feminist blogs

So, I live in BK and work in Manhattan. That means that every morning and every night, I spend about 30 minutes riding the NYC subway -an hour total on a daily basis.

Now. Usually I don't mind this part of my day. I scrunch up tight in packed trains with my fellow commuters, willing to weather the occasional bump and jostle to get to work at a reasonable hour. I jam to my customized "commute" playlists. I read from my book-of-the-moment. I play mindless video games on my iphone (jellycar holla!).

Anyway, apparently, thanks to a new ad campaign launching this month on NYC subways, I will be adding "I am forced to read some f'ed up anti-choice ads" to my regular subway repoirtoire.

Metro US is reporting that, starting this week, the New York City subway system will be home of a massive ad campaign bankrolled by the San Diego-based anti-choice organization "Abortion Changes You".

More images and info on the ads after the jump.

The article warns that

The 2,000 ads, which straphangers will see in nearly every subway station beginning tomorrow [this week], depict either a woman saying, "I thought life would be the way it was before," or a man saying, "I often wonder if there was something I could have done to help her."

I call bullshit, and I'm not the only one. Samantha Levine of NARAL Pro-Choice New York is all over this one:

"The campaign suggests that feelings of sadness and self-harm are the universal experiences for someone who had an abortion. And there's no evidence to suggest that that's true. The organization behind these ads has an agenda. They aren't seeking to help women -- they're seeking to get abortion banned."

I totally agree. I'm all for validating and honoring the experience of women who have had an abortion. But there are already TONS of really great support systems for women who have had abortions that are equipped to address a RANGE of post-abortion emotions and outcomes- glee, relief, guilt, sadness, loss, pride, no reaction at all, or a million other possibilities. When an ad campaign chooses to ignore these very real experiences of women who have had abortions, you have to assume that they have an agenda other than helping real women.

So, "Abortion Changes You" ad campaign, I have a question for you: If you care about women so much, why push such an anti-woman agenda? I think that the hidden-agenda-cloaked-in-faux-concern-for-women trend needed to end with the Aughts, yet somehow, the bizarre and twisted logic behind showing women you care about them by cutting off their access to healthcare mysteriously, miraculously, persists in all its annoyingness. Unfortunately, these ads are only the latest to join the crowded ranks of people and initiatives who couch their anti-woman agendas in messaging about "concern" for women and families (Georgia Right to Life, and Howard Stern are two recent ones that come to mind).

Aside from all that, the pictures from the group's website are pretty funny when you think about the fact that all the models are fake and just had these words plastered over their faux-concerned images:

I'm sorry your wife gets depressed, Brett Favre, but that's no excuse to take away other women's autonomy.

Listen, if you thought you were doing your job, you were absolutely right! You're a model, and you're looking real melancholy in this generic print ad. So...congrats on that!

In sum, I'll take a cue from Maya who wrote on twitter "yes, abortion change you- it makes you not pregnant anymore!" Also, you know what else changes you? Being FORCED to carry a pregnancy to term against your will! Now that's an ad campaign I wouldn't mind seeing on my morning commute.

Two weeks ago, Mike wrote about the latest from Mattel’s Barbie collection: Computer Engineering Barbie. He lamented, rightfully so, the head-to-toe pink accessories, including a hot pink laptop. (Because, let’s be honest, girls can only write in C++ with a fuchsia computer).

Today, I read that the White House Project, who had teamed up with Mattel in 2000 to launch President Barbie, has once again partnered with the company to promote Computer Engineering Barbie, while simultaneously advocating for national recognition of women’s issues. On the White House Project’s website, President Marie Wilson writes:

“Through Barbie, and its ‘I Can Be’ President Barbie, little girls have had the opportunity to lead the country from their living rooms and bedrooms, or get out their Barbie and Ken dolls and call a joint session of Congress.  We at The White House Project are thrilled to be partnering with Barbie as she celebrates her 125th career and continues to inspire girls of all ages to follow their dreams.”

