them that tits are stake.

Related: The Breast Cancer-Industrial Complex, More on breast cancer's most tragic victims..., Fun with Feminist Flickr (beating cancer/beating women edition), and more from Hoyden About Town.

Via.

While I too, think that straight men can sadly be intimidated by women who love their vagina, this was upsetting. Another confession Fox divulged in her Rolling Stones interview was that she used to cut herself:

"Yeah...But I don't want to elaborate. I would never call myself a cutter. Girls go through different phases when they're growing up, when they're miserable and do different things, whether it's an eating disorder or they dabble in cutting."(Emphasis mine)

No biggie, just something girls "dabble in" as they grow up. Huh? While I respect her openness about her problem, normalizing pretty serious issues as just somethin' us gals do isn't sending her young emulating fans a good message here.

(Not to mention cutting seems to be more common in general among young actresses lately - and of course the media is eating it up. Heinous.)

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Hello Professor Foxy,

Thank you,
Shy About Inverted Nipples

Hello Shy -

Things are a problem, if they are a problem for you. If a part of your body makes you uncomfortable, it matters.

Both men and women have inverted nipples. Breasts are different on everybody: size, shape, aerola and nipple size, color, heft, etc. Around 20 percent of women have at least one inverted nipple. (That's right, people can have one inverted and one not).

The important thing about this is to claim them. They are a part of you and if you can find them hot others will follow. As a sex educator, people constantly talk to me about the parts of their bodies that they hate. My response is pretty consistent "people are just glad to be in bed with you. No one is judging your body more than you are."

As for guys ignoring your breasts, the only way to get what you want in bed is to ask for it. Move your lover's hands to your breasts and moan. Erect nipples are just one way we have of showing our lovers what we like, our linguistic and verbal cues and how our body moves are equally if not more important.

Some people with inverted nipples do get them pierced and while there are no great studies, for some people this actually does cause the nipple to stand out even after the piercing is removed. If you decide to go this route, I would carefully choose a piercer who has experience piercing inverted nipples. Call around and find someone who will answer your questions honestly. Piercing causes scar tissue to form and this may impact your sensitivity (for better or worse) or your ability to breastfeed (if you want to have children and breast feed).

I would try the owning route first. See how it feels to try and love and accepting your body as is and projecting that to lovers. Give it time and see if you can start to truly love what you have.

Best,
Professor Foxy

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

Sean Lennon and girlfriend, model Kemp Muhl, were photographed for a recent issue of French magazine Purple imitating the famous Rolling Stone cover of Sean's parents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (The original and the imitation are after the jump -- probably NSFW.)

I've always loved the John and Yoko photo. The original was transgressive, powerful, emotional in its reversal of gender roles -- her clothed, him naked. It says so much about the vulnerability that comes with truly loving someone, and about forging an egalitarian relationship in a fucked-up world.

Here's how photographer Annie Leibovitz describes the shoot:

"John took his clothes off in a few seconds, but Yoko was very reluctant. She said, 'I'll take my shirt off but not my pants.' I was kinda disappointed, and I said, 'Just leave everything on.' We took one Polaroid, and the three of us knew it was profound right away."

Funny how John's boy-nipples weren't even exposed. His pose is more fetal than erotic. Remarkably Yoko Ono is shown as a sexual creature without being reduced to a sexualized male fantasy. The reversal of convention is so much more powerful than the capitulation to cliche in the newer photo. John and Yoko's photo is both more intimate and more innocent.

That's not to say Yoko was against the female body being photographed nude, or ashamed of her body. Here's what Beatles-loving feminist Cara has to say about Yoko, nudity, and John and Yoko's infamous full-frontal album cover:

Just look at it (obviously NSFW); there she is in all of her bare glory. Just like John standing beside her, she isn't attempting to arouse the viewer. She's not using her nakedness to express sexuality at all. And she looks equally as confident as he does. John once said that they purposely picked the least flattering photograph, and especially by today's standards, Yoko would be considered downright unphotogenic by the mainstream. She has full pubic hair, some hints of cellulite on her thighs, a waist that is not particularly defined, and most shocking of all, large breasts that do not defy gravity, and an unremarkable yet undeniable bit of hang with nipples pointing downwards.

In other words, she looks like an average woman. Her body resembles the one that most of look at in the mirror more than the ones we see in magazines. It exists not for the pleasures of others, but for her.

(Emphasis mine.) I know Cara is writing about a different photo, but I think the sentiment probably applies to the Rolling Stone cover as well. In the imitation, the photo of Sean and Kemp, Kemp's body is presented the way we always see the female body represented: for the pleasure of others. Which is why it is not actually an homage to the photo of his parents. It's actually the exact opposite.

UPDATE: Read Cara's take here.

Like me, Arianne Cohen is a woman over 6 feet tall who makes her living as a journalist. And dammit, she beat me to writing a book about life in the 99th percentile for height: The Tall Book. (I've blogged about some of my tall-lady experiences before, in response to an article Cohen wrote for Nerve.)

Much of the book focuses on the undeniable advantages that come with being tall -- I'd venture to call it height supremacist, even. Because height is a product of not just genetics but good childhood nutrition, there's a strong correlation between height and intelligence, and therefore height and wealth. (Ah, but a gender gap persists: tall women still earn 17% less than tall men.) Tall people are also more likely to attract attention (duh) and be perceived as leaders.

But the picture isn't quite as rosy for tall women -- especially those of us who are extremely tall -- as it is for tall men. Cohen describes how, as early as age 8, she was offered the option of taking estrogen to stunt her growth so she would not reach her projected height of 6'5". This practice developed in response to parents' fears their daughters would not be able to find a husband if they grew too tall. Cohen said no to the estrogen, and today she's 6'3". It was a good choice -- growth-stunting estrogen has been linked to fertility problems later in life. Yet some doctors continue to prescribe this "treatment" for tallness. A 2002 survey of 411 endocrinologists found 137 still offered height-reduction treatments. How fucking archaic is that? Cohen writes, "In the United States boys are rarely treated, because height is considered beneficial."

As I read Cohen's book and thought about my own height, the more I came to think my physical self has had a lot to do with me turning out a feminist despite a very conservative upbringing. It's the social aspects of tallness -- especially when it comes to gender dynamics -- where things really get interesting...

ABC News took on reality television's recent focus on exploiting larger women like the show Samhita recently reviewed, "More to Love" and decided to talk to her about it some more! Here are some thoughts Samhita gave the author:

To Feministing editor Mukhopadhyay, that perpetuates the impression that these women are to be pitied and fetishized for their size.

"On one level, it's good to have more images of larger women on TV because that act alone changes the way we look at people," she said. "But so many of them have low self-esteem, they're self-loathing, they talk about how no one loves them. It becomes this sort of spectacle. You really do wonder if all the stereotypes you've heard of fat people are true. On that level I do think it's exploitive."

Damn straight. Check out the whole piece.

I know I shouldn't be surprised by PETA's latest billboard campaign in Florida - after all, their brand of activism has proven to be sexist and racist time and time again - why not fat-shaming to boot? (Part of me hates posting this at all because it does just give PETA the attention that they want. But I just had to.)

From PETA's press release on the billboard:

A new PETA billboard campaign that was just launched in Jacksonville reminds people who are struggling to lose weight -- and who want to have enough energy to chase a beach ball -- that going vegetarian can be an effective way to shed those extra pounds that keep them from looking good in a bikini. The ad shows a woman whose "blubber" is spilling over the sides of her swimsuit bottom...

Anyone wishing to achieve a hot "beach bod" is reminded that studies show that vegetarians are, on average, about 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters...

"Trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. (Emphasis mine)

Seriously? This shit is just shameful. Consider this woman's reaction after seeing the billboard:

I was planning on taking [my family] to the beach to enjoy the beautiful day when I saw a billboard that made me want to cry.

...We all sat there and stared at it for a minute and everyone in the car was silent. No one wanted to mention my weight. I laughed it off as usual, but it really had made me so embarrassed, so self conscious and so ashamed about my weight that I dropped off my family at the oceanfront and left to go home, making the excuse that I wasn't feeling well.

I'm with Holly at Deceiver: PETA owes the residents of Jacksonville a serious apology.

Related posts: Sometimes there are no words
Quick Hit: PETA's Ad Banned from the Super Bowl
PETA: Cause objectifying women never gets old
When you thought PETA couldn't get worse.
PETA does it again
Same old shit from PETA

While Kelly Clarkson's body has apparently been airbrushed away in SELF magazine's September cover, members of the UK Parliament are calling for disclaimers on advertisements that have been airbrushed. Love it.

Airbrushing is sadly no new trend in women's magazines and ads, but the thing about Clarkson's "slimmed down" cover that's particularly disturbing is that September is SELF's "Total Body Confidence Issue," not to mention Clarkson talks about her (non)issues with weight fluctuation in the piece and the media's hissies that she just doesn't get:

"My happy weight changes. Sometimes I eat more; sometimes I play more. I'll be different sizes all the time. When people talk about my weight, I'm like, 'You seem to have a problem with it; I don't. I'm fine!'"

In the meantime, UK Democrats from the House of Parliament just released 42 recommendations to "help improve the lives of women in the UK," with one of the most controversial being the suggestion that airbrushed ads have a disclaimer saying so.

What really pisses me off is the contention by fashion folks supportive of airbrushing that it somehow benefits the subject being airbrushed. Photographer Nigel Baker said in response to the proposal:

"The idea is that you want to produce the most flattering image possible . . . The reason why talent in the modeling industry is so young is because of this desire to have flawless-looking women. But with good retouching, you can have older-looking women working longer. You can show her maturity, but perhaps you don't show every wrinkle and line. What you are seeing are older models having longer careers that they never would have had because of retouching.''

See, airbrushing is good for women! We're allowing older, "flawed" women to continue to work even though they shouldn't be! In response to Clarkson's airbrushed cover, SELF editor Lucy Danziger says the "retouching" was "only to make her look her personal best." But how could that be her personal best when it's technically not even all of her there?

h/t to Ethan for the link.

If you're a dude, that is. Ladies, continue to starve yourself per usual please.

Yes, seriously. And the Wall Street Journal did a feature on it. (Note the subtitle of the video is "In Depth.")

Between declaring thin eyelashes a "condition" and an awareness month created around "chubby ankles," it seems that the micromanagement of women's body parts is becoming so much of a trend that soon, women will begin to hate literally every fiber of their being.

This is not to mention that the gym's campaign is a smack in the face to every awareness month that works towards, you know, saving lives and fighting injustice and stuff. Shame on Gold's, and on WSJ for actually covering this bullshit as news.

h/t to Jill, who has started her own campaign of sorts in response.

The fashion world went hoo-ha for Delta Airlines when they decided to hire designer Richard Tyler to create new uniforms for the airline, who assured he'd made the dresses look "look sexy and great." (Ick.) The flight attendants at Delta, however, were less than thrilled to find that the uniform is too small:

The Northwest chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (essentially made up of members from Northwest Airlines before it was bought by Delta) filed an official complaint with Delta Air Lines and requested that it make the signature red dress available in sizes going up to 28 (right now the red dress only goes up to a size 18). As Patricia Reller (who manages the union's grievances) told The Associated Press, the fact that the dress isn't available in larger sizes says: "We don't want you wearing that if you are over size 18."

Sadly, I can't say the nonsense that comes out of any airline surprises me anymore. You can contact Delta here.

Photo: Katy Winn, Getty Images.

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Professor Foxy,
I am newly divorced from a relationship I began at age 17. I am now 29, and playing the field a bit. Truly enjoying some of my new found freedom and exploring my sexuality in many ways, for the first time.

Recently, it was brought to my attention that I am a little different. You see, I don't shave my pubic hair. It's not that I never have, its that I don't really like to. I trim, keep it neat and aesthetically pleasing to my tastes. I have played around with shaving, have bought and used the best and sharpest razors, and really tried to make it work. What I've discovered is that it's a pain in the butt (how does a mom find that much time alone to shave labia!), the shave is never close enough (always the sensation of stubble at least in some areas) and man am I afraid to cut myself! Plus, you have to shave all the time! A vulva with a 5 o'clock shadow is not sexy to me, neither is razor burn, and my crotch feels itchier and sweatier when I'm hairless (where my newly shaven skin touches the insides of my thighs).

Right now, I'm giving up, and I guess I don't understand why so many women do this? Do I just have more and thicker hair than most women, making shaving just not right for me and my body? Is every woman just living with the discomforts I experience? My partner who mentioned it (he's much younger and I think I was the first woman with pubic hair he has ever slept with, haha, I'm proud) basically indicated it was better for him as far as cunnilingus. That seems fair enough. It's a pragmatic enough reason, and for the same reason I prefer it when my partner shaves or at least trims and does basic maintenance.

On the other hand, what the fuck?! I am a woman, not a little girl! The unapologetic feminist in me wants to flip anybody who doesn't like pubic hair the bird!

Why are so many women doing this; pragmatic reasons, purity myth, both? Is having pubic hair such an anomaly that it is something I need to discuss with a new sexual partner before hand? I don't want to have sex with a guy who thinks my pubic hair is a novelty.

Sincerely,
(Insert any catchy non-offensive name of your choosing pertaining to my lovely pubes ;)

Hi IACNNOYCPTMLP -

Hair is one of the new feminist sex frontiers. Pubic hair and its trimming, shaping, and full removal were not the talked about and at times expected topic until the 90s. On its most basic level pubic hair exists to cushion the skin and genitalia of men and women during sex.

While it is now portrayed as the norm to shave and remove pubic hair, I doubt that it is "the standard" that the media implies that it is. On a sex etiquette level, I think some trimming is appropriate (for all genders). It provides easier access to genitalia with less of a chance of getting pubic hair in one's partner's mouth.

You are a grown and mature woman, who has made a decision about her body that is right for her. Stick with it. Lovers who reject you based on your pubic hair are asking you to change your decisions about your body. It may not be as serious as abortion, but it is still your body and your body integrity.

Every woman has different thickness and amounts of pubic hair, there is no standard. What matters is what you want. Some women may love removing their pubic hair (via shaving, waxing, or depilatory). Shaving is not itchy for everyone; it really depends on how sensitive your skin is.

Beyond the pragmatic reasons for removal of pubic hair, we cannot ignore our society's obsession and fetishization of youth. The pressure to remove and limit women's pubic hair is certainly an example of this. There is also another aspect of this that speaks to women being available and ready for sex by having constantly sculpted genitals.

You know what is best for you and have made the decision what works for you. Stick with it. Society will always pressure women to maintain a false version of perfection and this has reached even into our genitals.

Best,
Professor Foxy

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

I knew not to be too excited about this article about plus size fashion when the accompanying picture was a young woman in a frozen food aisle. In the words of Seth Meyer and Amy Poehler, REALLY, NEW YORK TIMES?! You publish a story on "big girls" who--what a shock!--are interested in looking cute, and then promptly choose to lead the whole thing off with an image that insinuates that they're favorite hang spot is the supermarket. Really?!

The piece details all the different clothing stores that have recently started plus size fashion lines, including Top Shop, Forever 21, and H&M (subsequently dropped for reasons unknown). There's a market, it turns out, for women above a size 10 to buy clothing. Who would have thunk it?

A few really annoying things...most of these lines are still only available online, which suggests that a) the stores don't want "big girls" shopping it up in store or b) the stores assume that "big girls" don't want to have a shopping experience like everyone else, that they're oh-so-ashamed. Either way, it's insulting. (I know the stores claim they just don't have room for all their merchandise, but I call bullshit on that).

Annie Maribona, the founder and part owner of Fat Fancy, a new boutique in Portland, Oregon, told the Times: "When you're fat you stand out anyway. It's really important to go all the way and do something fun or even outrageous with your clothes."

