I found Meghan Daum‘s latest article, ‘Mad Men’ shares a lesson on beauty, in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times fascinating.
The women of the 1960s and their ‘period bodies’ with normal proportions are rare today, and something to be envied.
The fourth season of “Mad Men” starts Sunday, and with it another round of opportunities to both marvel and gasp at how much things have changed since the early 1960s. Much of the genius of the show, of course, lies in its ferocious attention to period details. From the entrenched womanizing and nonstop drinking and smoking (even while pregnant!) to children who play with plastic dry-cleaning bags and family picnics that end with a flourish of litter shaken insouciantly onto the grass, “Mad Men” leaves no antediluvian stone unturned.
That includes body types. Watch some of the commentary features on the DVD editions and you’ll hear the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, refer to “period bodies.” What he means is that just as the show applies painstaking care to finding sofas and kitchen appliances exactly like those you would have seen in that era, it also seeks bodies — particularly female ones — quintessentially of the time. That means no ripped abs or fake breasts, no preternaturally white teeth. (A lot of people wear eyeglasses too — the horror!)
Read the complete article here. Thanks to Diahann for sending this my way.
An ephemeral drawing is one that is created to be destroyed. It addresses the relationships between medium, subject, and significance.
over it is the documentation of an ephemeral art piece that talks about overcoming disordered eating through the creation and consumption of a cake with a scale drawn on it with icing. Though its narrative is deeply personal, the experience is nearly universal in our image-obsessed culture with its narrow standards of feminine beauty.
Liz Acosta is a photographer, writer, artist, cyclist, and activist in Los Angeles. With a degree from the University of Southern California, her work is primarily focused on questions of the body and its relationship to gender, sexuality, and performance. She blogs at www.happyland2007.com and will be joining the Feminist Fatale family as a blogger in the near future.
Barbie is a cultural icon. With her long, silky, blonde hair, perky breasts, cinched waist and mile-high legs Barbie represents mainstream definitions of physical perfection, the paragon of beauty and ideal femininity. Her shiny pink corvette, swanky townhouse, and oodles and oodles of perfectly accessorized outfits indicate her success within the consumer culture machine. Collectively, her physical and material assets (Eurocentric beauty, white-skin and class privilege rolled up into one statuesque doll), represent the collective dream spun by post-WWII advertisers and reinforced by the culture at large.
For more than 50 years, she has not waned in popularity (gained a pound, developed a wrinkle or gray hair) even in the face of mounting criticism.
Despite some of the negative headlines Barbie is still a hit with girls across America and the world.
More than one billion dolls have been sold since her inception, and according to the dolls makers, Mattel, 90% of American girls aged between three and 10 own at least one.
While Barbie is a manufactured fantasy, she remains an emblem of idealized femininity and a key element of gender socialization.
Barbie fan Danielle Scott, 16, said: “Playing with the hair, the brushes, switching outfits. It really just made girls be girls.
“All the characteristics of what to look forward to and what girls really could do…” she said.
While it is true that Barbie has had approximately 125 jobs over the last half-century (jobs that presumably allowed her to purchase her multiple homes, extensive wardrobe etc. etc)., Barbie is not famous for her resume. She is most well-known for her flawless figure and coveted beauty.
Today we’re inundated with images of a false reality that concentrate on one ideal form of beauty. Altering images via Photoshop, ultimately exposes us to millions of images are not “real.” Our project takes a look at the dangers of the media, from Photoshopping to white-washing to an emphasis on an unattainable perfection. Collectively, the images in the media do not represent the diversity found in the larger population; not all women are tall, thin, white, heterosexual or young. And in real life, nobody is Photoshopped. Where are representations of “real” women?
The advertising industry sells us images directly aimed women’s mounting insecurities. The for-profit consumer culture exploits these insecurities and rakes in billions of dollars each year. Ultimately, these images dehumanize, hypersexualize and disempower women.
Having struggled with our own body image issues and eating disorders, we know first hand the amount of pressure the media can exert on women and the psychological and physical costs. We wanted to address the serious nature of these issues and focus on the importance of a healthy body image.
