feminist blogs

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).

I already posted about reading one sex worker’s blog; that’s not the only one that got my attention recently.

I’ve been reading College Call Girl. She has been on a bit of a break for the last three weeks, and I don’t know her personally, so I have no idea when or if she’s coming back, but I keep hoping.

Now, some folks may think that this is light reading, or one-handed reading. And sometimes it is. But she alternates between the glib and hot, soul-searching, and flat-out patriarchy-blaming; so that passages like this:

Even with all the admittedly sinful diddling and fingering and rubbing and stroking I had done before, I had never once done something as terrible, as sacrilegious as what I found myself doing now.

I was masturbating to the Bible.

I don’t remember what section in particular it was that got me so steamed up, although I think it was in the Old Testament.

rub shoulders with passages like this:

One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.

I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.

Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.

She’s not a representative sample; she’s one woman from a particular social position (white, class-privileged, etc.). She doesn’t represent all sex workers — nobody could, or should, or should be expected to. She represents her own experience; which is ambiguous and nuanced. She both loves and hates sex work; she’s honest about keeping it light to keep her audience entertained, and honest that she knows this glamorizes and whitewashes her own experiences:

But there’s another side to this deal that I’m afraid I haven’t shown you. It’s not easy to write about prostitution in a totally honest way because it is painful… I am a tangle of contradictions. I am not ashamed of my choices and I will fully defend mine or anyone else’s right to make them. But when you ask me if you should do this? My immediate instinct is a loud, desperate no.

Along her road of self-reflective posts, CCG put up one that I’ll probably never forget, [Trigger Warning] the sort of speaking out that one woman can do to make thousands of other women feel less alone:

The Number is Eight

I have been sexually assaulted more than once. Each time that it happened to me, I felt that extenuating circumstances kept it from truly being rape. I was working as a prostitute, he was my boyfriend, I was drunk, I got in the car. I never believed that I had fought hard enough. I made excuses for the men who hurt me; I told myself “he didn’t know what he was doing.” When I spoke about my experiences with sexual assault (which I did very rarely), I would say only that “a lot of bad things have happened to me.”

And she lists them. And she tells the story. And every one will resonate with some woman out there who reads it, who will know that it wasn’t just her; that it wasn’t her fault; that what happened to her was wrong.

Nothing I ever write will matter that much.

Posting on this at the request of my spouse. At 20 seconds, is that the most transparent metaphor for breasts to sell orange juice? (It might not be so clear if it were not for the voice-over, which contextualizes the images.)

We’re surrounded by the commodification of the female body. The drumbeat is so steady that it’s hard not to tune it out, but it needs calling out every once in a while.

I can see the thinking. Orange juice is a kids’ beverage. Charging a premium requires rebranding. Rebranding requires that they make a sharp break with what people think about orange juice. It can’t be simple and yummy, it has to be sophisticated, sensual … erotic … and, cut to the thinly veiled metaphors for women’s body parts. Not women, not women’s bodies, but women’s body parts.

Some het guy in creative is probably geeking out about how slick this is. But it’s not. It’s annoying.

(While I’m on the subject of ubiquitous women’s bodies as superfluous ornaments: Stop with the “ring card girls.” I don’t need some woman I’ve never met holding a sign with a round number on it; I know what round it is. I’m keeping a scorecard.)

The amazing Julia Serano has contributed a post to Feministing about this Philips ad for an epilator:

All of her points are great, and you should go over to Feministing and read them, and then follow the link from her fourth point to her essay on media depictions of trans women. Personally, I shave my legs about twice a year, and mostly so I don’t have to be aware of disgusted stares from random assholes. So I’m especially glad that Serano pointed out how myopic this portrayal of trans-feminine spectrum folks as hyper-feminine propagators of sexist stereotypes and beauty rituals is. (If you really want more examples of that, just click on the Youtube link and look at all the sex-objectastic “related videos.”)
(more…)

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 lame. 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'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 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.

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.