Um, I'm all for anyone of any size doing something fun or even outrageous with their style, but this sort of makes it sound like bigger girls have to present as freak shows in order to adhere to the public's expectation. It's fine if a larger woman likes to dress in "outrageous" colors or styles--more power to her--but she shouldn't feel like she has to "go all the way" unless it's authentic to her tastes and personality.

Thank goodness Maribona redeems herself in the short snippet on fat acceptance:

More than tokenism, such fashion and media tactics seem born of a conviction that larger young women have become more self-accepting. "They are inclined to show off the parts of their bodies they love," said Ms. Sack, the Chicago retailer. Pushing the trend is a broad movement of fat acceptance among academics, anti-bias activists and some psychologists. "It's important to reclaim 'fat' as a descriptive, as even something positive," argued Ms. Maribona of Fat Fancy.

But others point to serious health consequences of being overweight. Andrea Marks, a specialist in adolescent medicine in Manhattan, suspects that "the vast majority of overweight girls are not so happy."

Why can't we live in a world where there is no need to segregate larger sizes of clothing as if they were specialized when really they are average or not far from it? Why are larger women talked about as if they are a different species of human being, as if it is surprising that they'd like to look good or find clothing that fits them in the stores near their homes?

For real information about fashion-forward styles for larger women, check out:
Young, Fat, and Fabulous
Manolo for the Big Girl
Frocks and Frou Frou
The Rotund
Joy Nash

And check out community poster RMJ on the subject.

Thanks to Wendy and Marjorie for the awesome links, and reader Ali for the heads up.

Latoya Peterson (pictured right), our girl from Racialicious.com, is up first.

Pop culture conversations are vital because it reaches so many people across the world. "The U.S.'s biggest export is pop culture; it's about all we export."

Dr. Laura Plybon, a self-identified Apache Indian and Girls Inc., speaks VERY briefly about her desire to see people from her culture represented in the media accurately and complexly.

Glennda Testone, from the Women's Media Center, is up next. I heart her so much. She talks about the Women's Media Center's work:

The Women's Media Center makes women visible and powerful in the media. Led by our president, the Emmy-winning journalist, writer, and producer Carol Jenkins, the WMC works with the media to ensure that women's stories are told and women's voices are heard. We do this in three ways: through our media advocacy campaigns; by creating our own media; and by training women to participate directly in media. We are directly engaged with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, as sources and subjects.

She also mentions Rhianna and the most recent Disney princess as potential flash points to look at during the conversation.

This is amazing. Each panelist is basically passing the mic. How refreshing.

Anne Zill of the Women's Center for Ethics in Action says she's probably going to be a "little heretical" on this panel today because she wants to talk about ways in which pop culture right now is actually positive in certain ways.

She advocates for throwing away the superwoman archetype and embracing a more communitarian approach to raising families and finding fulfilling work. She also talks about the critical need to foster empathy while raising all children.

Glennda (pictured left) talks about how women are the majority of the population and the majority of consumers are women. Women only hold 3% of clout positions in the media. She talks about an initial meeting with all the bookers and producers from mainstream media that the WMC initially had. They were so excited that there were tons of women with decision making power in the room, but when they went around the room, it turned out that every single one of them reported to a male boss. Management positions in media are 15-24% women.

She proposes the idea of a hiring quota of some kind of people of color and women in leadership positions in the media.

Latoya shows a really interesting graph of Huffington Post's traffic vs. Feministing's traffic and reminds us that, though it's great that we're "making our own media," we still don't have nearly the same bandwith as the mainstream media outlets.

Latoya: "what permeates the social consciousness is at the CNN level."

She refers to Women & Hollywood's recent commentary on the ways in which Hollywood just refuses to believe that women go to the movies and want to see more than chick flicks. Melissa Silverstein advocates, from the audience, that women really need to go to women-oriented films on opening weekend. Buying a ticket, she explains, is like voting. You can sign up for her e-newsletter if you want to get weekly information about what films are opening.

So I totally had a "Get in Shape, Girl" ballet bar, weights and baton - I'm not gonna lie. But it just pains me to watch this commercial.

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Hi Professor Foxy,

Thanks in advance,
Lonely

Hi Lonely -
Although I vowed not to bare the intimate details of my life in this column, I cannot help but respond personally as one not-thin woman to another. I have never been thin and get what it's like to walk through a world that tells you that you are inherently unattractive for the size you wear.

I don't doubt that some men will reject you due to your size, but others will not. Still others find women of size the hottest thing since butter on bread.

But I've found that bigger is better only when you sell it that way. Simply put, you have to think yourself Hot Stuff.

What about you do you find attractive? Yes--society, media, etc. says women over a certain size are unattractive, but I call bullshit. For many of us--size irrelevant given the malarkey all women are taught-- it is believing that we are hot that is difficult.

So how do you find yourself hot? What body parts do you like on yourself? Close your eyes and run your hands over your body . . . isn't there something lovely about how soft you are? What do you wear that feels sexy- playing dress up can help us see the erotic parts of ourselves.

There are thin men out there who date bigger women. The trick is finding them. How are you looking to meet men? Have you tried personal ads? In ads you can put it out there that you are bigger and what you want in a man. It helps lower the rejection factor.

For me, a basic tenet of feminism is not to beat yourself up over your likes/dislikes. Yes, there is some hypocrisy in being attracted to a man of a certain size, but your attraction is there and we can acknowledge our own hypocrisy and then move on.

Losing weight is something that has to be done for you. I would urge you not to focus on your size or weight, but instead on your health. How far can you run? How heavy a bag can you carry? Those numbers are often a better reflection of our health than the numbers on a scale.

As for flirting, there is not some magical code, and frankly, lots of people don't "flirt" at all. Men are just people. Talk to them, have a conversation, laugh. Somewhere in there, you will likely find that you are flirting. Nothing magically leads to another, but a good conversation can lead to a good relationship and/or good sex. Put yourself out there; try to be clear about what (and who!) you are interested in.

The risk of rejection is part of dating, regardless of size. The trick is to realize that being rejected is part of life. Only by putting yourself out there in all your fabulous size are you going to meet someone. I'm not saying it is easy, but only by putting ourselves out there do we get what we want.

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

The due date is quickly approaching..... Everyone is eagerly waiting to see the new addition to the family. The pictures that are taken will be in the albums forever..... but wait, who is that unrecognizable monster in a hospital gown? NOT YOU!

Finally there is A Dressed Up Delivery!

We at Pretty Pushers believe that you deserve to look your best when you work your hardest. The enclosed five items are sure to keep you feeling fabulous until the job is done!

I'm sure you're dying to know what these five magical items are. 1) Pink lip gloss and a mirror 2) A "delivery dress" 3) A headband 4) A lemon-water towelette 5) Heated massage oil

As a doula who has accompanied women during childbirth I can tell you that the only useful thing in the kit is the massage oil and maybe the headband. Massage can be great for pain mediation during labor, and if your hair is long you might want it out of your face. Oh, and the mirror could come in handy, because some women like to see what they are doing as they push.

Perpetuating screwed up ideas about women's beauty is already infuriating enough, but now we need to mix it in with childbirth. If you've ever actually been with a woman after she's given birth, I'd say she looks pretty damn beautiful, sweat and all.

This is the preview for a new WE TV show, I Want to Save Your Life.

Not only is this creepy, it's just plain wrong in so many ways. Do we really need ANOTHER television show that tells women they are ruining their lives because of what they put in their mouths?

First of all, this guy is like a stalker, following her around, monitoring her. He's creepy beyond belief. Secondly, this once again, for the millionth time perpetuates the myth that everyone who is overweight is secretly and guilty sneaking ice cream sundaes. We should know by now that weight is much more complex than that. Thirdly, this shit is just sensationalist. I want to save your life? This woman does not look like she is at risk of dying because of a few extra pounds.

Also, why is it always skinny white guys who have discovered the secret of weight loss and are going to teach it to women?

As the reader who sent this in said (h/t to caryb):

Since this show is about women, this is yet another example of how women's bodies are community property, and this time the justification is health and in the promo, the woman isn't even that fat, which makes this even more ridiculous. These things are never about health, they're always about body politics in my opinion.

I hope this show goes the way of the dodo.

Note: After posting this, I amended the title and added the quotes around the word "overweight." I did this because I disagree with the suggestion that these women, or women of any weight, are not the norm. Also the show obviously is using it's own screwed up standards to decide who needs these interventions.

I feel like I may have been the last person on earth to watch the video of 47-year-old Brit Susan Boyle taking all the "Britain's Got Talent" folks by surprise with her beautiful voice. This morning, nearly 40 million people have seen the clip on YouTube. So what gives? Why is this striking such a global chord?

Well, from a feminist perspective, there are some really compelling explanations. First of all, Susan Boyle defies just about every one of the "ideal beauty" standards that have such a tight grip on the recording industry. She's not thin, she's not blonde, she's not manicured, she's not young. The fact that she's white may be the only way in which her physicality conforms to stereotypical definitions of Western beauty. Her reception when she walked out on stage was such an exquisite example of the way in which we, as a society, vilify overweight people--projecting all sorts of negative assumptions on them because of their perceived weight. The audience members' faces said it all--"She's overweight and ugly, so she must not be talented."

As I write about in my book, psychologists have a concept called "the halo effect"--essentially that we often project unrelated and unearned attributes to people based on their beauty. We see a hot women on the street, for example, and automatically assume she has a great, easy life, a loving partner, a successful career--all because her hair is shiny and straight and she wears a size two! The reverse effect is ever-present these days; when a woman is overweight or doesn't fit the conventional standard of beauty in some other way, we assume all sorts of completely unrelated thing about her--she's lazy, unhappy, untalented, unloved.

Susan Boyle brings all those ugly thoughts to the surface and then highlights their absolute ridiculousness with her gorgeous singing voice.

But that, my friends, is not really why this video is being forwarded like nobody's business. I don't think the majority of us are really willing to look at the ugly scripts in our heads, the fat discrimination, the self-hate (oh so relate to our merciless judgment of others). Instead, I think Susan Boyle represents a certain kind of surprise that we are desperate for in this time of economic recession. The typical power brokers have been revealed in their corruptness and brutality and now we want the little guy/lady to succeed, to have her day in the sun, to indicate for all the rest of us, that we, too, can still dream.

I wish Susan Boyle's explosion on the global scene would make people less brutal in their physical critiques. I'm not optimistic. You?

Check out radishette's community post!

Sarah Haskins taking on the "mow the lawn" commercial = heaven. Hilarious.

From the same folks who want your to "mow your lawn" comes a commercial telling women that if they don't shave their legs, chaos will ensue.

Sarahec at the Community blog already posted this mess of an ad, but I just had to write about it as well. The video is obviously gross and hackneyed (how many cat/pussy references does one really need?), but the not-so-subtle racism of who has a "big" bush and who has a "small" bush just put me over the edge.

Please?

Via Women's Glib.

Via newsday.com

FOX is setting out to prove that love comes in all shapes and sizes with the new inspirational dating competition series "More to Love." Executive-produced by Mike Fleiss ("The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette"), the unscripted series follows a single average guy with a big waist and an even bigger heart as he romances several confident and secure plus-size women. Each week, the husky hunk will wine and dine a group of curvy women to determine if they have more love to give or if they are truly more than he can handle. When the size of competition narrows, he will have to decide if one full-figured lady will become his true love.

Ugh. I am all for representations of people with all sorts of body shapes and sizes, but the size euphemisms are gross. And why the assumption that plus-size people can only date each other? There is so much offense-worthy potential in this show it isn't even funny.

Kim Kardashian posted a pre-photoshopped picture of herself from her Complex Magazine photoshoot to her blog saying she is aware she has cellulite and "which curvy girl doesn't?" Complex had "mistakenly" run the pre-photoshopped picture showing her *gasp* cellulite. Soon after they took the picture down replacing it with one that trims down her thighs and lightens her skin.

Kim's response,

"I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect."

Kudos to her for saying that. Frankly, I see very little actual difference between the two pictures, but the subtle changes make a huge difference and I think it speaks to the extent popular culture will go to produce unnatural and unattainable images of women.

Hortense from Jezebel has a hilarious post about one of my pet peeves-magazines that try and help you "dress for your shape." I am so sick of being inundated with magazines that are supposed to help me look thinner or dress better, because you know, fat girls can't wear sexy clothes, we must hide our bodies. A quick google search and I found plenty of links about how to figure out what shape your body is, so you can figure out what clothes to wear.

As Hortense points out it is difficult to have an exhaustive list of body sizes because we are all shaped differently and therefore, not only are most of the categories limiting and exclusive, they are often downright offensive.

Take, for example, this Glamour feature from last year, which breaks women's body types into these categories: Tall, Busty, Petite, Boyish, Plus-Size, and Pear-Shaped. Which is all well and good, I suppose, unless you happen to be a Pear-Shaped Busty Tall Woman looking for ideas on Plus-Size gowns, because the advice for each category is markedly different, which would lead many women to believe that there are only certain aspects of their bodies that are truly worth addressing, as opposed to concentrating on what fits and feels good.

Also, as someone who generally falls into the "oh, dear, puberty forgot to deliver your boobs" category, I think it would be nice if fashion magazines could stop referring to thin women without many curves as "boyish." Femininity comes in many shapes and sizes, thanks, and Glamour's advice only reinforces the fact that they feel that flat-chested women need to blow up their bust lines to achieve sexiness: "Don't have voluptuous curves? Fake 'em!" Ah yes, because nothing makes me feel more confident than putting in my fake temporary boobs in order to wear a dress.

Read the whole post because at the end she gives some humorous advice on dressing for you shape. In any case, imagine headlines in women's magazines that said, "feel beautiful no matter what!" or "you can rock it, yes you can!" I guess the whole industry that perpetuates women's insecurity about their bodies and therefore marketing us products, tips, techniques and torture devices that will make us "feel better" would fall apart as we know it. All I know is I really don't want my body to be compared to a piece of fruit.

Via Womanist Musings, I find myself speechless.

Located in the Netherlands, Fitness First took it upon themselves to use a different approach to marketing their clubs - public shaming. When someone sits on a bench to rest while waiting for the bus, the ad literally shows the person's weight in red numbers for the world to see. I second Renee's thoughts.

Forever 21 has announced that they will launch a plus size clothing line beginning in May.

The Forever 21 plus-size line, called Faith 21, will feature items similar to other Forever 21 clothing, including flirty dresses, trendy tops, skirts, jeans and basics such as T-shirts, camisoles, tanks and leggings. The target customer is age 15 to 29. Junior plus sizes include XL, 1X and 2X. Prices will range from $3.80 to $29.80.

Alright. There are obvious issues with Forever 21 (see claims of sweat shop labor) and I take issue with Forever 21 having to create a special line of clothing (Faith 21? what does that even mean?) for sizes that represent the majority of women in the US. But, things like this mean more women, and particularly young women might actually be able to find clothing in mainstream stores that fit them.

Thanks to Jeff for the link

The Frito Lay chip company has just launched a disastrous new campaign to try to get women to start snacking on chips as much as their male counterparts. Faced with dropping sales, they employed some neurologists to tell them what sort of kooky advertising would get inside of those tiny lady brains. The New York Times reports:

Juniper Park used neuromarketing in a slightly different way. Ms. Nykoliation began by researching how women's brains compared with men's, so the firm could adjust the marketing accordingly. Her research suggested that the communication center in women's brains was more developed, leading her to infer that women could process ads with more complexity and more pieces of information. A memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was proportionally larger in women, so Ms. Nykoliation concluded that women would look for characters they could empathize with.

Which apparently translates into women obsessing over the size of their thighs, melting into little animated piles of tears over random dudes, using words like "cankle," and being generally super stressed out.

For the vomit worthy results, go here. I warn you, a gag bag is totally necessary.

Thanks to Beth for the heads up.