Part of our video was inspired by our in-class project, the body collage that covered two walls from floor to ceiling with images of women in the print media. We were shocked to see the onslaught of these homogeneous all at once. This experience inspired our project as well as the Feminist Majority Foundation campaign, “This is what a feminist looks like.” Ultimately, our statement “this is what a real woman looks like” is a reaction to the exclusion of women in the mass media and the erasing of age, race and authenticity as a result of the standard industry practice of altering women that already reflect an incredibly small percentage of the population.
The video is a mosaic of our own stories; our struggles with our own body image, our relationship with our bodies and our message of self-love and acceptance.
In light of Britney Spears’ recent unaltered photos, a recent guest post at Jezebel proclaimed feminism’s battle with the beauty myth as bourgeois and not worth the fight. Author, Helen Razer, claims that the efforts to expose the gruesome reality behind the beauty myth is a tiresome and unworthy battle that detracts focus from issues of “real gender equality.”
I recall an era when feminism’s purview was not limited to banging on about the need for more fat chicks in glossy magazines. While others fight for the right to force-feed Kate Moss, I continue antique fretting over equal pay, domestic violence and federal representation. At 40, I am old and clearly out of step with a movement that demands Size 14 representation.
She continues:
Yes. This just in: heat is hot, water is wet and teenagers are obsessed with their appearance. As such, let’s spend money on developing an industry code of conduct so that we can all enjoy the spectacle of more cottage cheese on Britney’s thighs.
Is it as simple as “teenagers are obsessed with their appearance?” I don’t think so. While the obsession with beauty has long been considered a narcissistic rite of passage among teens, beauty and body image issues are not limited to this demographic. Research shows that eating disorders and the preoccupation with beauty is found younger and younger girls as well as increasingly older women. Disordered eating, eating disorders and an overall obsession with the physical form is not limited to teens as part of a passing trend.
Not only are the consequences of the beauty myth not limited to a specific age group, it is notlimited to rich (“bourgeois”), white girls. In fact, the Eurocentric beauty ideal is exported the globe over via the mass media and continues to erase our physical diversity. The global reach of these manufactured and altered images result in more and more individuals conforming to homogeneous definitions of beauty.
As Brumberg traces in The Body Project: An Intimate History of Young Girls, physical beauty has become the sole measure of the worth of girls and women. This reduction of value and self-identification to the numbers on the scale and shape of one’s figure signals a sociohistorical shift in the ways in which girls and women are valued. It doesn’t matter if you’re intelligent, independent, competent, charismatic, artistic, or successful unless you’re thin, toned and flawless. In other words, you’ve got to be hot, too.
We believe beauty is not always thin, and beauty is not always young. In Exploring Beauty, women are invited to explore their thoughts about the nature of beauty. The paring of their ideas and images expands the definition of what beautiful is. – Exploring Beauty
Exploring Beauty is the work of artist Erik Hagen, a US citizen currently transplanted in The Netherlands, an attempt to explore the nature of beauty and expand its cultural definitions. In a collaborative effort with each volunteer model, Hagen pairs the image with the interview in order to bring the essence of each woman to the reader.
In an image-based culture that proliferates streams of homogeneous images reinforcing unrealistic and dangerous images of beauty, these unaltered photos of women are a breath of fresh air, rich and full of life. Not only do Hagen’s images offer diversity and authenticity, the accompanying stories provide depth and character, reminding us that women are not solely defined by their physical appearance. Hagen’s work allows us to fully experience a woman’s beauty; her mind, body and spirit.
Like many men, in Hagen’s youth, he preferred a beauty standard that reflected the dominant beauty norm, young and thin. As he grew and matured, he came to recognize and appreciate a woman’s character and story as a primary component of holistic beauty. In addition to his growth as a man, his move to Europe continued to expand his boundaries of beauty. Unlike many parts of the United States, Holland’s beauty definitions are broader and fuller.
Engaging in this intimate exploration of beauty, both Hagen and his models have emerged changed, moved by the collaborative experience and their contribution to change prevailing attitudes that have created epidemic levels of low self-esteem and body hate.
Projects that allow us to see what a real woman looks like, are important efforts in combating the manufactured images that tell us that we are defined and valued in narrow, one-dimensional ways.
A few years ago, Apple released a brand new ad campaign. “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” was an instant hit, starring hipster movie star Justin Long and John Hodgman, and ran for years, generating lots of revenue for Apple. Microsoft‘s rebuttals to this fell flat for quite some time, but their new ad campaign for Windows 7 proved successful. Instead of focusing on mocking Apple, they highlighted the features of the new operating system, as told by “real people”, stating “Windows 7 was my idea.“ The first two ads I saw featured overweight, older men who are shown imagining idealized versions of themselves (as male models) when they “get the idea” for Windows 7.
