Category Archives: Body Image

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Glenn Beck.

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So, so many books!

Now that classes have ended for the semester, I have regained my ability to read for fun! As a result of this new-found free time and renewed joy in leisure reading I have spent a ridiculous amount of time at various bookstores over the last few weeks.

Yesterday I found myself at Barnes & Noble for an hour or so, just to get out of the house. I really didn’t want to add to that already GIGANTIC pile of books to be read, so I decided to spend some time looking at books that I knew I would never want to buy. This is how I ended up flipping through Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems. (Link goes to the Google Books preview.)

First off: save your money. Glenn doesn’t actually solve a single problem, he just complains a lot about how messed up our culture is and makes extravagant claims about how conservatism could fix everything from troubled marriages to oil dependency.

What struck me the most, though, is the whole chapter in his book devoted to body image.

That’s right, the man who just recently spent eight minutes pretending to vomit on his show, in response to a skin cancer PSA that Meghan McCain took part in. In the PSA McCain wore a tube-top and positioned her body so as to appear naked (the point of the PSA was to equate leaving the house without sunscreen to leaving the house without clothes.)

[I'm not the BIGGEST Meghan McCain fan, but her response to Beck has made me like her that much more!]

Beck continued on to advise her to:

“Put some extra clothes on. Like, lots of extra clothes … has she thought about a burqa, just to be extra safe.”

Meanwhile, in his book (which came out before this whole mess) Beck wrote about the need for the modeling industry to truly enforce standards that promote models who look like the “average” American woman (… like Meghan McCain?) or, at the very least, discourage models from becoming life-threateningly thin. He also talks a bit about the societal pressures that young women face in regards to their body image. (You can read most of the chapter for free, here!)

Yes, he said plenty of problematic things in this chapter too: for instance, constantly referring to young girls as “prostitots” complete with a “charming little drawing that shows a “prostitot” growing up. However, mixed in with the problematic messages, there seemed to be a man who genuinely wanted his daughters to grow up in a world where they could feel comfortable in their bodies.

How is this the same man who went on to fake vomit in response to a woman’s body on his national radio show?

Glenn gives some pretty solid advice in his book, bringing the responsibility for protecting young people’s body image onto the parents:

“My family has an unwritten rule, if you wouldn’t spend time with someone in real life, then don’t let them into the living room via your television set either. It seems simple, but these days we’re not just letting people into our living rooms; we’re letting them right into our kid’s bedrooms. [...] Celebrities only have power because we give it to them.”

- Glenn Beck, page 67 of An Inconvenient Book.

This isn’t the whole solution, but cutting out negative media messages is a great start to helping to shape positive self-esteem for yourself and those around you. May I suggest starting by cutting Glenn Beck out of your lives? (After all, you wouldn’t want him vomiting all over your living room!)

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Also, a sidenote to anyone else with a WordPress powered blog: working in the new distraction free mode really is convenient. I love how the sidebar slides down the page with you as you type!

My First Burlesque Show

Posted in Body Image, Sexuality by

Before this weekend all I really knew about Burlesque was that it was a form of performance art that combined dance and taking off one’s clothes. I knew some people feel that it is awesome and empowering, others feel that it is degrading. Basically I knew very little, mostly because I was too intimidated to seek any more information out on my own.

Luckily for me Momentum offered the opportunity to attend Sense & Sexuality: How Taking it Off Empowers the World with N (“The Only Letter in Burlesque”) and Lillith Grey. I was a little nervous at the start of this workshop, but as soon as we started discussing glitter and its many, many (endless, really) uses, I knew I had found my people. The session passed quickly, with stories shared about burlesque history and legends, how-to books and samples of props (like boas and hats and pasties) passed around… it went by so quickly, in fact, that I found myself entirely unprepared towards the end of the workshop when N declared: “I’m going to do a little performance for you now!” (Lillith was injured and, thus, sadly unable to perform as well.)

Uh-oh. N moved a chair to the middle of the room, as I quickly tried to understand the feeling of anxiety shooting through me. You have seen naked bodies before, I reminded myself. This is not a big deal. N tossed on a dramatic mask and a blonde wig, getting read for the show. She does this all the time, this is her job, she enjoys doing it… there is nothing wrong with being in this audience. N told the intern to turn the music loud. Before I had time to deal with my strange gut reaction there was a real live burlesque performance happening not three feet from my face.

I had no fucking clue what to do.

Continue reading →

We Don’t Have an Obesity Epidemic

Posted in Body Image, Health by

Crossposted at Persephone

If we really cared about health in America, we wouldn’t be worrying about an obesity epidemic, because we don’t have one. We don’t have an obesity epidemic because weight isn’t the problem, health is. We have an epidemic of food-deserts. An epidemic of people who cannot afford healthy, well-balanced diets even if they do have access to decent grocery stores. We have an epidemic of companies producing foods laden with trans fats and hydrogenated oils, things that do damage to our bodies, simply because those ingredients are cheaper. We have an epidemic of people damaging their bodies through yo-yo dieting, dangerous diet pills and supplements, completely unhealthy weight-loss plans, and even eating disorders because our society teaches that this behavior is normal, okay, even preferable. We do not have an epidemic of fat people; we have an epidemic of people of all sizes being fed damaging attitudes, horrible misinformation, and unfulfilling food.