"Appetite is the hook on which all my ancillary struggles have hung, the ocean from which all internal rivers (my own, those of many women) have sprung."
-Caroline Knapp

INDWELLING III: Living in a Female Body:
The Project Continues
Saturday, FEBRUARY 7, 2009
1:00 pm -- 4:00 pm
Location: Friends Meeting House, Manhattan
15 Rutherford Place (15th Street Between Second and Third Avenues. Short walk from Union Square)
$25 Registration / $15 Students / underwritten tickets available

FOR TICKETS CONTACT (212)721-7005
wtcinyc@mac.com

Several years ago, I wrote a post about how I thought Barbie hadn't been bad for me. Sure, I said, I agree with criticism of the dolls' creepy blonde, blue-eyed, big-boobed uniformity. But, I wrote, for me the alternative gendered toy was baby-dolls. And at least Barbie was an adult who allowed me to play-act future roles for myself beyond motherhood.

Suffice to say, I would not write it this way if I were to set out to blog about Barbie today. (For better or worse, that's the nature of blogging. Your snap-shot opinions live on forever.) Even thought I didn't endorse Barbie in that post, and I said I understood that this toy is a truly destructive thing for most women, I didn't stop to fully consider -- or didn't really grasp -- the ways in which the "Barbie look" affected other young girls. (I told myself, this is a post about my personal experience. For me personally, Barbie wasn't so bad.)

I haven't thought about the post much since I published it. That is, until I clicked a link from JJP to this post Danielle Belton wrote at her blog, The Black Snob:

Along time ago at a kitchen table in an all-black, middle/working class neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo.'s North County a young Danielle Belton, age five, loved to draw and color more than anything in the world. My older sister, aka "Big Sis, bka Denise, didn't like to color, so I inherited all the coloring books she never used.

I could draw for hours and color for hours, but all I drew and colored were white people.

GO read her entire post. Her experience -- not mine -- is the baseline by which Barbie dolls (and their ilk) should be judged. And she provides a really powerful lens into a lot of the discussion around Sasha and Malia Obama.

Also, if you haven't already, go watch A Girl Like Me.

UPDATE: Veronica also has a good post on this subject.

This is the point in the day when I go hide under the covers, and pretend that technology doesn't exist.

Via TechCrunch.

Prepare to be pissed. Nick Coles at Spike thinks that women like Salma Hayek and Mandy Moore have bodies that have "gone to butter." Frankly, I think we get all we need to know by checking out Coles' other articles, like "The Top 13 Hottest Dead Girls."

As the reader who emailed the link in said, "Spike TV still exists?"

In announcing new labeling info for the drug, Health Canada said that "the toxin in Botox products may spread to distant parts of the body, with potentially fatal consequences."

An anti-bulimia ad from Pro Mädchen in Düsseldorf, Germany has been placed in an...interesting location.

...through their WPP ad agency red cell, placed these splatter stickers (headline translates: Bulimia is curable) on the undersides of toilet lids in women's bathrooms at area colleges.

Now, I see what they're going for and part of me thinks its innovative. But another part of me finds it kind of offensive - a splatter ad? And let's not even talk about the fact that it's pink. But perhaps it's an effective way to reach young women.

What do you think?

I am getting SO fucking sick of seeing Vagisil commercials. Yes, Vagisil, I get it: you think vaginas are gross and smelly and that women spend all day trying not to scratch desperately at their shame-caves.

The above commercial isn't the latest one I've seen - I saw an ad not five minutes ago for Vagisil wipes that combined a cutesy colorful cartoon look with copy about feeling smelly.

Seriously, Vagisil, I know you're trying to make money by suggesting that women's bodies are in need of constant-deodorizing; but leave my vadge alone!

I have never been a fan of New Year's Resolutions. When I was younger they always had to do with losing weight or to quit eating cookies or some such thing that I was told if I do would unlock the secret to the life I always wanted. As I have gotten older and more in touch with myself and my feminism, I realize that negative self talk or putting myself up to tasks that are based on insecurity and hold the 'secret to everything I am missing' is rarely successful and never makes me feel good. So I moved to focusing on being as healthy and positive as I can be. But this year, I am coming out of my anti-New Year's resolution attitude with a few resolutions that have to do with things I want to do, not things I think I should do.

1. I commit to doing more video-blogging.
2. I want to get my personal website/consulting business up and running.
3. I will continue to write for Feministing, building on the work we have already done as we move to building relationships in the real world.
4. I will continue to not give a shit about my weight, but live a full, happy and healthy life based on self reflection, deep breathing and love.
5. I will finish my book. Hopefully. (Ha!)

Once I let go of resolutions that were based in self hate and things I didn't want to do, I realized that this is actually pretty fun, like a to-do list for the year, filled with positivity, aspirations and ways to move forward.

What are your New Year's resolutions this year?

So I had the pleasure this past weekend to go to Re-Dress, the newly opened, first ever size 14+ vintage clothing store in the country. It was amazing and I spent money I don't have, but I felt like I was making up for a lifetime of clothes that never fit right. Conventional wisdom might suggest that I should focus my resources on losing weight, but I am way more into looking fabulous and I love vintage clothing. Which is the concept behind Re-Dress-women that don't fit the oppressive beauty standards pushed by mainstream media have good style-if not better style than mainstream 'chic.'

So if you are in NY or you are visiting, please check out Re-Dress. The staff is knowledgeable about fashion, they are friendly and queer friendly. Everyone I spoke with had amazing political analysis along with great fashion sense. You can't really beat that, now can you.

I felt beautiful when I came out. I can't remember that last time I felt that way after going clothes shopping. Seriously.

It's nice to see PETA changing up their marketing strategy. Oh, wait...

Thanks to miss.meshuganer for the link!

Courtney and I have both discussed before our love/hate relationship with Oprah. The woman is complex and frequently, I disagree with her but I do respect her greatly and the work that she has done. And as a feminist, the way the media treats Oprah in talking about her weight, well, I think it is sexist.

Yesterday, I watched an entire segment on CNN devoted to Oprah's weight. Two female news anchors concluded that it was a hyperthyroid that has led to her fluctuation in weight. yet other news outlets weren't so forgiving or "scientific" in there assumptions. One google news search brings up how much she gained, her denial in it and calling her chubby and "heffer."

I am so disgusted by this, I almost don't know where to begin. First of all, why is weight gain newsworthy? Oprah is one of the most accomplished business women of our generation who has shown to not only be smart, but interesting, complex, well-read. Why does her weight make major headlines? Secondly, between having a health problem and being really busy, yeah she might gain weight and the fact that this is looked down upon shows us loud and clear the unfair standards put on women to not only be uber-successful but to also be svelte.

I know what you are thinking. But Oprah put this out as news herself! Probably to sell her brand even more! Yes, I think there is some validity to this argument, Oprah herself has pushed the, "I gained weight and this is why" story. But I guess it is important to ask, is Oprah creating this narrative herself or is she merely buying into a narrative that centralizes the way a woman looks before what she does? She is after all a savvy business woman. I don't agree with her using her weight as a selling point but really the joke is on the US consumer for buying into it.

As I have written about before, I struggle with this myself. I am really busy and don't have time to watch after my weight non-stop. Frankly, I don't care enough to since I think I look great anyway, but the constant barrage of comments I get about my weight is infuriating. I am successful in my personal endeavors, not to mention managing multiple relationships, projects, familial obligations and so much more, yet there are some people that only notice that I gained weight.

Bottom line, it is sexist to focus on Oprah's weight in the media. Men don't have this same pressure. You would never see a special on Lou Dobb's weight gain, nor would it be lucrative for him to have a special on his weight gain (although this sentiment is changing). As long as popular culture and mainstream media outlets stay fixed on women's physical characteristics we are bound by these constraints, holding our bodies as representations of who we are. It is not fair and we shouldn't stand for it.

Related:
Kate Harding: Dear Oprah
Rachel Setzer:Oprah done with fat shaming

I'm kind of obsessed with the site Passive Aggressive Notes; I think it's hilarious. This one I found particularly irritating/interesting:

Apparently this woman's supervisor sent this charming note because someone had been complaining (!) about her showing a bit of cleavage. According to the sender, "as I'm currently 7 months pregnant, i could be wearing a turtleneck and still be showing 'too much' cleavage."

Ugh.

Via the f word, we find out that Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls fame has left her record label after they refused to promote her new single and video (above) because of her "fat" stomach. Seriously.

[Palmer] refused to let them remove shots of her "fat" belly from the video for Leeds United (see above), and is therefore "uncommercial". This comes from a metal label where, I have it on good authority, "you can count the number of women on the fingers of one hand and most of the people on the label are decidedly chunky hairy dudes".

Amanda's fans are quite rightly outraged by this shoddy, sexist behaviour and have begun a Rebellyon, posting pictures of their own bellies on fan forum Shadowbox and sending them to Roadrunner in protest.

Too ridiculous for words - but you've gotta love awesome fans taking action.

P.S. Community poster lefthandedpenguin beat us to this punch on this last week!

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Palmer has not left her label - they won't let her. She gives the full story here.

A reader writes in...

I went to the OBGYN for a check up, and while I was cooling my feet for two hours waiting for the doctor, I found myself staring at multiple shiny pamphlets advertising laser surgery, microdermabrasion, and botox. In an OBGYN office.

Then I found out that this Laser Surgery place shares all its rooms with the OBGYN. I feel like the two practices are completely antithetical. One should create a nonjudgemental, private, safe and caring environment. The other preys on negative self-image and unbalanced expectations for women's appearance. I felt outraged that they felt it was a good partnership.

Has anyone else found supposedly caring places for women sabotaged?

Yuck. Hopefully this is not a widespread trend.

Women's involvement in sports incites "you go girl" enthusiasm from feminists round the globe. I don't blame them--the image of little ladies running around a soccer field, having fun, or high school athletes gaining a sense of community and tenacity by sweating up and down the basketball court is truly inspiring. I was a serious high school athelte (lacrosse and basketball) and some of my best memories of adolescence take place on the court or the field.

BUT, and this is a big BUT, there is an ugly story that often goes untold. Many young women involved in sports end up disordered--whether over-exercising or under-eating. It's not just in appearance-based sports, like ballet or gymnastics. While researching my book, I found that women involved in cross country running were among the most at risk. In one NCAA survey of college women athletes, 70% reported aspiring to lose their periods. That's not a sign of dedication to your sport, ladies, it's a sign of delusion. Menstruating is one of the first signals of a healthy female body at the college age.

The worst part is that so many coaches and trainers don't know a thing about these issues. Some are downright disasters. I was speaking on a college campus recently and had a couple of young women approach me from the volleyball team, complaining that their coach weighs every single member of the team every Monday. She substitutes the words "big" for unhealthy and "thin" for healthy, and chastises girls who gain weight for any reason. Not. O. Kay.

Sports have the potential to empower and energize us, but we must beware of crossing the line between dedication and disease.

Fellow midwest diva Rachel sent along the following picture she snapped at a Target store in St. Paul, Minn.:

This wall decoration was for sale in the baby-items aisle. Apparently it's never too early to start fat-shaming and instilling body-self-consciousness! I wonder if parents who buy this also buy their infant daughters "high heels" and their six-year-olds padded bras? Ugh.

Thanks to reader JustCharlotte for emailing us about this charming UK-based television show, Three Fat Brides, One Thin Dress.

In each of the three episodes of Three Fat Brides, One Thin Dress, three brides-to-be have just eight weeks to transform their appearance and well-being, with the prize of the wedding dress of her dreams for the bride who has the greatest success.

But how will they cope with the added pressure of Ms McKeith on the wedding scene? Will they make it to their big day a few sizes smaller? Or will they want to call the whole thing off?

You know, because women would rather call their wedding off than be fat. I mean, is this show for fucking real? It's the same gross sentiment behind We TV's Bulging Brides: That women only deserve love if they're a certain (small small small) size.

Hey hey Missouri feminists! The fabulous Shark-Fu will be participating in an event in St.Louis tonight:

A Girl like Me: A Conversation About Race, Beauty and Self-Image

Wed., Oct. 1, 2008 (tonight!) at 6 p.m.
Missouri History Museum in Forest Park
in the AT&T Foundation Multipurpose Room
Free!

Join us for a candid discussion about popular images, race and beauty. The program begins with a short documentary, A Girl like Me (7:08), created by high schooler Kiri Davis through the Reel Works Teen Filmmaking program.

Davis re-conducts the "doll test" used in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case and sheds new light on how society affects black children today.

Sounds awesome. Wish I could go!

UPDATE: For those who can't attend, you can watch the film online.

The October issue of Essence magazine features all curvy ladies, including the amazing Mo'Nique, who talks openly about her sexual abuse history. I saw a couple of the editors talking about it on the TODAY Show; their idea was to top off fashion week, where size 3 is considered big these days, with some real looking women.

One thing that I found annoying was how much the hosts of the show (yeah, that's you Kathie Lee) seemed to struggle over terminology. They shifted back and forth between "full figured" and "plus size." Can we all just agree on something that doesn't make women feel like fast food meals (I'll take a plus size fries with that)? Ugh. Throw your suggestions in comments, if you will.

So similar to Ann, I too spend a good deal of time reading about vintage fashion online. Guilty pleasure if you will but can also be a resourceful way to dress on the cheap. But sometimes my late night google searches lead me to the funniest places. Such as this gem. It is a wiki-how to be a femme fatale.

1. Speak in a low voice. Not creepy low, just attractive low. Practice some vocal exercises for a few weeks and it will become habit. Listen to Scarlett Johanssen speak for an example of this kind of voice.

2. Wear dark, sexy, retro clothes. Not too gothic-looking, though. Think Angelina Jolie in the mid-90's. Subtle, well-cut clothing that draws attention to you, but in a tasteful way. Stick to colors like black, maroon, and emerald green. Look for silk cocktail dresses, dark-wash, high-waisted jeans, expensive-looking, dramatic jewelry, and fishnet tights.

4. Be "one of the guys". This means means holding your own with the guys in their poker/pool/video games and occasionally winning. You'll earn respect and allure as a result. But dont loose your femenine side trying to hang out with men.

5. Be mysterious. Dont let everybody know what you are feeling or what's going on. The very mystery proves to be the allure of the femme fatale.

What does it look like when someone follows all this advice? Eeeek! Aside from the patronizing advice about not being too creepy, becoming too masculine, or having a brain (#12) isn't it funny that being a quirky, individualistic, educated, fashionable, sexy woman makes you fatal? Le sigh!

My sisters, some of us are like this without trying and without having to fit it into what is sexy for men. Let's try and keep it that way.

This is awesome. A group of women started a collaborative YouTube channel, Project LifeSize, which aims to give a voice to women of size, to discuss and dismantle ridiculous beauty standards and inspire young women. Check out the casting call above, and some of their amazing videos.

Make sure you subscribe!

But I'm digging it, in a "it creeps me out" kinda way.

Copyranter points out this latest Wonderbra ad, one in a long line of...interesting takes on boobies and bras.

It seems that the Wonderbra will not only allow you to crack through glass walls (not painful at all, of course), but they'll also allow your girls to hold umbrellas, make train-riding a little more interesting, ensure that you don't have oh-so-horrible "pancake tits," and will even make you bodacious once you're dead.

You know, I think I'll stick with my un-Wonderbras - they may not make my breasts boobs-of-steel, but they also don't reduce me to a body part.

Tiffany Jackson and Margaret Cho

via reappropriate, the Oprah magazine interviewed four very accomplished women about body image. Some excerpts:

Margaret Cho, comedian:

My father ... one time when I was maybe 9 years old and dancing in ballet -- I loved it -- he said after a recital, "You're the fattest ballerina." It so destroyed me that I never wanted to dance again. He wanted to prepare me for a world that was not going to accept me because I think he experienced so much racism. He'd say, "You're not pretty. And you're not going to be pretty." I absolutely believed him.

Now I feel great and settled in myself and the way I look. It took a long time to get there. You need to look in the mirror and compliment yourself. I have these little rituals of being very fastidious about my skin care and drinking a lot of water, and I see the results. When we care for ourselves, these are acts of love.