I laughed, I loved it, and then I watched a commercial break a couple months back – same campaign, one major difference. This ad utilized the same concept, except the latest ads featured women, all of whom are pretty enough that they could be the “ideal” person, the model that someone imagines themselves as. Their “ideals” are women who are heavily made-up, and appear to be digitally enhanced.
I think those pictures speak for themselves, yes?
There are two theories that I hold about where Microsoft is coming from with this approach. Either they are completely unwilling to show an “unattractive,” overweight woman in their ad because, ew, that’s gross. Or they deem these women “not worthy enough” and think they’re on the same level of attractiveness as the “regular” men in their ads. One of the criticisms of the “beauty norm” is the doublestandard – men are allowed to be unattractive, women aren’t – I’d say that applies here. The YouTube upload dates on the Windows 7 official page shows they set a precedent with the original ads – Steve, Jack, and Widmark were uploaded late last year, followed by Charline and Crystal in more recent months. I would have deemed this a successful and funny campaign if they had been equal in their treatment of both genders. Instead, they just cemented the fact that I’m a Mac.
Heidi Montag continues to be a tabloid focal point, prompting ridicule, cruel jokes and derision. After she unveiled her new self to the horror of many (including her mother), I was impelled to blog on her surgical transformation in a way that didn’t simply chalk her up to a freaky circus sideshow or Franken-barbie, a name commonly used in the tabloids and blogosphere.
Lets be honest, she is not the only woman (of any age) to pursue multiple procedures at once or over a period of time. Unlike most women who keep these “beauty secrets” precisely that, secrets, Heidi exposed herself and helped fuel the initial media feeding frenzy in the pursuit of exposure and publicity. Clearly, Heid’s revelation wasn’t necessarily an intentional revelation to critically examine the truth behind women’s insecurities, beauty pressure and the often horrifying consequences of elective cosmetic surgery (she is half of the fame mongering duo formely known as Speidi, afterall). But she did pull back the curtain on a beauty reality for many women. That reality is the incessant pursuit of unrealistic and crippling images of beauty. This candid and uncomfortable reality doesn’t sit well with most of us. It forces us to confront the emotional and physical fall-out that the beauty myth leaves in it’s wake, a wake made large and wide thanks to the proliferation of streams of images that fan the flames of the all-consuming beauty norm. And, lets face it, most of these images are perpetuated in the seemingly benign environment of pop culture, a cultural environment dominated by mindless “reality” shows that depict women as stupid, superficial pop-tarts consumed with the reflection in the mirror and their relationships with men (the former used to secure the latter).
Perez Hilton recently blogged on the “Franken-Heidi” in training, the 15-year-old UK girl regularly injecting Botox as preventative maintenance. Perez acts surprised but “botox babies” are nothing new. The New York Times published an article on this phenomenon in 2005 and this is the cultural landscape Montag came of age in, an era in which young girls seek extreme measures to maintain their looks before they’ve even developed a line. As much as her new face and enormous, overly-round implants make me cringe, I recognize her as a pop culture casualty that is held up as some sort of freaky novelty because it is too uncomfortable to admit that she represents the insecurities so many of us face on a daily basis (and the measures many are silently willing to take).
This recent Gawker post, articulates the toxic terrain Montag rides on and the frightening and sad result.
When The Hills premiered, in May of 2006, Heidi Montag was 19 years old. Which could very well mean that she signed her first MTV contract at 18. The network snared this kid, this real genuine kid, into their glossy trap and then just let her hang herself, over and over again, claiming some sort of documentarian remove when asked if they’d intervene. They simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t even acknowledge the swirling Oort cloud of Us Weekly frenzy that surrounded the cast, because then it wouldn’t be real. Only of course they do intervene, all the time, when it is convenient for them. It’s pretty much common knowledge at this point that the show is staged to within an inch of its life — nearly every look, conversation, relationship is false. So the audience at home is never quite sure what to believe. “Oh look how awful Heidi acts on this show, let’s be cruel to her. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a made-up show!” Which, sure, may have seemed, or been, true at some point. But now, with all of these surgeries, this willful and terrifying mangling of her body, Heidi has emerged as a deeply troubled and emotionally damaged lost soul, one who childishly offered herself up to a reality camera crew and watched, feeling helpless to do anything but not fight the riptide, as they stripped her bare, took everything off her, mocked her for taking what they’d offered her, edited her however they wanted, threw her family into the mix and tore them apart too.