Is this partnership problematic? Barbie is never popular among feminist circles, due to unrealistic body expectations, race issues, and stereotypes of girls’ activities. And let’s not forget that while Barbie first ran for president in 2000, eight years earlier she was skipping math class to go to the mall. (“Math class is tough,” TeenTalking Barbie repeated. “Let’s go shopping!”) And furthermore, what sort of mixed messages is President Barbie sending? Girls can run for office, provided they fit a mainstream patriarchal view of beauty, and spent their formative years gossiping on pink cell phones about Ken dolls?

And who among us can really say, as Marie Wilson writes, that they’ve been inspired by Barbie dolls? Entertained, fine, but inspired? The White House Project does a lot of good as far as promoting women’s leadership, but is their message diluted by the addition of Barbie to the mix?

On the other hand, Barbie continues to be one of the most popular children’s products out there, and global sales of the doll rose 12% last quarter. Is this part of the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ mentality? And if so, is it harmful for girls and feminism?

Nothing says you should quit smoking like conflating sexual assault with the effects of cigarettes. Via the NYTimes, a feminist activist in France speaks out,

But the reaction on the Web site of Droits des Non-fumeurs has been mixed. One comment read, "The campaign trivializes sexual abuse -- worse, it implies guilt on the part of the abused."

Florence Montreynaud, the president of La Meute des Chiennes de Garde, or the Pack of Female Watchdogs, which opposes symbols of sexual violence in films and advertising, called the ads "unbearable" and said "what is most shocking is the banalization of sexual violence."

She is a feminist, she said, and a longtime member of Droits des Non-fumeurs. "But it is terrible to represent in the public space this kind of image restricted to pornography," she added. "I'm appalled. It's a poverty of imagination. When people have no ideas, they use female bodies."

These ads are not edgy to me at all. They are just gross.

That sure is the impression I got when I first looked at these ads from France, aimed at teens:



I saw the ad and thought "Umm ... huh. What the ... how does this get you to stop smoking, or not start smoking? Are they saying you should put a dick in your mouth instead of a cigarette? It's hard to smoke and perform oral sex at the same time ... Are they forcing a dick in these people's mouths? Dicks > tobacco? What the hell? And they're aiming this at teens? What am I miss-- OH THE HAND IS TOBACCO."

Because, you see, the tagline for the ads is "Smoking means being a slave to tobacco." So ... they're sucking tobacco's dick? (I can't reconcile the positioning of the people in these images as being a slave to something. All I see is someone forcibly being pushed down as if they should be performing oral sex.)

I'm joining the loud chorus of people and claiming these as a a major fail.

More reading:

• Time magazine: "In France, Sex Sells — Even in Anti-Smoking Ads"
• Parent Dish: "Hey Kids: Smoking Blows; Teen Anti-Smoking Ad Inflames the French." (haha, smoking blows, get it?!)
• Telegraph: "Anti-smoking advert with sexual innuendo shocks French."

A recommendation from the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists could lead to warning labels being attached to photoshopped pictures of models. The college cited research evidence that suggests the media’s role in the existence of eating disorders in girls. The group also called for a ban on underweight models in London’s fashion week.

The argument that fashion advertising leads to obsession with unattainable beauty standards is not a new one. Standards of thinness have been criticized for years, as well as inclusion of racial groups. Magazines like Vogue have an appallingly low rate of women of color on the cover. And even Vanity Fair has gotten heat for depicting the “new faces of Hollywood” as entirely white and thin (particularly ridiculous, considering the fact that many 2009 movies featured rising young women of color in lead roles). But the issue of photoshopping has gotten more prominence since Ralph Lauren’s controversial ad campaign, featuring a cartoonish photoshopped Filippa Hamilton (pictured below, juxtaposed with her natural body shape):

Obviously fashion ads aren’t the only contributing factor to disordered eating in girls and women. But its not a leap to suggest that the absence of ‘normal’ or healthy bodies from the fashion industry contributes to body image problems. And when great liberties are taken with photo manipulation, leading to completely unrealistic waistlines, the standards are shifted even further into the unattainable.