And here's Tiffany Jackson, WNBA player:

I was always taller than everybody else. In the eighth grade, all the guys were shorter than me. My mom told me always walk with my head up, I'm beautiful. She gave me such positive messages when it came to my body. She'd tell me, "Walk in the room like you own the room." And then I'd complain, "People are staring at me." She'd say, "No, you're beautiful. That's why they're looking at you." I think after a while that just kind of stuck with me.

It's really fascinating to break it down and think about the handful of standout incidents or comments that have had a disproportionate impact on your body image. (This is something I thought about a lot when I was reading Courtney's book.) I'm not sure exactly what questions the Oprah magazine reporter asked these women, but each woman mentions some pretty specific memories -- both positive and negative -- that shaped her view of her body.

Like Tiffany, I had some awkward super-tall-preteen years -- marked by a memory of a boy in my junior high class who called me "chicken legs" and by an incident where I walked past some little kids playing in the park and one remarked to the other about me, "She looks like she's on stilts." (Kids are so mean!) But I learned to stand up straight and just own it. (Oh, and that boy who called me "chicken legs" is now a refrigerator-repair-school dropout. Yes, I find that kind of delightful. Sue me.)

What's the one body-image-shaping story -- negative or positive -- that stands out most for you?

So yeah, they didn't give her nearly enough air-time, but our own fabulous "Ray of Light"* Courtney Martin was on Good Morning America today discussing Keira Knightley's stand against digital makeovers. Check out the story and video here.

*A nickname recently discovered at the Feministing retreat because of C's shiny-light goodness.

The second highest paid actress in Hollywood is telling the publicists for her latest movie, The Duchess, to keep their airbrushing hands off her breasts. In previous films she was stunned to find her breasts digitally enhanced, but this time she's insisting it be different. I was asked to comment on this and related issues (body image, media etc.) on Good Morning America, which is supposed to air tomorrow morning for those of you with fancy television recording devices.

I'll probably be on screen for all of two seconds, but what I would like to say is this: Keira isn't telling young women anything they don't already know. We've watched Next Top Model. We've taken media literacy classes. What she is doing--and it's significant--is reminding us to honor what we already know: namely that the images we see every day on television, in magazines, online, are notoriously technologically-altered and unrealistic. It's not willpower that makes these women's bodies perfect--it's money, money, money, and a splash of genetic predisposition.

It's important that someone inside the system, someone that has benefited from the system, has the balls to come out and remind us of our own wisdom. Thanks Keira.

I know we generally reserve our "fuck you"s for Fridays, but this one can't wait till the end of the week. (Especially since I'm already coming late to this one!)

From Mighty Ponygirl at Feminist Gamers:

A new game about to be released for the PSN called Fat Princess is a TF2-like capture-the-flag game where the point is to feed your princess enough cake so that she grows really fat so that the opposing team can't carry her back to their castle.

...Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.

Oh, but that's not as "cute" as cake and fat chicks. Right.

Fuck you, "Fat Princess." And fuck you, Sony for putting out this garbage and perpetuating fat-hating. Seriously. Fuck. You. Sorry I can't be more articulate on this one, I'm just too pissed.

Holly and Melissa (who had a awful but oh-so-telling influx of trolls) has more.

via community blogger x364173.

Vintage ad uploaded by Flickr user jbcurio.

Over on the community blog, mland45 recounts an experience she had when she went to an ear, nose and throat doctor to get treated for a sinus infection:

[Receptionist]: The insurance doesn't pay for the rhinoplasty

Me: Well, I'm not interested in the rhinoplasty.

[Receptionist]: You sure? Because your nose is crooked.

Me: I know, but I'm not worried about that.

[Receptionist]: Well let me explain why I'm telling you this. It's such a good price, because you'll already be paying for the anesthesia for the other surgery. It is such a good deal.

Me: Well, since I was never considering cosmetic surgery in the first place, it's not a good deal to me. I never had a serious problem with my nose, but by the time I leave this office I will have a COMPLEX about it.

How infuriating is that? Read the rest here.

Are you sick of only wealthy women being able to afford "designer vaginas"? Well worry no more! Now hating your genitals is easy, affordable, and comes in packaging that looks like a cross between My Little Pony and White-Out!

Liquid Virgin "work to temporarily tighten the walls of the vagina." The drops also contain Potassium Alum, which according to the website (and I'm super curious as to why they felt like sharing this fact), often appears in cartoons: "The character eats some Alum and their mouth is shown to pucker up. Often seen on Tom & Jerry."

With the Tom & Jerry seal of vaginal approval, how could I say no?

Via Feministe.

I'm all for Kegels, really. But do we really need a genital gym to keep our lady parts healthy?

[N]ow comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman's genital area. Phit -- short for pelvic health integrated techniques -- is to open this month on East 58th Street.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.

So Dr. Romanzi developed her own concept of "pelvic fitness" for healthy women. She said that Phit (www.theperfectphit.com) will help women get "in shape from the inside out."

First of all, isn't that the new tagline for Metamucil? Also, as the article points out, isn't this just another way to make women feel like they have to be pro-active about making their vaginas "acceptable?" Whether it's through convincing women that they need "rejuvenation" surgeries or that they're unkempt without Brazilian waxes - I'm sick of pathologizing our poor vaginas. Give the poor girls a break!

But Dr. Romanzi says that her spa is all about health: "If you can vote and you have a vagina, you should do these...It's the dental floss of feminine fitness." Ew.

One question: Does this mean I need to get my vagina a sweatband?

Apparently, there is a trend online of posting videos of women's breasts being slapped and punched. Cuz you know punching a woman in the breasts is so funny, har har.

(This video is very annoying to watch and probably NSFW)

Ouch. Am I the only one that doesn't think this is funny?

Thanks to Joy for the link.

Fun facts about your clitoris:

• The clitoris rivals the penis in size.
• "The vaginal wall is, in fact, the clitoris."
• "If you lift the skin off the vagina on the side walls, you get the bulbs of the clitoris - triangular, crescental masses of erectile tissue."
• [T]he clitoris is more than just its glans - the "little hill"
• "There's nothing quite like the shape of a clitoris."
• "The glans are dense with nerve endings and receptors - all the vibration and sensation is there."
• The bulk of it is shaped like a pyramid.
• Its base forms the external genitalia or vulva; its triangular "walls" are wrapped around the urine-carrying tube known as the urethra and the vagina.
• When aroused, the whole structure becomes engorged.
• "They're designed to stimulate a much larger area."

No wonder, after reading this, Andrew Sullivan claims "clitoris envy."

Click here for an extremely educational video on the clitoris (internal and external).

All I can say is, thank god they decided against it. Also, this makes me really uncomfortable.

Thanks to Joy for the link

It seems that someone thinks it's hilarious, oh excuse me - "heelarious" - to make fake high heels for infants. Yes, I know it's supposed to be funny and clever. But then why does it just make me sad?

Via The F Word and The Frisky.

Thanks to, somewhat appropriately, Mz.Stilletto for the link.

So this is kind of a nepotistic plug, but a friend of mine made and posted this short video (semi-claymation style!) and I thought it was cool enough to share here. It's called Fat Dinosity, and that's Erin (the creator and a high school classmate) staring in the video.

What do you all think?

Attention women over 35! Did you think that your days of desperately trying to fit in with unrealistic beauty standards were over? Guess again! The new TV show "She's Got the Look" gives women of all ages the chance to feel insecure and unworthy!

When will the madness stop?

Check out Hannah Seligson's piece in the Wall Street Journal today on "bodysnarking"--essentially talking shit about other people's bodies, which I would argue, is an absolute projection of self-hate. Hannah focuses on the technological and celebrity influences making girls so damn mean to one another. I've said it often on the road and I'll say it again...when you start being more generous and kind, even just in your head, about other women's bodies, you'll feel better about your own (and visa versa).

Thanks to Lauren for the link.

Facebook is on a roll today. Reader Adrienne alerted us to an ad for a crisis pregnancy center on Facebook, so I decided to do a little more research on the site’s advertisements.

Sure, there’s a range from shoe brands to social justice organizations, but pretty offensive weight loss ads are more common. And then we find the ad for “A Woman’s Concern,� a center that, according to their website, provides a variety of services including “pregnancy testing, ultrasound testing, information on abortion procedures, mentoring…� You can guess what the "information" on abortion is.

Another ad I found was a pitch to recruit egg donors. Not to say that egg donation is necessarily a bad thing, but the egg business has become one of many ethical and political questions. The Center for Genetic and Society, Choice USA and the Pro-Choice Public Education Project have been conducting research on egg donation and reproductive justice, make sure to check it out.

These should serve as a reminder that we need to pay attention to what's being marketed to young women online. In the meantime, Facebook may not strictly moderate their ads, but you can; report an ad you think is offensive. And as a first step, let’s get deceptive CPC advertising off of Facebook.

(And join our Feministing group!)

Former deputy prime minister John Prescott has confessed to suffering from bulimia for ten years before getting treatment. He told the BBC: "I want to say to the millions of people, do take advice, it can help and it can help you out of a lot of misery that you suffer in silence."

I think Prescott is incredibly brave. Too often folks only think of eating disorders as a female affliction, as he puts it "anorexic girls, models trying to keep their weight down - or women in stressful situations, like Princess Diana," but in fact 10% of those throughout the world with eating disorders are men. With the rise of lad mags like Men's Health, that are basically as body-focused and insecurity-inducing as Cosmo, men are being pressured to adhere to a body ideal as well. There's a whole cosmetic industry cropping up to profit from this insecurity--men's skin, hair, and nail products. Not exactly the equality we were looking for, huh ladies?

While Prescott is brave, The BBC article is actually pretty stupid. Even after establishing that his disease stemmed from his inability to manage stress, it ends with a focus on his weight. For the last frickin' time people, eating disorders are psychological, not physical diseases. If an inability to manage his emotions caused the disease, why not report on how he learned to do that, not his 15 stones?

Thanks to Soledad for the heads up.

We're all painfully aware of how common it is for the media to "digitally slim-down" women's (and girls') bodies. But now some magazines are apparently using Photoshop to fill out super-skinny celebrities and models. (via bits & bobbins)

Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, also confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured.

"There have been cases where models are booked way ahead of a shoot and then they turn up two months later looking less healthy and perhaps a bit underweight. We wouldn't be happy showing them that way, so it is then that we would need that person to look a little bit fuller."

But Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of the eating disorder charity Beat, condemned the practice. "Altering models' bodies to appear fuller-figured proves that the industry acknowledges there is a serious issue with projecting images of very thin models, but [it is] missing the point," she said. "They should be using naturally healthy models in the first instance, instead of having to make them look that way."

Indeed, if you want to send the message that curvier is sexier, then hire some models who are actually curvy! I can't imagine how thin those models must have been for Conde Nast to declare them "unhealthy looking." If you're unhealthily underweight by even the fashion industry's standards, that's pretty extreme.

At its core, I don't believe this type of Photoshopping is about deflecting criticism that models and celebrities are dangerously thin. I think this is about perpetuating an even more unrealistic beauty standard than unattainable thinness (something I never thought possible): the message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs. So even the skinniest celebrities STILL require Photoshopping to meet this standard. You can be less than a size zero and still lose this game. And that's pretty frightening.

More at Feminocracy.

I have acne, my knees are round, my left breast is bigger than the right one, my abs are not flat (and never will be), but surprisingly enough, I’m OK with all of these things. Two years ago, though, I would not have been. I am a girl who has gone from being obese to weighing practically nothing. While I did not necessarily suffer from anorexia, I dangerously flirted with the disorder. I felt as though my entire body was socially inadequate, so in high school I determined that the only way to be accepted was to be skinny like all of the celebrities that were in my home state of California. In a mere year and a half I lost 70 pounds, at the end of it I looked like a skeleton and was in critical health. After years of therapy and seeing a nutritionist, I am finally at a healthy weight. Now as a college freshman in Texas, I try to promote more realistic expectations of the female form through my work with the campus Women’s Center.

At V to the 10th in New Orleans, we had the privilege of attending a panel regarding body issues that was lead by Rosario Dawson (RENT), Kerry Washington (The Last King Of Scotland), Ali Larter (Heros, Legally Blonde), and Amber Tamblyn (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this video that my good friend, DJ No Friends, sent my way.

It's called "Gluttonous" and it features awesomely curvy ladies singing and rapping about their healthy appetites. Seen as an effort to reclaim "hunger" and do away with a sin-infused view of femaleness and food (while being really, really funny), I'm so down. But there's something here that makes me nervous...could it be the all-or-nothing tone of the whole thing? Could it be that I fear douche bag dudes could use it for douche bag purposes? Help me understand dear Feministing crew.

It looks like the French are trying to take aim at the media-manufactured thin ideal, but seriously missing the mark. A bill, approved by the lower house of Parliament but still set to face a Senate vote, would make it illegal to “provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or endangering health.� See The New York Times for more.

As someone who has spent years immersed in research, reflection, and discussion on this topic, I am continually amazed at how short-sighted the government response is to body image issues. It's not website and magazine policing, or even runway banishment, that we need most. It is, first and foremost, health care systems that subsidizes treatment for eating disordered women and men. At present, most health insurance companies stateside (France is a different story) give and withhold treatment based on physical symptoms, even though eating disorders are psychological diseases--resulting in a revolving door of pain for most eating disordered patients and their families. For more on this, check out pieces I wrote awhile back for HuffPo and Women's eNews.

If government officials seriously want to deal with the culture that promotes food and fitness obsessions, self hatred, and body anxiety, they need to make sure that public schools are infused with physiological education (for example, we each have a set point within which our metabolism adjusts automatically), media literacy (airbrushing and the like), and social and emotional learning (most eating disorders stem from emotional issues that go unresolved).

For too long we have congratulated leaders when they decide to point the finger at media moguls. Sure, these schmucks play a role, but so do we as consumers, mothers, fathers, pastors, coaches, and peers. Eating disorders won't be eradicated by policing fashion magazines or pro-ana and mia websites. They'll be eradicated by a paradigm shift where we all take responsibility for our part in promoting a body-focused society.

A new children's book, My Beautiful Mommy, (being released on Mother's Day, no less) aims to explain to kids why their mom is getting plastic surgery.

It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she's having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up "even more" beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.

Okay, I can understand the need to explain to children why a parent is getting surgery, but this...well, it's just ridiculous.

"My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

Superhero, huh? I suppose that should come as no surprise, given the book is written by a Florida-based plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Salzhauer. Now, I'm certainly not going to sit in judgment of those who get plastic surgery - but do we really have to teach our kids that we need it to "feel better" and be "beautiful"? Ugh.

Thanks to Alexis for the link.

Apparently there's a show on WE (the network that brought you Bridezillas) called Bulging Brides, in which women buy wedding dresses two sizes too small, and rely on a drill-sergeant-like trainer to get them to lose the weight by their wedding day. It's size-shaming meets the bridal-industrial complex. Or, as Big Fat Blog asks, "There aren't enough reality shows that combine unrealistic feminine body ideals with unrealistic and heavily-marketed ideals towards heterosexual weddings?"

Here's a sample of what it's like:

Ah, a tasteful montage of close-ups of everything the bride-to-be eats during her bachelorette party, followed by an early-morning pole-dancing lesson to shed the pounds she supposedly gained the night before from all those quesadillas and mojitos. My feminist head is exploding.

Yes, there's a lot of sexist, sizist, crappy "reality" TV out there. But something about this show seems to have it all. Which is why it's worth mentioning and decrying here.

Thanks to Tomi for the tip.

As if Victoria Beckham hasn't done enough damage by catapulting anorexia-on-the-page Skinny Bitch to instant bestseller status, now she's offering women an even more degrading perspective: you're not just a sex object; you're a straight-up product.

