Your Yucky Body: Embrace Your Shape Edition!
Seriously, even Vogue has an annual "Shape" issue where they patronizingly allow someone as (*GASP*) huge as Beyonce or Kate Winslet on the cover in addition to their usual sub-zero model roundup... then offer drastic dieting tips... all while mysteriously claiming to promote body acceptance: And don't miss the small print under the "LOVE YOUR BODY! headlines...
I threw in the "Lucy Loser" joke after being enraged by comments in an Entertainment Weekly piece (from the 7/31/09 issue) claiming that the proliferation of "inspiring" weight loss reality TV shows is a public good. Says the Style Network's Coleman Smith:
"Given what is going on with the country with obesity, I absolutely think weight loss is its own category. ... It's enabled us to stop thinking we live in a size 2 world by appropriately embracing real people." (emphasis mine)
Ah, I see. The only APPROPRIATE way to show non-size-2 bodies on TV is to show people trying to DIET DOWN to become a size 2! And this is about HEALTH, not HUMILIATION and RATINGS, right? That's body positivity we can all believe in! This cartoon is part of a series I've been doing for a while now. See also:
- "Your Yucky Body: A Repair Manual" (the original)
- "Summer Swimsuit Spectacular"
- "Designer Dieting"
- "Mommy Makeovers"
For more on fake body positivity, see...
- Marianne Kirby's Daily Beast piece "Really Big Love". (Kirby says of "More to Love": "It’s a one-two punch of acceptance followed by a knockout blow of shame" and that she's "tempted to make up a drinking game around how often the contestants and suitor on the show say 'voluptuous, curvy women.' It would be an easy way to get sloshed.")
- My pal Jenn Pozner, who is live-tweeting a host of reality TV horrors as she writes her book Reality Bites Back.
Update: I've been getting a lot of comments on this post I've had to reject. So FYI, if you are going to leave mean-spirited comments that refer to people as "blimps" or claiming that men only find skinny women attractive, I will reject them.
Labels: body image, cwa, feminism, toons, women
15 Comments:
Holy shit. If Beyonce is the new model of chunk, I must be a total fatass. And I'm only a size 9. :/
I am so over the fake "love your body!" thing. I love my body because I DON'T buy those crap magazines. Why would I pay $6 for 200 pages of ads for things I don't want, don't need, and can't afford?
What I REALLY hate is how patronizing and self-congratulatory those fake "love your body" pieces are. They always open with some syrupy letter from the editor about how much they just ADORE "curvy" women.
I actually used to read a couple of those magazines regularly for the fashion stuff (I had subscriptions to Vogue, Glamour and Lucky) but had to stop. Besides, they just repeat the same stories every year anyway.
P.S. But you always get the sense that those editors are SO relieved they aren't actually like those women they supposedly adore!
I think they shrunk Kate Winslet's waist for that cover (!)
Yes, there are many well-documented cases of Kate Winslet being PhotoShopped to extremes. Even extremely thin women get PhotoShopped thinner for those magazines.
P.P.S. I just noticed the small banner on the top right of the Vogue cover "Nip/Tuck: Designing the Perfect Body". Sigh...
i've noticed these magazines have been doing this for awhile and it's so patronizing. it's no surprise that i actually hate my body more after i read them or feel like i need to exercise or get surgery.
Yup. I think I've seen the same "150 Sex Moves Your Man Will Love!" article on the front of Cosmo about 25 times now.
You are a freaking GENIUS. Thank you for this.
I really wish ladies would just stop buying those crappy magazines. They only keep making them, because people keep buying them. I don't know who reads them, or why? They're just pages and pages of wasted paper... showing airbrushed fake women, and telling us all how to make our lives better by loosing weight and buying makeup. You couldn't pay me to read them....
Anonymous, I don't think that's quite it. Those magazines are mostly advertorial crap--but they're also quick, fun (if also depressing) reads full of advice columns and little tidbits on fashion, etc, and actually occasionally feature some pretty great articles by women writers amidst the advertorials and stick-thin celebrities in overpriced dresses. So I definitely don't blame women for reading them. I'm more critiquing their contradictory tone--they'll feature an article about "no more dieting, love your body" on one page, and diet tips on the next.
As a pretty transparent guy, I don't like phrases like 'curvy'. They're deceptive. If a man has to compliment his significant other with evasive terms like that, he's still wrapped up in media silliness.
I'm sure most straight women over 16 have figured out that men don't want the women on the cover of those mags - men that deluded think women smell like paper.
It's easy to make fun of magazines like that. What's harder but would make an important impact is to create news magazines that aren't. It's not about "blaming women" who buy it. I don't think that's what the other anonymous meant. It's about taking action. Subjects, not objects, also means Actors, not Victims, including, don't buy those magazines, or (like meat) consuming less is a positive step if you don't want to stop entirely: buying those magazines less often.
Also isn't there a third option besides either conforming to mainstream supermodel nonsense, on the one hand, or ignoring the overweight epidemic on the other? Is brushing the health epidemic that will lead to not only shorter lives but also more disease-filled lives for tens of millions of women (and men) the only way to bash corporate sexist consumerist crap stories? Can't we bash that and also bash unhealthy overweight and obesity?
And is "Love your body. Lose weight" really the contradiction some seem to think it is? Sure the source of that is the cover is a moronic magazine and story, but the statement is absolutely not self contradictory. If you're overweight or obese, then loving your body and honoring does mean losing weight -not on their corporate consumerist sexist crap terms but on your own terms..
Anonymous, I have to say I (and many others) don't agree that "overweight" people need to lose weight in order to love their bodies. I'm all for exercise and eating healthfully, but those things aren't the same as dieting. My pal Barry has more on the "Health at Every Size" approach over on his blog.
I love these, they're like David Cronenbergian horror. Man, can you imagine if David Cronenberg did a movie about all the ways we mess up our bodies trying to look perfect. I bet the cosmetic surgery would try to sue him, in hopes that film would never see the light of day.
There is a film called Antiviral by David Cronenberg's son Brandon that touches on the idea that we modify our bodies to a degree that's messed up. It's based on a society where people pay money, to contract the illnesses of celebrities. One of the notable things in the beginning of the film, is they are promoting how you can contract a celebrity's Anorexia eating disorder to become thinner. It's frighteningly realistic, that some people might pay for that.
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