Photoshop and digital enhancement is used in nearly every type of media production, and attaching “warning labels” to each of these wouldn’t be possible. But when such extreme thinness is glorified, its hurting a culture that should be telling girls of all shapes to value themselves. We put warning labels on alcohol and smoking ads, so should we attach them to beauty ads to expose the truth? What do you think? Should advertisements like these feature a label that states: women in photos are, in reality, larger than they appear?

So American Apparel, rolled out a new ad fairly recently.  I know you’re probably wondering what the next teenage boy fantasy masquerading as an ad includes, I mean, they have a youtube channel that pretty much involves bootyshaking, what else can they come up with?

Full on breast exposure, that’s what! Nipples included.

Now I am very far from an anti sex feminist. I’m even pro-sex…I’m down with legalizing prostitution, making porn a safer industry, and curbing the abuses in the sex industry instead of pretending they’ll go away if we keep the Good Girls ignorant of their bodies and safe sex, for starters. Not to mention how the eroticizing of the female body has made it impossible to pass or maintain equal coverage standards in the United States. (Sorry, that’s another post, back to this one.)

But something was pissing me off about this ad. Something beyond the normal American Apparel Slime Factor.

And then it hit me. The  beauty standard that this advertisement is catering to is the root of my problem. We have a rail thin, white, blond model. And that would be fine, if it was accompanied by other ads, encompassing minorities, women with different abilities, transwomen, and the million of other marginalized groups I am leaving out in my ignorance and anger.  But it isn’t. It is another ad, promoting the same old male created, male enforced, unrealistic beauty standard that harms everyone who comes in contact with it, from the women who view it as ideal to the men who expect all women to look like that. No one benefits from the standard this ad is holding up.

Now, isn’t that the case with pretty much all advertising? Well, yeah. The beauty standard I described above exists everywhere, yes. But the added bonus of completely bare breasts sent me over the edge, not gonna lie. It seemed to me to go too far. Advertising has taken on faces, our arms, our legs, our thighs, our stomachs and sternums. While breasts were still a focal point of the ads, they were covered. And I guess I always imagined them underneath the bra, or fabric, or artfully draped hair, as sort of sticking their tongues out, full of sass, saying “yeah, you’ve held the rest of me up to these standards, but these puppies, they’re mine!”

It was an illusion, I know, to think that women still had some control over how their bodies were portrayed in mainstream advertising. I should have seen this coming.

But I was hoping that when the time for bare breasts came, it would be because we chose it. Because we’d changed to body ideals present in advertising and changed our culture of violence against woman, and it was SAFE to do so. Because women were no longer stigmatized and hurt for the biological identifiers of a woman, and all genders were able to walk up and down the street in various states of coverage on a hot day.

Not to sell more cheap, badly made clothes.

As many of you know by now, this year’s Super Bowl featured an onslaught of sexist commercials, apparently geared towards men who feel ‘emasculated’ by the women in their lives. (For more on the word ‘emasculated,’ check out Mike’s previous post). One of the offenders was this Dodge commercial…”Man’s Last Stand,” which features a list of grievances that men supposedly feel while being oppressed in heterosexual relationships:

Now, as a funny rebuttal to this commercial, MacKenzie Fegan has offered this response:

Here’s an excerpt of the script:

…I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make doing the same job. I will assert myself and get called a bitch. I will catch you staring at my breasts but pretend not to notice. I will put my career on hold to raise your children. I will diet, Botox, and wax. Everything. I will assure you that size doesn’t matter…I will get angry, and you will ask if it’s that time of the month. I will watch Superbowl commercials that depict men as emasculated and depressed, and I will feel so fucking sorry for you.

That’s what Lisa Hilton asks in the Daily Beast this week — although she’s actually asking, “What’s wrong with living off of coffee and cigarettes? Better than being fat!”

Katie Drummond over at Slant/Truth gives Hilton’s piece a great take-down, pointing out that while official eating disorder diagnosis rates may not be skyrocketing, a lot of women engage in disordered eating without having a diagnosed eating disorder. But Hilton isn’t just concerned with what she deems “hysteria” over super-skinny models; see, she’s worried that for all of our obsessing over skinny girls, we’re actually really fat. Obese, even! And don’t you know that being obese is unhealthy?

