May 2, 2010

Heidi Montag: Pop culture fall-out

Filed under: Body Image — Tags: , , , , — Melanie @ 10:46 pm

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].

April 21, 2010

Beauty isn't the problem, its ownership is

Originally posted at The Delphiad Blog by Dominique Millette in response to my post at Ms. Magazine yesterday, Unretouched Photos: Empowering or just more “Empower-tainment?” Cross-posted with permission.

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.

(more…)

April 16, 2010

Add this to your list of unacceptable body parts: your armpits

Rachel O:

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.

Anyone who thinks it’s not a big deal? We’re living in a world where  Jessica Simpson going without make-up is a big deal.  And Glamour publishing a picture of a woman with a belly roll is considered a revolution.   So, yeah it’s a problem.  We’re in a publishing age, where someone in charge somewhere, looked at a Jennifer Lopez magazine cover, a Ralph Lauren ad, and an image in Maxim Mexico and said “perfect, send that to the printer!”

We need a lot less this:

And a lot more this:

March 21, 2010

Breaking: Victoria's Secret Models Love Their Bodies

victoriassecret-300x138

Guest post by Rachel O:

So plenty of criticism has been thrown Victoria’s Secret way in the past few years.  They’ve been criticized for advertising that seems to be made for men instead of their female customers, stealing, and sometimes going overboard with photoshop, but what bothers me the most is their new ad campaign.  (more…)

May 15, 2009

How much are your looks worth?

We know the beauty industry pulls in billions of dollars.  According to the Economist via this latest post @ Sociological Images:

…beauty spending–on make-up, diet and exercise, fragrances, skin care, hair products, and cosmetic surgery–adds up to a $160 billion-a-year worldwide.

But, how often do we personally think about what we spend and the amount of time it takes us to get ready? I’m not considered “high-maintenance” and, even so, I spend a tremendous amount of time and energy on my physical appearance:

I shave my legs, armpits and bikini area, I get my eyebrows waxed, I use body lotion, facial moisturizer and eye cream, toner for my face, facial serum, SPF, get manicures and pedicures, use deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, hair oil and shine, nail polish, mascara, liquid eye liner and eye shadow.

Wow!

It’s sobering to write it out. As I said, it doesn’t take me hours to get ready, I don’t look like a woman that takes hours to get ready, my hair is not perfectly coiffed and groomed, I am not “flawless,” and don’t look like anyone featured in the media.

Sociological Images provides the link to a slide show of women photographed during their monthly beauty routine and calculates the costs associated with it.

How much do you spend each month on diet, exercise, make-up, hair, scents and oils, and/or plastic surgery or various enhancements such as Botox, teeth whitening, photofacials and/or laser treatments? How many products do you have in your bathroom that you haven’t used completely before buying another brand name?

May 13, 2009

Designer vagina for granny

Filed under: Body Image,Gender,Media,Sexuality — Tags: , , , , — Melanie @ 5:07 pm

Vaginal plastic surgery knows no age limit.

May 12, 2009

How does God feel about breast implants?

Miss California’s Carrie Prejean is generating more commentary.  Following her statement that she was tempted by the devil when asked about gay marriage, the question asked by Sheldon Filger is: how does God feel about breast implants.  Never mind the fact that these were implants funded by the pageant to boost self-esteem.  I guess God’s version weren’t good enough. Hmmmm.

Maybe I’m just Miss California dreaming, but it seems to me that Carrie Prejean is afflicted with a terminal case of breast envy. Just as some men may feel inadequate if they perceive a certain part of their anatomy doesn’t “measure up,” it could be that the actions, thoughts and words of the 21 year old beauty queen and runner up at the Miss USA pageant are merely a disguise for her own sense of not “measuring up” to her beauty queen peers in the natural state God endowed her with.

There is a reason why I inserted God into this narrative. The whole premise of Ms. Prejean’s political antics has been predicated on the claim that she is a devout, Bible-believing Christian woman and her outspoken posture on the issue of same sex-marriage is an act of pious conscience. Whether or not I agree with Carrie Prejean’s decision to place her celebrity persona in the service of the anti-Gay marriage organization known as the National Organization for Marriage, I could respect her decision if it was based on consistency. However, it strikes me that this devout Bible-believing Christian woman missed one verse in the Bible, no doubt unintentionally. Allow me to quote from Chapter 4, Verse 5 of the Song of Solomon: “Thy two breasts are like young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.”

If you are a conservative Christian who believes that the entire Bible, chapter and verse, is the inalterable word of God almighty, then it appears clear that God thought female breasts were quite important, or otherwise the Lord of the universe would not have bothered to reveal what is essentially an erotic ode to the bosoms of women. My interpretation of this biblical verse is that God thought breasts as they exist on each woman are beautiful, “like young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” And for the record, young roes are somewhat on the small size.