Yet all we can focus on is fat.

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The “Truth” About Beauty

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Warning: Lots of snark ahead. Every so often I just can’t contain myself and stuff like this happens… enjoy! (This was posted a  month ago, but I just found it today so bear with me.)

So a few months back I applied for an internship at Psychology Today and never heard back. I was slightly bummed out about this (but not really, considering the awesome internship I was accepted for) up until today… now I am just relieved not to be associated with an organization that would actually give this misogynistic piece of  hack-journalism masquerading as something of value a platform. (Not only was this posted online, but it was apparently a cover article in the magazine.)

“Welcome to Uglytopia—the world reimagined as a place where it’s the content of a woman’s character, not her pushup bra, that puts her on the cover of Maxim.”

Welcome to Psychology Today – psychology reimagined as a field where where the regurgitation of misogynistic bullshit, not real research, gets you a platform! Now, let me teach you how this great new world works…

Women in this world get into relationships with people (MEN, STRAIGHT MEN!) because they find us hot… being interesting, funny, enjoyable to spend time with, and a good person doesn’t get you onto the cover of Maxim so clearly those qualities don’t matter.

“It just doesn’t seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages—whether it’s a movie star chin or a multimillion-dollar shipbuilding inheritance. Maybe we need affirmative action for ugly people; make George Clooney rotate in some homely women between all his gorgeous girlfriends. While we wish things were different, we’d best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.”

Science doesn’t matter so much here, but for the benefit of the feminists I’m going to to to say some science-y things to add validity to my argument. Doesn’t matter if I contradict myself halfway through (there really are universal standards of beauty… but what is considered beautiful changes across cultures, depending on access to resources.)

“The features men evolved to go for in women—youth, clear skin, a symmetrical face and body, feminine facial features, an hourglass figure—are those indicating that a woman would be a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on a man’s genes.

These preferences span borders, cultures, and generations, meaning yes, there really are universal standards of beauty. And while Western women do struggle to be slim, the truth is, women in all cultures eat (or don’t) to appeal to “the male gaze.” The body size that’s idealized in a particular culture appears to correspond to the availability of food. In cultures like ours, where you can’t go five miles without passing a 7-Eleven and food is sold by the pallet-load at warehouse grocery stores, thin women are in. In cultures where food is scarce (like in Sahara-adjacent hoods), blubber is beautiful, and women appeal to men by stuffing themselves until they’re slim like Jabba the Hut.”

My point is that standards of beauty are just a universal thing, and also that what’s hardest to maintain in a culture is what is considered beautiful. This isn’t sexist at all, even though women are the only ones expected to do whatever is more difficult in that culture to be hot. Also, I didn’t contradict myself at all even though changing beauty standards, based on resources, means that what is beautiful isn’t universal at all…. oh fuck it, science is hard lets get back to the misogyny!

Time to ask ourselves the most important question of all: what about the menz!?

“And, just like women who aren’t very attractive, men who make very little money or are chronically out of work tend to have a really hard time finding partners. There is some male grumbling about this. Yet, while feminist journalists deforest North America publishing articles urging women to bow out of the beauty arms race and “Learn to love that woman in the mirror!”, nobody gets into the ridiculous position of advising men to “Learn to love that unemployed guy sprawled on the couch!”"

See? Men are forced every day to work and make money and cultivate skills so that they can be considered datable. Its only fair that women should have to spend hours of time and massive amounts of money on looking hot because buying makeup, and expensive haircuts, and going to the gym constantly, and counting calories, and shopping for the perfect outfits, and styling our hair, and doing our make-up, and on and on… all of these things provide so much personal satisfaction and stimulation. Whereas having a career that you enjoy, and making money, and interacting with other people, and just generally being a productive human being is just so dull and such a chore.

These two things are totally comparable, especially since the only thing we expect out of women in relationships is beauty… its not like we expect them to also have jobs or maintain the household/children/pets (or both) as well!

“Now, before you brand me a traitor to my gender, let me say that I’m all for women having the vote, and I think a woman with a mustache should make the same money as a man with a mustache. But you don’t help that woman by advising her, “No need to wax that lip fringe or work off that beer belly!” (Because the road to female empowerment is…looking just like a hairy old man?)”

Look at that moustache & beer belly!

Hairy old men are the road to female empowerment ladies and gentlemen… or you know, its not. Is it possible that women who have “let themselves go” don’t all look like this? I haven’t shaved in quite a few weeks (it was No-Shave November… oh, and I just didn’t feel like it) and I haven’t worn makeup in two years, plus I’ve been way too busy to head to the gym for awhile… so, when do I grow my penis and my beard?

Moreover, even if some women do end up looking just like a hairy old man who the hell cares? If they are happy with the way they look, shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t they be free to focus on whatever they want to? Isn’t that what empowerment is really about… being comfortable with who you are and doing the things you love? (Or is it about getting a man? I always forget…) Continue reading →