In today's New York Times Style section, photographer for Marc Jacobs, Juergen Teller, is quoted as saying:

I told her, ‘You’re the most photographed woman in the world. And fashion nowadays is all about product — bags and shoes — and you’re kind of a product yourself, aren’t you? She was, like, ‘Uh, yeah.’

Cathy Horyn, the author of the article, titled "When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad," writes:

Instead of looking like a glamorous celebrity, she has been rendered as an abstraction, a living doll. In the most disquieting image, we see only her bare, high-heeled legs flopping over the side of a shopping bag Mr. Jacobs had specially made to hold her.

On the one hand, I'm almost relieved that Beckham is owning the fact that she's selling herself as a product. It's what so many of today's vacuous celebrities are doing anyway, but many of them pretend their ascent to stardom is something deeper than it is.

On the other hand, it all makes me sick. We've moved beyond "the male gaze" and objectification; now girls can grow up worshiping Victoria in her painfully tall stilettos and aspiring to be seen as a "living doll," an inhuman product. Beyond the classic advertising trope of cutting women into pieces, this ad campaign also seems to suck the real life right out of them. Please, please, please boycott Marc Jacobs. (As if most of could afford that shit anyway.)

Thanks to Kathy at the Women's Media Center for the heads up.

Queen Latifah then:

Queen Latifah now:

Okay, I get that they're trying to promote her through this "healthier" rhetoric so that it's not about beauty standards - but conflating health with size really bugs the shit out of me.

(And yes, I realize that I'm a bit late on this one - but I had to post on it anyway.)

I don't know about you, but I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High when I was a kid. (Though I was always pissed that the Jessica character was the vapid one, while Elizabeth was the cool, smart reporter type.)

Well, it seems that Random House is re-releasing the series with a new modern twist: skinnier twins.

To publicize the re-release of teen fiction series Sweet Valley High, Random House Children's Books sent a letter to journalists highlighting the changes made to the content of the 1980s paperbacks. New cover girl Leven Rambin (pictured) was not mentioned, but just to make sure preteen and teenaged girl readers are sufficiently insecure about their bodies, the publisher made the "perfect" clothing size a couple of notches more restrictive.

In a side-by-side column comapring the 1983 version of the book with the present one, publishers write that the previous characters were a "perfect size 6." Now, they're a "perfect size 4." Charming. The next SVH book? Nipping it in the Bud: Elizabeth's Designer Vagina.

This is too gross. An online game, Miss Bimbo, encourages girls (as in under 10 years old) to buy their avatars plastic surgery - face lifts, boob jobs, you name it - in order to be the "hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo in the whole world." Yeah.

Children are given a naked virtual character to look after. They compete against other players to earn "bimbo" dollars so they can dress her in sexy outfits and take her clubbing. They are given missions, including securing plastic surgery at the game's clinic to give their dolls bigger breasts, and they have to keep her at her target weight with diet pills.

Perhaps even worse than the sexist and dangerous messages being sent to young women, is the cavalier response of the Miss Bimbo creators (both men, btw).

[Chris Evans says,] "But there are lots of positive lessons that replicate messages in real life."

While feeding your bimbo too much chocolate has added virtual pounds to the animated girls' hips, feeding her fruits and vegetables will improve her health, Evans points out.

That and diet pills, apparently. Evans also claims that the game is just aiming to be realistic: "The breast operations are just one part of the game and we are not encouraging young girls to have them, just reflecting real life." You know, the kind of real life where nine year-olds get boob jobs. Charming.

The most recent entry in a personal-history subgenre I like to call "I'm not a freak, I'm an over-6-foot-tall woman!" was excerpted in yesterday's New York Times (via):

Everywhere I go people stare at me. At the grocery store children gawk at me wide-eyed, craning their necks and pointing as they tug their mothers’ shirts. When I pass people on the street, I hear them mumble comments about my appearance.

I am not deformed or handicapped, I’m not a circus attraction. I have strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. What makes me different is that I’m 6-foot-4, and I’m a woman.

Arianne Cohen, who's got a book about height coming out in July, said much the same thing in Nerve in 2006:

To begin with, to be extra-tall is to be somehow more public than the average woman. Everybody sees me. Strangers on the subway peer upward and tell me about their childhood neighbor who was tall. Fellow grocery shoppers sheepishly request my help procuring items from upper shelves. Male passers-by mutter, "That was one giant woman." Men seem particularly inclined to register one characteristic: tall.

And here's a bit from my own take on life as a tall woman:

I'd add to that: Fratty dudes in bars will chant "6 footer!" or loudly make bets with each other about how tall I am. (Well, I've actually had restaurant wait staff and fellow wedding guests make bets, too, so maybe it's unfair to pin that one on the bros alone.) People stare openly, all the time, everywhere I go. There are some days, namely those when I'm wearing whopping 1-inch heels, that I feel like I leave a ripple of height comments in my wake. Small children point and say, "Mommy! Look at the giant lady!" Women who feel insecure about their own height will often say to me, "I wish I was that tall!" No, honey, you don't. Really.

But it does have certain benefits.

That post sparked a great conversation in comments about height and gender -- and again and again women of all body types wrote about strangers walking up to them and commenting on their body. Guess that's a pretty universal female experience in this country, no matter what your height. (And yet another reason why we're feminists...)

Many of you probably remember the grossness that was Southwest Airlines last year, when they kicked a young woman off a flight for what she was wearing. Then, when you thought the drama was over, they harassed a second woman and later mocked the debacle through a press release and promotional deal where they offered flights at "mini-skirt" prices.

Now, two women on a recent flight say they were harassed and eventually kicked off the plane and detained by officers because of the way they looked. The full story is somewhat unclear from the video (if anyone has more info, please send it along), but given Southwest's history - I'm not putting anything past them.

Thanks to Matt for the link.

I love this. Hayley Atwell is starring in Woody Allen's new movie, Cassandra's Dream, but Miramax Films asked her to loose weight.

Says Atwell: "I went round to Emma's one night and she was getting very angry that I wasn't eating all the food she was giving me. I told her why and she hit the roof." The no-nonsense Thompson was so outraged that she called the producers the next day and threatened to resign from the film if they forced Atwell to lose weight. Faced with Thompson - a two-times Oscar winner - on the warpath, Miramax Films swiftly relented.

I heart her.

We've written a lot about steak or burger restaurants that employ exclusively half-naked women, using "meat" to sell meat. But is the flip side also true? Reader Lauren alerted us to the fact that there's apparently a vegan strip club in Portland, Oregon, where owner Johnny Diablo (his real name??) hopes to convert his patrons to veganism:

While it may not be the most orthodox way to win over new vegans, Diablo hopes people bring some green and eat some green at his new club.

“(It’s) vixens, not veal, and sizzle, not steak,� Diablo said. “We put the meat on the pole, not on the plate.�

There's a video segment here. Says the newscaster,

"You won't find any meat inside Casa Diablo, but you will find a whole lot of flesh."

Johnny Diablo has made sure to clarify, on his MySpace blog, "Don't be fooled by the political correctness posers out there. We aren't feminazis. We are femi-libertarians!" He signs the post, "Johnny Diablo, Lord & Master"

Wow. Just... let that all sink in.

This is definitely part of a trend -- starting with PETA ads -- in which women's bodies are used as a way of promoting veganism and vegetarianism. There's also L.A.'s Vegan Vixens, "sexy, trendy and fun loving women whose goal is to inspire men to live a longer and happier life, by making healthier decisions on what they consume." And now the vegan strip club.

One common thread here is that all of these efforts are aimed at making veganism appealing to men. The Maxim-like PETA ads, the Vegan Vixens, the strip club: All are saying it's okay to buck the stereotype of Real Men Eat Red Meat, because here are some naked ladies to reassure you that you're still a superhetero manly man! Almost as if they're saying, you won't even miss eating meat, because you'll get to look at so much of it! Or as Diablo puts it, “We put the meat on the pole, not on the plate.� It's a substitution. This trend seems to confirm much of what Carol Adams observed in the Sexual Politics of Meat -- and then turn it on its head.

I think the Skinny Bitch in the Kitch books are related to this whole thing, too. It, too, is using women's bodies to sell veganism. As Samhita put it,

But similar to what Debbie Rasmussen from BITCH says in the article, I too am all for an assault on the food industry, but I have major issues with demanding that skinny is the end all goal for being a vegan. That is not "girl power" to me. It is tacky and a dated way of selling books.

I'm not saying Skinny Bitch and Vegan Vixens are doing the exact same thing here. But both are using the "ideal" female body type -- something men want and women want to be -- as an incentive to go vegan. This is deeply fucked up, especially because there are dozens of real, compelling reasons to switch to a vegan lifestyle -- none of them based on sexist bullshit.

*Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, and I am by no means asserting that every vegan or vegetarian supports the use of women's bodies as a way to recruit more people to their diet/lifestyle.

I spent many a college night dancing my ass of to Anything Can Happen, so it pains me to report that Wyclef Jean is, well, an asshole.

Thanks to Ashlee for the link.

UPDATE: Reader Rachel Fallon writes,

I saw Wyclef perform at the House of Blues in San Diego on Monday (the day after the Super Bowl) he dedicated about half an hour refuting the fact that he dislikes fat girls...he only allowed "bigger" girls onstage for 3 or 4 songs and danced with every single one. he seemed extremely pissed that anyone would accuse him of disrespected full bodied women.

A premium denim company, Fiorana, is has created a "Latina-cut" jean.

"The Latina body is different in waist and hip structure," says Mike Braden, Founder and President of Fiorana, Inc. "When wearing Anglo cut jeans, there is always a fit problem around the waist area. Our 'Latina Cut' collection will provide the American Hispanic woman a sexy, sophisticated premium jean that caters to their feminine curves."

'Cause all Latinas look like J-Lo? What? Laura Martinez responds,

Still, reading and re-reading the staggering conclusions of the apparel maker's internal research among Hispanics, I couldn't help but wonder: Could it be that the jean maker is simply generalizing about what a Latina body is supposed to look like? Either that or I'm going to have a serious talk with my parents, as perhaps I am really not what they told me I was, but the adopted child of a non-Latino, voluptuously challenged family clan from some far away place.

I am absolutely, 100% in favor of a wider range of denim cuts and styles (cue commentary about how hard it is for every woman to find jeans that fit well). And I don't have a problem with culturally-conscious marketing. But this is different. It implies that curvaceous is the only "authentic" Latina shape. Women like Laura Martinez, who aren't particularly curvy, don't count. I mean, is Fiorana planning on rolling out a style of jeans for every race/ethnicity? "African cut," "Asian cut," etc.? The company would *never* make a "Caucasian cut." Why? Because it's acknowledged that white women come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There's not one specific shape stereotype attached to the "white ass" (unless I'm unaware...). But, uh, last time I checked, women of all races came in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps Fiorana should stick to selling jeans by their measurements, not by ethnic stereotype.

Now I have been known to call some of my best friends skinny bitches, but usually it is a term of endearment or as a total joke. I know, totally tacky. But I have never thought of "skinny bitch" as a term of empowerment or reflective of girl power. Sure we know all about the reclamation of the word "bitch," but I have yet to see an effective reclaiming of "skinny." Of course it is OK to be skinny, it is more the pressure women face to be skinny or stay skinny or even being told they are too skinny, that frankly makes all of us, go insane. In a culture where being skinny is something held over the heads of young women and used to determine their social and cultural value, I am wary of its use in the politics of food.

So this piece struck a cord with me from last week's NYT. It is about the new book by the author of vegan best-seller, "Skinny Bitch," called "Skinny Bitch in the Kitch." It is a cookbook for politically conscious, weight conscious, vegans.

Despite its seemingly indigestible qualities, “Skinny Bitch� (Running Press) became one of the hottest-selling vegan books ever published. Now, the book’s peculiar combination of girl power, tough love and gross-out tales from the slaughterhouse has been translated to the kitchen. The authors’ new cookbook, “Skinny Bitch in the Kitch,� was published in December and reached No. 6 on the New York Times best-seller list in the paperback advice category last week.

Now it does not surprise me that this book is selling so much. There is a huge market for literature that calls women fucked up things and tells them they are stupid or fat and why they should buy this book and be svelte and will have men swooning after them. If they could just do this wonder thing that the book details. But similar to what Debbie Rasmussen from BITCH says in the article, I too am all for an assault on the food industry, but I have major issues with demanding that skinny is the end all goal for being a vegan. That is not "girl power" to me. It is tacky and a dated way of selling books.

Speaking personally, I used to be vegan and honestly, when done right and with support it can work really well. But then I started to realize one of the main reasons I was doing it was because it was keeping my weight down in a really extreme way (read: eating disorder) but I could cover it up in the guise of a political identity. So when young women tell me they are vegan, I am always inquisitive as to the method of their veganism. It is a very extreme diet that needs supplements to make sure you are not deficient in nutrients. It is frustrating, the lack of real nutritional information available to young women to teach us how to eat properly in a way that is healthy, maintains a healthy weight and keeps us happy. I certainly continue to struggle with it and I am almost 30!

Utne Reader has a great excerpt from our gal Courtney's book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. If you haven't bought her book yet, it's a nice glimpse of what you're missing.

Shortly after Katherine Heigl made her statement about Knocked Up saying the movie was "a little sexist," we find that an Jennifer Love Hewitt is now speaking out against social beauty standards. In response to ridicule on the internet regarding an "unflattering" picture of her in a bikini, Hewitt said:

"I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized. . . To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all the girls out there that are struggling with their body image.

A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. . . And being a size 0 doesn't make you beautiful. . . To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist. . . put on a bikini — put it on and stay strong."

While I agree with Zuzu (who has a great post on this, by the way) that she seems a wee defensive as being seen as fat, it's great that she's speaking out against this bullshit.

Thanks to Michael for the link.

After a Glamour associate editor's implication that being black is a fashion don't, the magazine has issued an apology and is hosting a panel today on "Women, Race & Beauty," which "will explore the culture of beauty, with an emphasis on ethnic hairstyles in corporate America." (via.) They've got some excellent panelists, including Farai Chideya from NPR's News and Notes and Daisy Hernandez of ColorLines. (If someone finds a link to a transcript or video, please post it in comments!)

The Newsday article about the panel also features a slideshow of several professional women talking about their hair, and how they've chosen to wear it. I think this comment, from Keisha Walker, is especially telling:

"It’s obvious that corporate America doesn’t care for natural hairstyles on Black women because you rarely see them wearing them there. People think that when Black women wear natural hair that they are making a political statement. And I find that strange, because I don’t know of any ethnic group where if the women wear their hair naturally, it is associated with politics."

And Ifeanyi Chijindu echoes that:

"Hair is a big issue with black women. We are judged by it all the time When I wore my Angela Davis afro at school, all of a sudden people parted the way. They were treating me like a Black Panther. I could feel this huge sense of fear."

That sounds, interestingly enough, like the Glamour editor's critique:

'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go.

Maybe that's a large part of why corporate America treats Afros, braids, and other natural styles as "inappropriate" for the workplace: Because they associate these hairstyles with black empowerment, and with women of color standing up for themselves and for their rights. It goes beyond the superficial racism of "this is a messy fashion don't." It's also about the old boys' (and girls') club feeling threatened by an empowered woman of color.

Our gal Courtney went mano a mano with serious wingnut Laura Ingraham on the O'Reilly Factor. Click here to watch Courtney drop knowledge. (Isn't she brave?)

I'm especially glad she got to make this point on Fox News:

Courtney: I believe we live in a culture where the pop messages are sex, sex, sex everywhere. They tell girls, your body is your power. Then, we have the federally funded abstinence in sex education that tells girls, your bodies are dangerous. Do not ask questions. After interviewing over 100 women, I believe we are struggling to decipher those messages. In the real world, how do we create state boundaries for ourselves? How do we have good relationships with our bodies when we are caught between extreme arguments?