So, it is obvious that God adores female breasts (kind of like me, or maybe it is vice versa). But more importantly, God created female breasts, along with everything else in the universe. So the essence of that verse from the Song of Solomon is that God thought his creation of the bosoms of women was perfection. Furthermore, it is a principal of conservative Christians such as Carrie Prejean that everything God created in its natural state is perfect and should never be altered, such as the institution of marriage being solely a union for a man and a woman. So Ms. Prejean, what about hiring a cosmetic surgeon to alter your breasts, and undo God’s perfect creation?

May 11, 2009

Book Spotlight: Bodies

Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, talks about her latest work, Bodies:

Her latest book, Bodies, maps the progress of our alienation, from a time when we took our bodies for granted to one where they are an endlessly perfectible work in progress. “When I was growing up,” she explains, “one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right? We didn’t expect to be that sportsman or that beauty queen. That was OK, that was what movie stars were for. That wasn’t something that was essential for all of us.” Yet today, movie-star looks are not just an aspiration but an imperative, and ordinary people think nothing of starving or surgically enhancing their bodies in a tireless campaign to make them look as though they belong to somebody else altogether.

Just as Donald Winnicott identified the “false self”, whereby a neglected baby will blame itself for its carer’s lack of interest, and create an artificial version of itself in the hope of winning love, so Orbach argues that we are creating false bodies. Assailed by media imagery that celebrates only one type of body and one type of beauty, we assume any discrepancy between our own appearance and this digitally airbrushed “ideal” must be our fault, and that it’s not merely necessary but morally virtuous to do whatever it takes to correct our deficiency. The simultaneous rise of anorexia and obesity is not a paradox, but rather two sides of the same psychological coin – both manifestations of our panic about hunger, in which normal appetite becomes pathologised as the enemy. Crucially, whereas once we might have experienced the pressure to look different as an onerous tyranny, today we tell ourselves that it’s empowering.

“We transform the sense of being criticised,” Orbach writes, “by becoming the moving and enthusiastic actor in our own self-improvement programme. We will eagerly repair what is wrong … We see ourselves as agents, not victims. It is the individual woman who feels herself to be at fault for not matching up to the current imagery … She applies herself to the job of perfecting that image for herself and so makes it her own, not assaultive or alien.”

Orbach’s writing is closer in tone to cultural studies than to the jaunty self-help register of most contemporary books about eating, but in person there is nothing abstractly academic about her. Framed by a mass of curls, she is small, even birdlike, but her sprightly energy conveys a vivid sense of aliveness. Her accent has a faint American inflection, which can sound almost antipodean at times, particularly when her sentences end in a question mark – “right?” – and she is surprisingly relaxed, even imprecise, with her words, often letting sentences tail away unfinished. But she is very clear about where we are going wrong.

I’ve been half looking forward to the meeting, and half dreading it because, although it must be 20 years since I first read what Orbach calls “Fifi”, her work feels uncomfortably relevant to my own current state. She is the sort of woman you find yourself confiding in, and I admit to her that halfway through my first pregnancy, my overriding preoccupation is with weight gain. To my dismay, what I’m really thinking about most of the time is how I’m ever going to lose it. And right there, according to Orbach, is the source of our troubled relationship with food. Mothers transmit their own anxieties to their babies; it all begins in the family.

“The only way to solve the problem is to provide very different help to new mums,” she says briskly. “Because every mother wants to do right by their kid. It would mean training health visitors and midwives; you’d raise a mother’s awareness of her own body. This is an opportunity for both of you to find the rhythm in terms of relation to appetite. I don’t think it would be difficult to design. And it would be very cheap. And new mums would really benefit from it. But instead, they are being told to do sit-ups straightaway, and why not even consider having a C-section, so you don’t have to get that last month’s weight gain? All of that nonsense. It’s completely counter to what a baby’s mental health requires – and what the mother needs as well, actually.”

What can parents say, I ask, to a 16-year-old girl who is convinced that a regime of dieting and beautification is not self-punishing but empowering? “Well, it’s awfully late at 16. But I’d be saying to the mums: ‘Watch your own behaviour – how often do you criticise your own body in front of your daughter?’ Stop making the body the cause of the problem, or the solution to the problem. The problem isn’t how she looks.”

But surely a teenage girl would say that how she looks is precisely the problem? “But what she’d be picking out aren’t imperfections, they’re just what makes her her, right?” What if she says she’s overweight? “Well, they all feel overweight. Even when they’re tiny, tiny, tiny. But where are they getting that idea? That’s why I think the mums are doing something.”

If Orbach were just another voice in the cacophony of finger-pointing that surrounds most discussion about weight, I would be feeling unpleasantly guilty by now. But her analysis of what she calls “disordered eating” extends beyond mothers and the family, to encompass everything from the diet industry – “which relies upon a 95% recidivism rate” – to the media, which produces glossy magazines in which “not a single image is not digitally retouched, up to hundreds of times” – and globalisation, in which a culture of “aspirational bodies is the mark of entry”.