Which is kind of funny, given that “obesity” is defined by a pretty simplistic height/weight calculation and doesn’t mean a whole lot in terms of actual health, while “anorexia” and “bulimia” are significantly more complex psychological diagnoses which do reflect serious health issues. In other words, they aren’t really comparable at all.

So why do feminists (and other people who are concerned about women’s health) focus on anorexia and unrepresentative media images more than we go around fat-shaming larger women? Quite simply because there are huge numbers of women who are negatively impacted by narrow beauty standards. Hilton says it’s disrespectful to argue that anorexia is just about wanting to look skinny, since if you talk to actual anorexics, they’ll tell you it’s a lot deeper than that. And that’s a fair point. But then Hilton herself uses the “empowered” example of a teenage model who lived off of coffee and apples for two years to make a bunch of money. Was that model anorexic because of deep psychological issues that went beyond wanting to be skinny? Maybe, but it doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like she knew she could make a ton of money for being skinny, so she did what she had to do. And, hey, do your thing — the point is that Hilton’s piece itself reveals that the world of disordered eating is a complicated one, and it isn’t a choice between “women are anorexic because they want to be skinny” and “women are anorexic because they have mental health problems.” The point is that an ultra-thin ideal does harm to women in large and small ways; full-blown anorexia is only one tiny component.

I happen to like fashion quite a bit. I happen to think that part of the reason it’s treated as shallow is because it’s something that women primarily consume, it’s something that has been developed primarily for women, and it’s something that women have an increasing role in creating — unlike many other forms of art. But that said, a big problem with fashion-as-art is that instead of the clothes being decorative, the woman herself is expected to be the decoration. Thinness itself is fine; thinness presented as the only way to be beautiful is a problem, because it reinforces the idea that a woman has an obligation to look a certain way for the sake of others’ visual preferences. The pressure to be thin doesn’t just impact what we eat; it impacts the way we interact with the world. When we see ourselves as existing for others’ viewing pleasure, it’s difficult for us to experience pleasure for our own sake. It is difficult for us to find self-worth in places other than our physical appearance — especially when thin-obsession happens in a culture that repeatedly emphasizes that our ultimate goal is to find someone who will marry us, and beauty is a woman’s greatest currency in the marriage market (unlike men, whose value ties more to money and power). Women end up living a series of smaller problems with food. Those problems can be as large as dying of starvation or as small as having your day ruined because you can’t fit into a particular pair of pants. Mostly, though, they fall into a really sad and slightly deranged middle ground, like the woman who feels like she has to make a choice between sex and eating, or the woman who under-performs at work because she’s hungry, or the woman who spends $10,000 she doesn’t have on cosmetic surgery, or the woman who believes she’s beautiful but is told she’s wrong because she’s also fat, or the woman who doesn’t buy into beauty culture at all but is punished for it, or the woman like me who, for all her accomplishments and successes, has a persistent nagging feeling of failure because she just isn’t as thin as she would like to be.

That’s why this matters — not just because some of us are starving (although we are), and not just because some of us are sick (although we are). But because many of us are just not living as fully, pleasurably or successfully as we could live. Because being charged with being beautiful means that some women — a lot of women — are just never going to be viewed as really women, because their size or age or skin color takes them out of the running.

If a model wants to starve herself for a million dollars, by all means, do your thing girl — it’s not healthy and you might die or face serious long-term physical issues, but to each their own I guess. My problem isn’t with individual women who make individual decisions about how to best manage their lives. My problem is with a culture that expects women to physically present themselves in a particular, narrow way, and that punishes women who don’t conform to narrow beauty standards. And my problem is most certainly with apologists like Lisa Hilton, who insist that this is all no big deal and it could be worse — people could be fat.

Transcript after the jump

Dockers' feminist-hating "man-ifesto," now in video form. Cause if dudes want to "wear the pants," they should buy ugly khaki ones.

Dudes singing: I wear no pants [over and over and over again]

Voice-over: Calling all men...it's time to wear the pants.