Laura: You said, having relationships with our bodies. You said, there are people up there who tell young girls that their bodies are dangerous. I talked a lot of families, too. I never hear a mother tell her daughter that her body is dangerous. I do hear mothers tell their daughters, you'll be better off, less likely to commit suicide, less likely to take part in drug use, if you abstain from sex during your high school years. Do you disagree that that is a good thing for girls?

Courtney: I believe our education system is sending a message that girls should cut themselves off from their authentic identities.

Laura: What does that mean? If you are 12 years old, you do not know what color of shirt to put on.

Courtney: That's not true.

Doesn't she rock? (Courtney, that is...)

Rest of the transcript (which contains some typos -- be warned) is below the fold.

Editor's Note: When I got an email from Jaclyn yesterday with the subject line: "the antidote to the chubby-bashing asshole," I knew I was in for some good shit. So instead of me posting about her work at Big Moves, I asked Jaclyn to write about it herself...

Contributed by Jaclyn Friedman

I created the Big Moves calendar not just as a much-needed fundraiser for our tiny, broke-ass, volunteer-run organization, but also as an antidote to the narrow (pun-intended) images of beauty I'm bombarded with every day. In a world where Glamour sees fit to photoshop America Ferrara down to a size-nothing (and has the nerve to run the headline "1st Annual Figure Flattery Issue" right next to it), where images of "fat" women are used as sure-thing motivation to get you to buy whatever it is that will make you Not Like That, I wanted to reclaim the glamor of the Calendar Girl and make it something new and powerful. I wanted to glamorize the kind of real beauty that has nothing to do with what you weigh.

That's not just a cliche -- the women in this calendar are beautiful because they're confident, because they're brave enough to insist on being artists and performers against all social messages, because that's what makes them feel alive. It's an honor to perform with them, and it was a true privilege to shoot them for the calendar. These are my compatriots onstage and off -- my fatties, as we've taken to calling each other with pride, no matter what our size.

We are women mending what's broken in our lives, and my hope is that this calendar will mend some of what's broken in all of our lives. I can't wait to spend every day next year with this kind of beauty, and I hope that you will, too.

Note about the calendars: The slides how has lo-res versions of the pictures for quick-loading purposes. The actual pics are gorgeous high res and color saturated.

Via Jezebel, we find out about perhaps the world's biggest asshole, Michael Karolchyk.

Karolchyk owns a gym in Denver that he calls an "anti-gym.

It has numerous slogans, from "Too chubby; Never find a hubby," to "Have Sex With The Lights On" to "Save The Chubbitos" to "No Chubbies." It also has numerous amenities, including "live DJs, cage dancers, and our elite co-ed Ravish Room." The Ravish Room turns out to be a sauna that admits only members who have reached a sufficiently low body mass index, but you also have to be screened to so much as join his gym, where motivational techniques include having cupcakes hurled at you on the treadmill...

Charming. But nothing, nothing, beats this horrific commercial, "Hottie" in which Karolchyk physically assaults a "chubby" crying woman by pushing her onto a couch (so that her cake smashes up against her full humiliation style) while yelling "Moo!" at her. And that's just the tip of the asshole iceberg. If you can't watch the full commercial, a breakdown is after the jump.

It's stuff like this that makes me just fucking hate people.

Oh, and by the way, if you have the audacity to contact the "Anti-Gym" about their disgusting ads and vile owner, you are a "bearded lady."

1. Make the radical choice to commit to healing your relationship with your body.

2. Never diet. Never ever. It is a $31 billion industry that fails 95% of the time. That's just stupid.

3. Reconnect with your authentic hungers. When are you hungry? When are you full? What are you hungry for?

4. Move in ways (African dance, yoga, running, sex...) that make you feel happy instead of adhering to strict fitness regimens.

5. Add a compassionate voice to the chorus in your head.

6. Don't spend money on products made by companies that make you feel inadequate. Duh.

7. Stop hanging out with toxic people that make you feel bad about yourself.

8. Change conversations about weight to conversations about wellbeing.

9. Nominate someone for the REAL Hot 100.

10. Redefine your notion of success to include your own wellness--including joy, fulfillment, resilience, and self-love.

Shameless plug alert. For more ideas of how to heal, check out my book: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.

Because dressing like an eating disorder is sexy!

You think this get up is just another "sexy" take on a standard skeleton costume? Guess again. Meet...Anna Rexia.

The dress "includes a headband, choker looking like a tape measurer, a removable Anna Rexia heart badge, and ribbon tie belt resembling a tape measurer! Add fishnets or thigh high socks and the look is complete!"

I want to cry.

Via Pandagon.

The latest Dove ad dealing with women's body image issues is called "Onslaught":

The commercial is indebted to Jean Kilbourne's pioneering "Killing Us Softly" series, which was one of the first video explorations of how all these images of women's bodies we see in advertising really add up and influence how we view women's bodies in real life.

What I find fascinating about this Dove ad is how the fashion/beauty industry is finally portrayed like the drug it is. I mean, the whole, "Talk to your kids" message is usually used for things like weed or cigarettes or drunk driving. It's not often associated with the portrayal of women in mainstream advertising, which also has an extremely destructive influence on girls (and boys) who consume these ads. It's a powerful message.

Of course, as with all of these "body-positive" Dove ads, this message is coming from a company selling beauty products. A company that wants you to believe your thighs need firming and your underarms need "fixing" so that you'll buy their shit. A company whose parent corporation, Unilever, has pledged not to use size 0 models, but also makes products like Axe eau de asshole and skin-whitening cream. These things are hard to reconcile.

via Jezebel.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. At all.

A controversial ad campaign featuring a 68-pound anorexic woman has been launched in Italy to coincide with Milan Fashion Week.

The ads, which are aimed at raising awareness about eating disorders, feature Isabelle Caro, a 27-year-old French woman.

Caro, who has battled the disease for 15 years, shows her exposed breasts and frail, naked body.

Another image shows Caro's buttocks and the outline of her protruding rib cage. Both advertisements feature the slogan: "No Anorexia."

I'm not going to post the picture here, because I'm conflicted about it. Is this campaign raising awareness in an in-your-face way or objectifying a sick woman? Or both?

Part of me feels like the reality of eating disorders should be confronted head-on. In our current celeb-crazy climate, the wasting away of various starlets seems more glamorized than ever. Maybe we need a campaign like this. Thoughts?

UPDATE: The campaign isn't simply an awareness campaign--it's being used to sell a clothing brand. Should have mentioned that earlier.

Okay, I started shaving my legs when I was a young teen--so I'm certainly in no position to hate on hair removal. But this just seems...creepy.

Now Nair, the depilatory maker, is finally breaking that mold — by aiming at even younger customers. This year the company introduced Nair Pretty, a line aimed at 10- to 15-year-olds or, in industry parlance, “first-time hair removers.�

It's that "first-time" reference that give me the heebie jeebies. The Nair Pretty marketing scheme is half hilarious, half terrifying. Hilarious because of the obvious attempt to speak to young people in contrived slang:

It's not that you're obsessed or anything but maybe you've noticed that the hair on your legs (and other parts of your body) is just a little bit thicker and darker than before. Chill. You're growing up...it's all good.

I almost expected the next line to be about "getting jiggy" with hair removal. But it's still terrifying because the message of Nair Pretty is that you can't be pretty unless you're taking care of that unsightly leg (and everywhere else) hair.

And as Gawker put it, "We're probably months away from Baby Brazilians."

Via Broadsheet

I'm glad some researchers are out there asking the tough questions and have set about designing a bra that supports women in three dimensions. (Apparently breasts bounce three different ways.) Interesting facts:

- "[D]uring exercise, women's breasts bounce more than previously estimated, moving a vertical distance of up to around eight inches"
- Sports bras support wome with G-cups better than women with A-cups.
- The overall pattern of breast-bouncing resembles a figure-8.

And those stats apply, presumably, to women who are wearing the correct bra size. Most aren't. Take it from Oprah, or from super-fab style icon Tim Gunn:

I found that across the board there were a couple of common denominators with all eight women we worked with this season. For instance, not one of them was wearing the right bra size.

Who knows? Maybe the myth of the bra-burning feminist arose because women are so uncomfortable in the damn things they want to set them ablaze.

New research shows women who have had breast implants are three times as likely to commit suicide. While the article doesn't include what percentage of women who get implants have pre-existing mental health issues, it does mention that,

Previous studies have shown that as many as 15% of plastic surgery patients have body dysmorphic disorder, a condition marked by severe distress over minor physical flaws. People with the disorder have a higher rate of suicidal thoughts and rarely improve after surgery.

Lest I sound like a forced-pregnancy advocate screeching about so-called "post-abortion syndrome," I have to say that the implants themselves are pretty meaningless here. It's a question of the mental health status of women who choose to get breast implants. Realizing this, some plastic surgeons are calling for more pre-augmentation mental-health screenings. (My question: Would they really tell a woman with severe depression that she couldn't have D-cups? Maybe. Maybe not.) Other surgeons don't seem concerned, saying that, because the research was conducted between 1965 and 1993, the situation today is much brighter for the silicone-boobed:

Researchers said the results may have limited applicability to women today because breast augmentation is more acceptable than it was 40 years ago.

Do they actually mean to suggest that the women in the study were suicidal because, in previous decades, society was not accepting of their silicone-enhanced breasts? I'd argue that today there is even more social pressure to look perfect than there was 40 years ago. And as plastic surgery becomes more socially acceptable, women with mental-health issues (and problems like body-dysmorphic disorder) may be under even more pressure to get breast augmentations. Therefore this problem is not going away.

Does this mean it's time for the Love Your Body movement to take a cue from the anti-choice movement and start drumming up lots of biased research about so-called "post-boob-job syndrome"? Er, probably not...

Thanks to Erin for the link.

It's not news that child beauty pageant culture is more than a little screwed up. And that photoshop "enhancing" is all over the place. So I know I shouldn't be shocked by this site (via Broadsheet) where parents can send photos of their infants and young daughters to be cosmetically retouched. Apparently some parents are not content to let their daughters wait until puberty to start hating their bodies. A sample:

These photos are incredibly creepy -- not only photoshopping out stray hairs and shadows, but "correcting" facial features, adding makeup, and "removing drool." One of their "enhancements" is actually called "doll eyes."

Somehow more than the Katie Couric visual slimfast incident, the assorted before-and-after photos from magazine covers, and other digitally perfect images of women's bodies we're assaulted with every day, these pictures are notably more disturbing. Part of me wants to say, fine, "fix" Faith Hill's wrinkles, but leave the poor kids alone!

Because a 3-second soundbite wasn't enough... Here's what else I was going to say about the so-called controversy over Hillary Clinton sporting a v-neck top. Then I promise to stop yammering about it.

First off, Robin Givhan is a fashion writer for a paper in the political capital of the country. Of course she's going to write about what the '08 frontrunners are wearing. The difference between Hillary and the boys, though, is that she gets WAY more attention paid to what she wears. And even though Givhan's article appeared in the style section (where, if anywhere, such an article belongs), the unfortunate thing is that other news outlets took it for news, and interspersed it with their political coverage. That's when it gets really offensive.

Another difference between this incident and, say, the totally unwarranted flap over John Edwards' hair, is that when it's about a female candidate, it's all about sex. Givhan even compared Hillary sporting a v-neck to one of the male candidates appearing in public with his zipper down. Umm... really? And in her article, she even noted that Hillary's sedate, conservative black pantsuits during her senate campaign were "desexualized." But the minute Hillary goes to work (because that's where she was -- at work, on the Senate floor, not on the campaign trail) in something other than a collared shirt or turtleneck (in 90-degree weather, no less), she's supposedly making a break for "sexy."

We're going to run into this problem again and again. Because you know what? Hillary can never just grab a sedate gray suit out of the closet, pick a "fun" tie, and hit the road. She cannot make a fashion choice that doesn't "say something" about her, because there is no default, nondescript outfit. The default for politicians is the traditional male suit, because for so long, all major national politicians were male. She doesn't fit that mold. And try as she might, there is no clothing selection Hillary can make that won't elicit some sort of commentary.

The Clinton campaign was very smart to turn this into a fundraising issue. Every female public or political figure faces the same no-win situation that Hillary does when it comes to her clothes. Too conservative? You're a stuffy matron. A little lower-cut? You're practically baring your boobs, you slut. Women can relate to the experience of having every aspect of their personal appearance analyzed and critiqued. So even if the fundraising appeal didn't come right out and say, "Hillary has to put up with bullshit criticism of her appearance, just like you!" that was the sentiment they were capitalizing on. And rightfully so.

Taking the foot fetish to the next level of nasty.

Shoes have never been so sexy sexist.

via V Magazine.

Thanks to Jessica for the link.

I read last week about Mattel marketing a new Barbie website and other types of "virtual play" for girls. Even though it's still in beta, in its first 60 days, the Barbie Girls site signed up three million members, and is adding another 50,000 every day. (I tried to log in and poke around the site, but it's been so jammed with visitors that I couldn't get it to load.)

One of the reasons Barbie has historically had such a hold on young girls (and what I loved about Barbie as a kid) is that she's a grown-up. I know this is one of the critiques of Barbie -- that she presents a very screwed up image of what an adult woman is supposed to physically look like. As a kid, I loved Barbie because she wasn't a baby doll -- I had no interest in playing mommy. I used Barbie to act out how I wanted to be as an adult. My Barbie was a journalist. She wore men's sweaters sometimes. She always drove the red convertible. In her spare time, she was the frontwoman of a rock band.

What didn't she do? Go shopping. Sure, she had lots of fun outfits, but having her "purchase" more was never part of my play routine. When I searched for descriptions of what Barbie is actually set up to do in her popular new virtual world, every article I found only mentioned her ability to shop for stuff like "miniskirts, tiaras or home accessories." In other words, training girls to grow up to be women who are first and foremost consumers.

A Barbie virtual world seems so much more pernicious than Barbie the 10-inch doll. It's still got all the body- and beauty-standard issues that the old-school version has. But at least girls can more easily impose their own personalities and interests onto a doll. It requires imaginative play. I'm sure that Barbie Girls has been focus-grouped like crazy, and that TONS of young girls want their Barbies to do nothing but go shopping and get makeovers. But it's really terrible (not to mention a wasted opportunity) to not include other activities. Why couldn't they join a virtual rock band, or run for virtual office, or play virtual sports? (I can think of several great organizations that would have made perfect partners for a website like this.)

As the site stands now, though, where would a kid like I was fit into the Barbie Girls world? From what I've read, the site features no fast cars, no rock band, no newsdesk. Just credit cards and cosmetics.

Check out this HuffPo piece on the increase of older women falling ill to easting disorders. According to recent findings, the number of women in their 40s and 50s seeking treatment have tripled and quadrupled from a decade ago.

At the end of last month I taped an episode of "Everywoman" on Al Jazeera English, talking about the Israeli consulate's partnership with Maxim to try to "improve the country's image" among young men in the U.S. Check it out:

(My first TV appearance! I was so nervous.)

Thanks to Jezebel, we have yet another example of how fucked up magazine airbrushing is. Perhaps at her next concert Faith Hill will dedicate this song to the crack photoshopping team at Redbook:

Every part of who I am
Is so in love cause what I have is beautiful
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
You make me feel so beautiful feel like I could fly
Beautiful - cross the clear blue sky
Beautiful - baby I could cry
You make me feel so beautiful
Beautiful

Jezebel's also got a complete satirical breakdown of the cover.

Thanks to Erin for the link.

The first royal mummy since Tutankhamen has been discovered in Egypt. Her name was Hatshepsut, and she just can't catch a break for her appearance, even though she's been dead thousands of years.

Turns out, Hatshepsut was no Cleopatra. Instead, she was a 50-year-old fat lady; apparently she used her power over the Upper and Lower Nile to eat well and abundantly. Archaeologists also claim that she probably had diabetes, just like many obese women today.

*Gasp!* Can you believe they let a fat woman over age 50 be a ruler? Can you believe she liked to feast the same way male royalty did? OMG.