And then in a final act of desperation, the old innocent Heidi finally kicking out the chair, Montag got something like ten plastic surgeries at once, changing her entire face and body to something immovable and unrecognizable. She became some sort of version of Heidi as she imagined the show defined her — pretty, booby Heidi with her shallow, fake husband — and MTV saw it, they saw it, and said “OK, let’s roll cameras!” anyway. So we watched last night as she went home to Crested Butte (that name, that name) and her family tried to mask their horror, until it was finally too much. Until the presence of the cameras was so looming and demanding that her parents felt they had to try to sputter out words and just ended up hurting her feelings. Heidi tried to chew, she tried to cry, but she couldn’t. So she just sat there, her eyes wild with the recognition that she can never go back, and you realized that MTV ruined this kid’s life. They gave her a platform to indulge her greatest insecurities, to stoke her deepest unhealthy desires, and they encouraged it and filmed it and sent it out to world while saying Ha Ha.
Heidi isn’t any different than the girls watching at home, just worse off. She was watching the show, watching herself, and seeing something distant and faraway. And she wanted it, wanted desperately for it to be real. So she’s just chasing her tail forever, while MTV films and makes bundles in cellphone advertisements. They pried open that hole in Heidi’s heart, and they basically put that shit in her face. At least they certainly funded it [italics mine].
The following post has been inspired by discussions in the blogosphere of whether or not unretouched photos are progress. I argue they’re not: because beauty as a public discourse is a trap for women, unretouched or otherwise. No matter how we change definitions of beauty, the fact that women are constrained by the requirement of being beautiful above all else is the main problem. It remains whether or not we retouch the photographs.
Women are separated at birth from the right to their own beauty, just as they are separated from the right to their sexuality. Within patriarchy, both exist only to service male expectations and fantasies. We stop owning what belongs to us — it gets appropriated by men. Our beauty, like our sexuality, becomes a commodity to be traded and bartered, to be put on display, to be graded and tinkered with, for the profit and enjoyment of men.
The media, in a series of editing moves, has now deemed them unacceptable and unfit for public consumption.
I’ve wanted to write this piece for awhile and, in light of Britney Spears releasing unretouched photos of herself for the Candie’s campaign, decided it was time. Unfortunately I wasn’t very surprised by the things “enhanced” on Spears’ body – the usual suspects: cellulite, tattoos, blemishes, bruises, slimming of hips, thighs, waist, etc. But lately there’s been a new body part deemed unacceptable by the photo editors at magazines, record labels, etc. – armpits. That’s right ladies, the area under your arm, even when clean shaven has been deemed far too hideous for general public consumption.
I first noticed the trend, while reading Jezebel, as is usually the case with these kinds of things. They posted the cover of British GQ where Anne Hathaway seems to be missing something. Her armpit isn’t just hairless and smoothed by some moisturizing deodorant – it’s not there at all. Just completely gone, just torso side and…arm, with nothing in between. Since then, I’ve come to notice it in other places as well:
Photo stills of Lady Gaga’s music video Telephone:
A Kim Kardashian exercise line campaign:
A photoshoot for Harper’s Bazaar with Megan Fox:
and finally a Sports Illustrated spread:
Apparently that pesky underarm area hinders exercising, dancing, posing, and uh, swimming.
Now it’s just another thing that’s been added to a list of things for the resident photoshopper at any magazine, PR firm, etc. to check off their list, but I think the issue is much bigger than that. Men don’t have to deal with the same “image enhance everything” that is so prevalent when it comes to actresses and pop stars. For example, when Leonardo DiCaprio appeared on the cover of Esquire Magazine, all his stubble, lines, and wrinkles were left intact. For women, this new underarm thing is another flaw that someone in a board room somewhere has decided is not worthy of publication – it must be fixed. It is another issue for women to worry about – another thing for girls to look at and wonder “why don’t I look like that?” and “what can I do to fix it?” These images eventually become the norm, what we think women really look like, or are supposed to.