One of the things that strikes me is the statement that “movie-star” looks were not always an aspiration or expectation. Each semester my students conduct an oral history and time and time again, women over 60 respond to questions about beauty standards and beauty norms that existed when they were girls and teenagers with the same sentiment. There was a time, before the all out media assault, when standards of beauty existed that weren’t as relentless or unrealistic as they are today.  Girls and women recognized a celebrity figure as exactly that.  A celebrity. A star.  Someone unlike themselves.

Girls and women today are inundated with relentless messages that proclaim that they CAN look like the celebrity du-jour and that they SHOULD and if they don’t attain that image they have failed, they are without value and should try harder.

It is little wonder that girls and women see these “failures” as personal rather than recognizing the failure on the part of the mass media machine to portray “ordinary” girls and women.

Sitcoms and films from my childhood portrayed more “average-looking” individuals.  Not everyone was primped and polished with the intention of looking “natural.” “Natural” beauty these days is nowhere near natural or easy and breezy.  It is an all out organized campaign with a low success rate.

April 24, 2009

Say it ain't so…

I guess I should have figured.  Susan Boyle, the overnight singing sensation, who has been mocked for her comment about never beuing kissed and discussed not just for her singing talent but her “frumpy” “ordinariness” has begun a make-over. The breath of fresh air she gave many people by being authentic did not last long.  Afterall, she has just passed trhough the filter of the popular culture and, most things, don’t remain the same.

Some say the overnight singing sensation who rocketed to fame after a phenomenal performance on “Britain’s Got Talent” has every right to upgrade her dowdy appearance. Others fear she may lose her authenticity _ and her amazing connection with the TV audience _ if she goes too far in the image makeover department.

The change is startling. Gone is the fusty woman with graying, frizzy hair and a jowly face who joked on air that she had never been kissed, replaced by a stylish, freshly-coiffed lady in fashionable leather jacket and what looks to be a Burberry scarf. The dark, unkempt eyebrows have been shaped and colored.

Fashion experts say she’s taken years off her looks, but should think twice about making more improvements, particularly if they go beyond styling and involve artificial enhancements.

“She looks 10 years younger,” said Toni Jones, assistant fashion editor at The Sun tabloid newspaper, which featured the new look Boyle on its cover Friday.

“Compared to what she had, it’s a 200 percent improvement. But our readers think this is as far as she should go. We want her to stay one of us.”

Jones said Boyle’s decision to dye her hair brown was causing some consternation among the powers-that-be at “Britain’s Got Talent” by stoking fears that she may no longer seem real.

April 17, 2009

Oh, no…Kegels, trimming and rejuvenation…and?

Yes, it is true! There is a spa for your vag!  As reported in the New York Times, this spa is dedicated to the woman that seeks to “get in shape from the inside out.” “Pelvic fitness” was an idea inspired by teeth whitening. Uh, yeah.

First came the “medical spa,” or medi spa, offering dermatology services in a retail setting. The medi spa begat the dental spa, bringing tooth bleaching to storefronts nationwide. The dental spa begat the podiatry spa.

And now comes the first medi spa in Manhattan wholly dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area. Phit — short for pelvic health integrated techniques — is to open this month on East 58th Street.

Dr. Lauri Romanzi, a gynecologist who performs pelvic reconstruction surgery, said she came up with the idea for the spa one day while walking by an outlet of BriteSmile, the tooth-whitening chain. She liked that the stores cater to people with healthy teeth.

This makes vaginal plastic surgery seem tame. There’s just nothing off limits from the hands of the beauty industry.  They’ll make you feel insecure about anything and everything to make money.

With the ubiquity of pornography, the pelvis had already become a marketable area for modification, ranging from the Brazilian bikini wax to genital surgery referred to as vaginal “rejuvenation.” Doctors have even coined a term for such genital “beautification”: cosmetogynecology or cosmogynecology.

The advent of the pelvic spa, however, takes body fixation to a new level, furthering the idea that there is no female body part that cannot be tightened, plumped, trimmed or pruned.

“Whether the marketing is pushing the women or women are pushing the marketing, I don’t think anybody knows,” Dr. Berenson said.

I say, “Leave my pussy alone!” They are not suppossed to look the same, smell the same or feel the same, damn it. With the vag spa, or PHIT (Pelvic Health Integrated Services), the aim is clearly NOT about pelvic “health” when you consider their web address: perfectphit.com. Perfect fit, huh? It’s about making all our vags the same and, I ask, who determines this sameness?

There are no medical standards for determining what constitutes normal “fitness” or how to evaluate it, said Dr. Abbey B. Berenson, a gynecologist who directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

“If this is being recommended to women who have no symptoms, then there are no medical organizations or literature that support that that is necessary,” Dr. Berenson said.

It’s time to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and resisting imposed beauty standards that make our heads spin, our self-esteem shrink and our pussys look like they were manufactured on an assembly line.

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