Hatshepsut also suffered from what all women over 40 need -- a stylist. She was balding in front but let the hair on the back of her head to grow really long, like an aging female Dead Head with alopecia.

In other words... Today's women over age 40? So gross they have the same beauty issues as a 3,500-year-old mummy.

But like today, one should never be fooled by a woman’s Look. Hatshepsut was a powerful, successful woman.

Riiight... Because in modern society, we'd never assume a less-than-perfect-looking woman was powerful or successful. I mean, how successful could she really be if she can't afford plastic surgery, a personal trainer, and her own stylist?

Ok, ok, I know this article is written in trying-to-be-playful style, but I just found it incredibly annoying.

via Just Dreadful.

Apparently not. This woman is actually supposed to disgust you.

Apparently this is just one in a series of Brazilian ads for light yogurt that takes iconic images of women and replaces them with "fat" women. The tagline? Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.

Excuse me while I go dispose of all the yogurt in my fridge. Fuckers.

Via tigtog and the f-word.

If lipo and vaginal "rejuvenation" surgery isn't quite enough body hatred for you--you can always look further down.

It is 8 o’clock on a serene blue morning in Beverly Hills and Dr Ali Sadrieh, a podiatrist, has just performed a 45-minute operation on a client, cutting a section of bone out of her toe to shorten it. She was awake during surgery, watching a film; next week Sadrieh will do the same thing to the second toe on the other foot. There was nothing medically wrong with the toes, but his patient didn’t like the way they protruded over the lip of her high-heeled Manolo Blahniks.

Welcome to the wilder shores of La-La Land, where cosmetic surgery has finally travelled the full length of the female form. Down the phone line from California, Sadrieh’s voice is upbeat: “Toes are the new nose,� he tells me happily.

Now I like heels as much as the next gal, but generally I look for shoes to fit my feet--not feet to fit my shoes. Just saying.

Lovely.

I haven’t heard about this before so I don’t know how prevalent it is, but regardless it’s not good: a new trend has been developing among young diabetic girls who are skipping or reducing their insulin injections as a means of losing weight.

“Diabulimia� is apparently on the rise, and is extremely dangerous not only obviously because of the severe weight loss often involved with having an eating disorder, but the risks of a decrease in insulin, including blindness, damage to the kidneys and limbs, and could eventually result in a coma and/or death. Veronica has more.

Does anyone know more about this condition?

Just wondering what folks thought about this:

An Anthropologist Wannabe on hymenoplasty. “But how do we turn our backs on these women who in all likelihood could be killed by their fathers, brothers or husbands (Honor killings) if it is found out that they are not virgins? Aren’t doctors morally bound to help these women who could face certain death if they are discovered to be non-virgins?�

Via Global Voices.

It's taken me forever to get around to posting this, but Beth Ditto's bare-it-all cover of British music mag NME has got everyone talking.

My initial reaction? YES! She looks fabulous. It's so incredible to see a mainstream music magazine put a sexy, anti-sizist, feminist artist on the cover, who stands apart from your typically emaciated covergirl and presents an entirely different beauty standard. Size-positivity! Armpit hair! It's as if NME declared May "Love Your Body Month." Ditto has long been an ambassador for all the girls who don't fit the media construct of "perfect female form" -- she's also posed nude for the Sunday Times of London and is fond of stripping down during her live shows.

But I've got a few reservations, too. I'm not generally in favor of serious female musicians having to get naked in order to make it onto the cover of a mainstream magazine. It's worth noting that NME is not Maxim. It's not even comparable to Rolling Stone in terms of fleshy photos. It does not regularly publish cover shots of any naked woman. (I wonder if they considered shooting Ditto with her clothes on?) This post speculates that NME would have come in for more criticism if it had published a naked cover photo of a thinner woman, possibly facing accusations that it was turning into a lad mag when it supposedly focuses on music. But because Ditto does not have the body of a conventional, skeletal cover model, NME was shielded from this argument. (Thoughts?)

Ditto has had some interesting interactions with super-skinny stars who we typically see on magazine covers. Back in February, Ditto complained that she was up against Kate Moss for the "Sexiest Woman" title at the NME Awards, saying "I don't even know why she's here. Just because she's sleeping with a singer and sings a few backing vocals she thinks she's it." But after a serious heart-to-heart, now Ditto and Moss are apparently best pals. Ditto said recently:

"Kate is amazing. I spent one night talking to her and she just said the most amazing things about bodies," explained Ditto. At first I didn't think I was going to like her, but she just turned up to one of our shows and said, 'Do you know what I hate Beth? I hate it when people tell my big girlfriends, 'You have a beautiful face...' I mean, that's a really radical concept."

Ditto was also praised by Keira Knightly in a recent issue of In Touch, where Knightly said, "Oh my god, that woman is so sexy. She has the most amazing body." Check out the photo juxtaposition that accompanies the quote. It's that image that convinces me to quit fretting and celebrate the nekkid NME cover. Her cover photo is transgressive. It's groundbreaking. And putting on the newsstands an alternate version of what is normally presented as SEXY is incredibly important. So kudos to NME. And Ditto rocks.

(Thanks to Becky for the link, long ago.)

Dove's Real Beauty Campaign has had its fair share of successes and critiques, yet while they have been pushing this idea of "real beauty," it seems that they also think that should exclude your armpits. Like we don't have enough body parts to obsess over.

The slogan, "Are you sleeveless ready?" says enough about what they're trying to pitch, but I've heard the commercial is pretty irritating, more or less saying that their newest deodorant will make your underarms look soft and gorgeous (as opposed to their gross existence before). The website says:

"Every woman can have softer, smoother underams and show them off in sleeveless styles that make her feel beautiful."

Because seriously, who likes a girl with dry and not soft-as-a-baby's-ass underarms?

Thanks MAC for the story.

Because women can never feel bad enough about their bodies. The New York Times had an article yesterday about the latest in "hot" bodies: a "well-chiseled clavicle."

That's right ladies, not only do we need skinny waists to be pretty, we need skinny collarbones.

I think Emily at Gawker put it best: "Stay tuned, Styles readers, for the inevitable follow-up story—'Is Clavicle-Whittling The New Labioplasty'?"

Check out this Newsweek interview with Courtney Martin, Feministing contributor and author of the newly-released Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. It's a great piece with an unfortunate title: "How Feminism Got Corrupted." (Sigh.)

Sigh.

Clearly in need of nipping and tucking.

Because why stop at nipples? Best that women feel like shit about every inch oh their body--"especially the fun bits.

I know we've written a lot about "designer" vaginas and the increasing popularity of labiaplasty, but whenever I see a new article about it I just get fired up all over again.

Christopher A. Warner says he considers himself something of a maverick, a caring physician willing to challenge medical orthodoxy in order to help women.

That's why the 39-year-old board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist recently opened the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Washington in a red brick townhouse off Washington Circle. There, he is building a business as the first area physician to perform controversial procedures that use a laser to enhance sexual gratification by repairing tissue damaged by childbirth, to give women a "youthful aesthetic look" or to make those who are not appear to be virgins.

Yeah, what a trailblazer. Because no one has ever thought of cutting up women's genitals to make them more "attractive."? I especially like the bullshit surgery name: vaginal rejuvenation. As if there's a scourge of exhausted pussies across America.

But perhaps the most vile aspect of this surgery is how doctors are appropriating feminist language to make the case for cutting up women. A press release from The Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of New York shouts, "Women Now Have Equal Sexuality Rights." One of the doctors mentioned in the article, David Matlock (who we've also posted about before), calls one of his surgery packages the "Wonder Woman Makeover."? It includes "several vaginal procedures, breast implants and a breast lift, abdominal liposuction and a Brazilian butt augmentation." Lovely.

I wonder how empowering these docs find the possible risks of surgery:

[Sex therapist Laura] Berman said she has treated about 15 women who have undergone vaginal procedures to improve their sex lives and developed complications such as painful intercourse.

Operating on or near sensitive vaginal tissue, [plastic surgeon V. Leroy] Young added, is inherently risky and can cause scarring, nerve damage and decreased sensation.

But so long as you have a nice, tidy, tight vagina for your man, what's a little pain and bad sex? Seriously, this makes me want to cry.

Who knew?

Apparently Benefit--which is probably my favorite makeup company--is touting their Benetint blush (above) as something to enhance your nipple color.

In just one more sign of the stripperization of the Everywoman, Benefit’s Benetint, conceived in the seventies for an exotic dancer to color lips and cheeks, is now also being sold at Sephora and elsewhere as a “kiss-proof and water-resistant� nipple tint. “Women want nipples to be pert and fresh-looking, and this shade makes them appear that way,� Benefit spokeswoman Alison Haljun says. “For a long time, the idea of a ripe, rosy nipple has been considered appealing and alluring.’’

Not only is this just, well, ick...it also sets the nipple beauty ideal as light skinned. I mean, you have to be pretty fair to have "rosy" nipples, no? Anyway, ick.

In the largest poll on body image in which 25,000 people in the UK were questioned by BBC radio, half of the women said they would consider plastic surgery.

Some of the women who run Casa Atabex Ache.

Daynara Marte has been executive director of the “House of Womyn Power� Casa Atabex Ache in the South Bronx of New York for four years. She came to Casa in 1999 as an intern and has stayed and moved up in the organization ever since.

"Casa" in Spanish means house. "Atabex" is one of the many names for the Taino goddess or earth mother of Puerto Rico. Taino are the indigenous people of Puerto Rico, and other islands in the Caribbean. "Ache" means power in Yoruba, the language of a West African ethnic group.

Between 30 to 65 young women learn about self empowerment through cultural and indigenous rituals, spirituality, and social justice at Casa Atabex Ache at any given time. Currently, Dayanara is working on outreaching to the large Mexican immigrant community living in the South Bronx. Many fear entering community establishments and being asked for their immigration papers.

Here’s Dayanara…

Check out this disturbing Indian commercial for Fair & Lovely skin whitener (made by Unilever, which also manufactures Dove's "real beauty" products... and Axe). Here's a synopsis:

One TV commercial aired in India (often referred to as the Air Hostess advertisement) “showed a young, dark-skinned girl’s father lamenting he had no son to provide for him, as his daughter’s salary was not high enough – the suggestion being that she could not get a better job or get married because of her dark skin. The girl then uses the cream [Fair & Lovely], becomes fairer, and gets a better-paid job as an air hostess – and makes her father happy�.

Sexism, classism and racism, tied up together in a neat little 60-second spot! A similar ad for a whitener made by Pond's -- also a Unilever brand -- drew criticism a few years ago:

"Those ads are incredible," says Malaysian social activist Cynthia Gabriel, referring to the Unilever ads. "Whitening creams are capitalizing on a market that's quite racist and biased toward people who are lighter."

Responded a Unilever rep:

"Our TV commercial was never intended to suggest any correlation between skin color and beauty. We leave that to each individual to interpret according to his or her culture, background and education."

High-end whiteners are also sold by Chanel and Shiseido in the U.S. But they're huge in countries like China, India and Malaysia, where they help perpetuate the idea that whiter skin = more respect = success in life. They also pose health risks.

As Salon points out, the popularity of Fair & Lovely (the best-selling whitening cream in the world) provides fodder for a debate about whether marketing to lower-income populations helps or hurts them.

Not surprisingly, [manufacturer] HLL claims Fair & Lovely is doing good by fulfilling a social need. They argue that 90 percent of Indian women want to use whiteners because it is “aspirational…. A fair skin is like education, regarded as a social and economic step up� (Luce and Merchant, 2003).

But Fair & Lovely isn't a step up or solution; it only enforces the prejudices that contribute to economic and social inequality.

Via Nerve.

Via Nerve, I discovered the Vagina Institute (NSFW), a site dedicated to informing you of the myriad ways you can feel insecure about yourself -- then encouraging "vagina enhancement."

Feministing fave the Vagina Lady (source of one of Jess's favorite pics ever) stumbled across this website nearly two years ago. She received some seriously angry emails for suggesting that the Institute, while seemingly pro-vag and pro-woman, is really just about the worst thing ever. A front site for a plastic surgeon, maybe? In any case, the Vagina Institute definitely wants you to hate your body (highlights mine - click to enlarge):

The Vagina Lady had an appropriate response:

I bet the semi-literate prick who penned this has something unsightly about his wanker, some deformation of angle or curvature, the pulsing flaw of a too-prominent vein, an offensive variation in skin tone, an asymmetricality of the glans, perhaps simply an inadequacy of size… or perhaps just the dull ache of an unsatisfied penis, and the empty blackness in his heart, made all the more prominent by his long lonely nights when none of his vagina models would go home with him, not even one with labial deformation.

Well said. If all the Institute's vag-hating depressed you as much as it did me, cheer up by checking out photos of the Vagina Lady's roadtrip. Or buy yourself something nice.

UPDATE: It looks likely the Institute is selling books and info about DIY "vagina enhancement", not actual surgery -- kind of like the female equivalent of penis enhancement spam. Gross.

The Guardian has an interesting piece up about how beauty pageants "are being crushed by their own internal contradiction, that the women involved should look sexually available at all times, but never actually be sexually active." (Vanessa has already written a great post on the subject.)

Bonus: The article quotes one of our favorite "prominent young US feminists," Jess.

Good for her.

So, what it's like to be a woman who's over 6 feet tall?

To begin with, to be extra-tall is to be somehow more public than the average woman. Everybody sees me. Strangers on the subway peer upward and tell me about their childhood neighbor who was tall. Fellow grocery shoppers sheepishly request my help procuring items from upper shelves. Male passers-by mutter, "That was one giant woman." Men seem particularly inclined to register one characteristic: tall.

I'd add to that: Fratty dudes in bars will chant "6 footer!" or loudly make bets with each other about how tall I am. (Well, I've actually had restaurant wait staff and fellow wedding guests make bets, too, so maybe it's unfair to pin that one on the bros alone.) People stare openly, all the time, everywhere I go. There are some days, namely those when I'm wearing whopping 1-inch heels, that I feel like I leave a ripple of height comments in my wake. Small children point and say, "Mommy! Look at the giant lady!" Women who feel insecure about their own height will often say to me, "I wish I was that tall!" No, honey, you don't. Really.

But it does have certain benefits.

Do not get your sexy on in the conservative town of Kotu Baru, Malaysia. You will be fined 138 dollars. And why? Because scantily clad women mar the image of the town.

The Kota Baru town's municipal council has said it will no longer tolerate indecent dressing and will begin enforcing an existing Islamic law that prohibits indecent dressing, The Star newspaper said.

The bylaw on proper feminine attire prohibits Muslim and non-Muslim women from wearing body hugging outfits, blouses that show the navel, see-through blouses, miniskirts and tight pants.

Women's groups are unhappy and ask rightfully, "I would like to know what is the (acceptable) level of tightness of a pair of pants or jeans, and what happens to those of us who have larger buttocks?" I understand differing cultural/relgious practices (whether I agree with them or not), but I bet there are no laws restricting what men wear.

via AP.

If you have the time, check out my interview with Rha Goddess and JLove Calderon, editors of We Got Issues! A Young Woman's Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life. They have lots of powerful things to say. Happy Thursday!

UPDATE (Jessica): Hey, just wanted to say that I just started reading this book and it's fucking awesome. I'm planning on doing a full review, but just wanted to sing it's praises here as well.

Yeah you heard it right. It still scares me, but I wouldn't get breast implants ever and I think it is sad that so many women do. And that big companies benefit off of low self esteem. But I guess that is what our culture is all about, innit.

via CNN.

Beauty image obsessions are just going WAY too far. Indian Airlines has been suspending their female flight attendants for being overweight. Their justification is that they need to save the company image. One company exec actually said, why would you fly with us, if other airlines have better looking staff. I don't know about you, but I am usually looking for the cheapest ticket and couldn't care fuck-all what the flight attendants look like. But I guess creepy businessmen flying around Asia may feel differently.

Eleven employees, recently grounded for putting on too much weight, claim that the airline has changed its vision of the Indian feminine ideal - abandoning the more buxom prototype in favour of a more westernised, skinny model, which staff see as 'unattainable'.

Indian Airlines will argue that this is a case of selecting the 'best ambassadors' to represent the national airline, and the country as a whole, and will also claim that thinner employees are more agile and better equipped to tackle terrorist incidents and other emergencies.

'They want to discard the heavier women and bring in newer, thinner models,' said Sheela Joshi, an air hostess who was grounded after a spot weigh-in found she was 1.9kg over the prescribed limit for her height.

Distressed at the prospect of losing her job after 25 years with the company, she went on a crash diet, and now eats only one meal a day to try to keep within the limit. She has been allowed to fly again, but describes the process as demeaning. 'This is our national carrier and should represent the dignity of Indian culture. These new policies are humiliating to women.'

I am sorry. That is just wrong. What the hell does thinness have to do with agility? Hopefully, the Indian Supreme Court will know what's up and Indian Airlines will LOSE.

via UK Guardian.

In light of all the recent, exaggerated and excessive discussion around "the veil," I noticed that the voices of women that choose to wear the veil (or not to wear it, or are forced to wear it, etc.) were not present. So I was happy when my lovely roomie forwarded this BBC piece to me which consists of four women sharing their own experiences.

A student from Syria says,

I chose to wear the veil or the niqab [a full face covering] as an act of worship. As a Muslim I believe that women should not only wear the hijab [head covering] but the veil too. I don't care what those who don't find my arguments convincing think. I believe that wearing the veil is God's will. I don't trust men, and women should protect themselves.

A teacher from Baghdad tells us,

This is what is happening in Iraq where the wearing of the hijab is a recent development. The hijab is being forced upon women at gunpoint. Women have no choice but to comply. Personally, I feel restricted when I wear it. I feel as if my personality is taken away. I feel I have to wear it, but if I had the chance, I wouldn't because I have faith that God knows what is truly in my heart.

I think their words speak for themselves. There is no uniform experience and to reduce women to the "veiled" subject ignores individual experiences, feelings and actions.

via BBC.

Thoughts?

For some more feminist fodder, check out this and this. (I'm going to post on it shortly, but I bet you can already guess where I stand.)

Pic from imylthinle.

It was pretty hard to miss this model's ribcage -- even amid all the blinding Pucci and Gucci prints -- in the NYT style section today.

Spain's decision to keep super-bony supermodels off the catwalk has been widely covered. But let's face it-- banning skeletal runway models won't really have much effect. The truth is that most young women see images of disgustingly skinny celebrities and models everywhere-- on billboards, in movies, in magazines and on television. And I don't think we should be passing legislation that mandates a minimum body weight for any woman who appears in the media.

Symbolically, though, I do like the fact that the Spanish government has publicly recognized that it's destructive to hold up this body type as an ideal. Now if only magazine editors and casting directors would agree, we might actually get somewhere.

That sounds fun. Ugh.

Britain's Channel 4 will show "Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Zero" early next year, as a group of female journalists film their attempts to drop to a size 2, equivalent to a U.S. size 00.

"This documentary will highlight the dangers of aiming for a super-skinny look, and expose the serious health risks of extreme weight-loss methods, all of which are already in the public domain," said a Channel 4 spokesman.

"At every stage of filming there will be continuous full medical support and expert guidance at hand."

The channel said it hoped the findings would provoke the same type of debate as Morgan Spurlock's documentary film "Super Size Me," which showed the health effects of a month long binge on fast food.

..."The documentary will also look at how the super-skinny American fad is spreading to the U.K. and question whether it is spawning an extreme, collective eating disorder," Channel 4 said in a statement.

OK, I'm all for highlighting dieting dangers--but do real women seriously have to do this to themselves in order to prove the point?

It seems even the experts think it's a bad idea. Britain's Eating Disorder Association says that "it could be very difficult to eat normally again after this experiment is over." Um yeah...that tends to happen when you starve yourself. Jeez.

I am not a fan of censorship, especially at the highschool level. I think young people should be allowed to express themselves how they feel. Repression is problematic, but what if how you are expressing yourself is detrimental to yourself or the people around you?

How do we feel about young girls wearing suggestive sexual slang on their shirts in highschool?

They're blatantly sexual, occasionally clever and often loaded with double meanings, forcing school administrators and other students to read provocations stripped across the chest, such as "yes, but not with u!," "Your Boyfriend Is a Good Kisser" and "two boys for every girl." Such T-shirts also are emblematic of the kind of sleazy-chic culture some teenagers now inhabit, in which status can be defined by images of sexual promiscuity that previous generations might have considered unhip.

At Potomac Senior High School in Prince William, a girl recently wore a black T-shirt parodying the "Got Milk?" ad, with sexual slang replacing the word "milk." Steve Bryson, the school's administrative assistant, brought the girl into his office. "I asked her, 'Why would you wear something like that?' And she said: 'I don't know. My dad knows that I have it,'" he recalled. "So I called the dad, and, of course, he had no idea. He said, 'Throw it away.'

One popular merchant of suggestive shirts is Hollister Co., a chain owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. Its shirts say such things as "two boys for every girl" and "FLIRTING MY WAY TO THE TOP."

Asked about the messages his company markets to teenagers, Thomas D. Lennox, Abercrombie & Fitch's vice president of corporate communications, said, "Our T-shirts are sometimes controversial, which we're fine with." He declined to elaborate.

Yuck, I hate Hollister and Co. We can't really ignore the corporate motivation behind this notion of "controversial." I mean is it really still student self-expression if everyone is wearing the same shirts and an entire company dedicated to marketing to young people is endorsing it?

I don't necessarily know if the shirts themselves are so bad, as is the lack of sex education in most public schools. Are most young women getting the education they need around self-esteem and sex? Furthermore, an analysis of how corporate enterprise supports these shirts is impossible to ignore. How do companies like Hollister benefit from the "slutification" of young women?

“Fighting discrimination with facts, humor and fake fur!�—that’s the motto of the internationally acclaimed anonymous activist artist group, The Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls celebrated their 20th anniversary last year, and have no plans of stopping.

I spoke with Frida Kahlo, one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, one early morning this summer. We also caught up a bit over email. The Guerrilla Girls are extremely busy with a lot of projects. Their next sighting will be at the Istanbul Modern Museum in Turkey, October 17 and 18.

Here’s Frida…

HP digital cameras are now offering a "slimming" feature. No gratuitous Photoshopping necessary!

Via Bitch Ph.D.

Wow. Looks like teeny tiny Katie Couric just isn't skinny enough for public viewing. CBS thinned her down (significantly) for its "Watch" Magazine in the grossest Photoshopped diet ever. TVNewser caught the altered image via a reader.

Via HuffPo.

Austin Young

Standup comic diva Margaret Cho has been working the burlesque scene since April in her show “The Sensuous Woman.� It plays the third Wednesday of every month in Los Angeles at El Cid, and monthly in San Francisco at The Plush Room. She hopes to take it monthly to New York City starting in October, and is working on booking a Minnesota show with local burlesque troupe Foxy Tann and the Wham Bam Thank You Ma'ams for December 8th.

Margaret is also still doing standup, and incorporates comedy in all of her burlesque shows. She spoke to me from her home in Glendale, California. Here’s Margaret…

They totally do. You see, skinny is out in Hollywood. "Fat" is in and totally sexy, as evidenced by the very flattering pig in high heels picture accompanying the article.

And who are the "curvy" actresses that prove that fat chicks can be hot? In addition to the ones listed in the article, check out some of the hot heiffers at Pandagon. (Oh, you don't think women like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rachel Weisz are chunky? Silly rabbit.)

Via Broadsheet.

Check out The Shape of a Mother, a blog/forum where women discuss and post photos of how pregnancy has changed their bodies. Because the vast majority of pregnant (and recently-pregnant) women we see are celebrities, it's so refreshing to see real women grappling-- in a constructive, non-diet-book way-- with how motherhood has changed them physically.

Via BitchPhD. (Also check out Broadsheet's post from earlier this week.)

Today marks the opening day of Gay Games VII in Chicago, Illinois. More than 12,000 members of the global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community from 70 countries will be taking part in the Games all week. And Nancy Brigham, 49, of the San Francisco team will be one of them, competing in the women’s bodybuilding/master physique portion of the Games for women ages 40-49.

Nancy won a gold medal in Sydney in 2002, and is looking for another gold this year. She’ll be competing on Tuesday. So if you’re in the area, give the girl some support! The closing ceremony is Saturday, July 22.

And when Nancy is not at the gym training, she’s at Brigham’s Therapeutic Massage. The private practice she founded in 1988.

Here’s Nancy…

Isn't it nice to to know that new plastic surgeries are cropping up every day to deal with all of that gross knee and "bra fat" you have? No, seriously.

Patients have developed their own nicknames for these obscure fat deposits. To help doctors understand the exact locations their patients are describing, the journal Dermatologic Surgery recently published an article titled "Lexicon of Areas Amenable to Liposuction." According to the article, patients are now asking for liposuction of the "buffalo hump" (upper back), the "wings" (bulges around the bra area), the "doughnut" (around the belly button), the "banana fold" (below the buttocks), the "piano legs" (calves) and the "chubb."

'Chubb' is apparently a term for knee fat. Funny, I just thought it was called 'leg.'

Ellyn Ruthstrom was diagnosed with breast cancer on July 6, 2005. She was 45. Close to a year later, Ellyn is almost finished with her last rounds of chemotherapy for this stage of the treatment. She will be returning from her close to three-month leave of absence as the editor-in-chief of Teen Voices at the end of June. And she’s ready to get back to publishing more kick-ass teen-written features for teen women everywhere. Here’s Ellyn…

The New York Times reports the ghastly news that petites sections are disappearing from high-end department stores, and some short, older, mostly wealthy (these stores are expensive) women are upset.

While stores may appear to be "long obsessed with that Seventh Avenue archetype, the tall, thin, leggy lady," I can say definitively, as a slender woman who's 6'2", they don't actually make clothes to fit us, either. My inseam is 36 inches. which means the average pair of pants is between six and four inches too short for me. Sleeve length is an even bigger issue-- I've gotten used to bare wrists.

I certainly have nothing against shorter women, but I can't help but get pissed off when I read articles like this. Women who are shorter than 5'3" have more clothing options than many of us on other ends of the spectrum. You can always have clothes taken in and shortened, but you can't magically extend sleeves and pant legs (or expand waistlines or bustlines, for that matter). So some while short women are whining about not being able to find whole sections of clothing tailored to fit them, I have NEVER seen a section of a store devoted to attire for the long-limbed.

But I'll also say that I've never met any woman who doesn't complain about finding clothes to fit her body. The traditional sizing system is seriously flawed. It doesn't work for women of a variety of shapes. Stores that have switched to more specific sizing-- a variety of cuts, lengths, widths, etc.-- have been met with rave reviews.

This is why I learned to sew. I'm much happier for it.

I'll admit to indulging in the occasional game of Dance Dance Revolution or its spinoff, Karaoke Revolution. But the latest in the video game series, Maiden Love Revolution, is truly disgusting.

Players assume the role of 220-pound Hitomi Sakurakawa as she struggles to slim down - mostly by restricting her diet. To advance, Hitomi must count calories and increase her exercise. The game keeps stats on her progress and ultimately rewards her conformity with a boyfriend.

Because thin is synonymous with self-improvement, and a boyfriend is the ultimate reward. Ugh. Why didn't they call it Eating Disorder Revolution?

I hate reading studies where I can't find the abstract, but according to a study published this past Wednesday, women are more into finding a man based on what he looks like, as opposed to what his bank statement says.

Hmmm.

"We are seeing that women who have control over their finances are less concerned with the fiscal status of their potential mates and look more as to how attractive they may be," said one of the authors, Fhionna Moore from University of St Andrews.

Moore, a research student, found that as a woman's level of "resource control" changed, so did her preferences.

"It is the control and the independence the money gives rather than the absolute income level that appears to be the key predicting variable," she told Reuters.

An analysis of questionnaires returned by 1,851 heterosexual women aged between 18 and 35 showed women were able to change their attitudes relatively quickly in reaction to their changed financial status.

I don't understand the purpose of these studies. Basically they are saying since women are becoming like men (because being a man means you earn money) that their dating/mating preferences are becoming like men (because men only care about what women look like) so now women only care what men look like. Seems like a rather simplistic and dated idea to me. There are SO many other factors at play when choosing a mate or even a date. Furthermore, what kind of questions would even get at this kind of data? "How much money do you earn and do you like ugly dudes or good-looking ones?" Gimme a break.

Plus your preference in partner is different based on your race, gender, class, historical background, sexual preference and personal preference (a lot of variables that couldn't possibly have been stablized for in this study). I don't know a single woman (okay maybe one) that gives a rat's ass about how much money a potential partner earns or just what they look like. What they DO for a living, maybe. They should rename this study, what straight, white, historically wealthy/middle class women feel about finding mate.

via Reuters.

This is disturbing. (And yes, I realize it's most likely a parody. Still gross.)

It’s called Plastic Assets, and gives you free breast implants with your credit card. Woohoo! Just what every gal wants in life, to go shopping and have fake tits! Let’s not forget a free lip injection for each friend you refer! (Yes, that’s an actual part of the deal.)

You can also choose a credit card that matches your new breast size, from B to DD, with a B card specialized for “Tweens and teens still growing in every way.”

Oh. My. God. They might as well just say that the prepubescent look is SO not hot. (So get those boobs before your friends do!)

Via Nerve.

Oddly enough, I find Skin Deep--the new magazine dedicated to plastic surgery, staying young, and all things superficial--kind of comforting.

At least this mag isn’t bullshitting anyone about their intentions. Shit, their name says it all!

But dear lord, how sad is it that an entire magazine is devoted to cutting up your body?

Via Gawker.

This is a new low, even for weight-loss commercials.

The other night (while watching Rollergirls, of course) I caught a TV ad for Jenny Craig featuring spokeswoman Kirstie Alley walking alone down a dark street. A man yells at her "Ooohhh mama, you lookin' good!" She turns and says, delighted, "Are you speaking to me?"

Then Kirstie rips off her raincoat, and they break into a song-and-dance rendition of "It’s Raining Men."

Way to romanticize catcalls from strangers in dark alleys. The ad exec is obviously not a woman who’s ever walked home alone at night.

And street heckling as proof of physical attractiveness? Uh, sorry to break it to the Jenny Craig folks, but creeps on the street don't limit their harassment to thin women.

Not to mention the Weather Girls, who sang the original version of "It’s Raining Men," were both heavyset women who also recorded under the name "Two Tons O’ Fun." And, in many of the group's videos, singer Martha Wash was replaced by lip-syncing models.

Have you called Jenny (to complain about this ad) yet?

Why is it that "modernization" and eating disorders go hand in hand?

Like many South African women, Bongi Tsuene is worried about her weight. The difference is that Tsuene, featured in a television advertisement promoting a dieting formula, is black.

Experts say more black women like Tsuene are shunning the traditional African reverence for the fuller figure as they adapt to the pressures of post-apartheid South Africa, raising fears they could become vulnerable to eating disorders.

Isn't that great!? Why?

Many non-Western societies have traditionally been immune to the diet-obsession of the rich world, viewing bigger bodies as a sign of prosperity.

But, as more of these women become exposed to Western culture in an ever-globalizing world, researchers have seen a shift in attitudes.

"Worldwide media exposure, which focuses on mainstream cultural values, has been implicated as a powerful force in shaping public perceptions regarding the value of thinness and hence contributory to the rise in eating disorders in non-Westernized populations,"

I think that women all over the world receive some degree of societal pressures to look a certain way based on their cultural surroundings. But something about this obsession with all things thin is so Western. I will now lovingly rub my belly in resistance to this bullshit.

via Reuters.