Here is some stuff in the news today...
President Obama appeared on Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," and if you would like to see it, here you go!
Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza compiled his annual Year in Photographs, and there are a whole lotta great photos there. I am really going to miss President Obama when he leaves office. Damn.
[Content Note: Police brutality] The latest in the Guardian's "The Counted" series, examining how the "fate of police officers who kill often rests in the hands of the prosecutors they typically work alongside," is really terrific. The whole series is just great. Difficult but great.
[CN: Transphobia] Fucking hell, this is so cruel and disgusting and abusive: "A new bill [introduced in Indiana] would actually criminalize transgender people for using the restroom. Sen. Jim Tomes (R) calls his legislation 'a simple bill,' and he' not wrong. SB 35 does two things. First, it would prohibit schools from ever allowing transgender students from using restrooms that match their gender identity. Students would only be identified by the sex assigned to them at birth as determined by their anatomy and chromosomes, and that sex would determine which facility they can and cannot use. This would force schools to violate Title IX and discriminate against transgender students. The Department of Education has repeatedly found that schools can not refuse access to transgender students on the basis of their gender identity. Then, the bill mandates that any transgender person who uses a public sex-specific restroom, locker room, or shower room that matches their gender identity has committed a 'single sex public facility trespass,' which it deems a Class A misdemeanor. A Class A misdemeanor is the highest non-felony charge in Indiana, punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $5,000 dollars." Rage. Seethe. Boil.
[CN: Guns; death] In Florida, a woman who is a 911 dispatcher with the Osceola County Sheriff's Office and who is married to a St. Cloud Police Corporal shot and killed her own daughter after mistaking her for an intruder. "Her death is being characterized by St. Cloud Police as an 'accidental shooting.'" I guess. But it wasn't really an "accident," despite the fact that it's a terrible tragedy. The woman intended to kill someone she thought was an intruder. (Which also would have been legal.) Calling it an accident suggests the lesson here is "make sure you know who you're killing," but maybe it should be "don't fucking kill people." I don't know. I'm so sorry for this family, and I'm so angry at our culture.
Okay: "When Marco Rubio was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, he used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier, according to records obtained by The Washington Post." He seems neat.
[CN: Stalking; harassment; murder; spoilers for the series Making a Murderer] If anyone has watched the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, which I recommend, this article contains some important details about the case that didn't make it, for reasons I cannot understand, into the series. I share the author's opinion about both this series and Serial. (I also have the same concerns regarding consent of the victim's family that I had about Serial.)
[CN: Toxic masculinity; Star Wars spoilers] "Geek male identity has been reduced to Kylo Ren thrashing a computer with his sword; this needs to change."
"Hairstylist Ursula Goff Shares Selfie Photos to Show No One Is Perfect: We should keep in mind that behind every pretty face or perfect lifestyle is a regular person and that there's really no point in comparing amongst ourselves because this is all cultivated." A+
[CN: Moving gifs at link] "This Raccoon Who Stole a Doughnut in Toronto Is Your Inspiration for 2016." LOL! When Deeky tweeted this video last night, he said: "Raccoons don't give a fuck." To which I replied: "They have tiny hands and the laws of humankind cannot hold them. WHY WOULD THEY."
And finally! I love this sooooo much: In 2009, Patti Page rewrote her 1952 classic song "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" and recorded a new version called "Do You See That Doggie in the Shelter?" Blub.
In the News
Oh Thank Maude
Science explains why beauty is in the eye of the beholder: "Is that guy sexy? Is that woman beautiful? If you ask these questions to a group of people, they may have different answers, and a new study hints at why: Your perception of other people's attractiveness is mainly the result of your own experiences."
It's about time we had SCIENTIFIC PROOF that individual human beings have individual lived experiences that influence our individual preferences and choices!
I just hope someone quickly funds a study to prove that some of these individuals are WRONG, lest we start getting the idea that beauty itself is entirely subjective.
People Are Assholes
[Content Note: Body policing; disablism; culture of judgment.]
Going around the internetz today are pictures of actress Renée Zellweger at last night's 2014 Elle Women in Hollywood Awards. I'm not going to link to any of the articles featuring the images; they're easy enough to find if you really want to see them. Simply, Zellweger looks different; her face no longer looks like it did earlier in her career—a face once described by Jim Carrey's character in her film Me, Myself & Irene as "Your squinty eyes and your face all pursed up like you just sucked a lemon."
In the back of the lint trap, I recall having read or seen something about Zellweger years ago that suggested she had trichiasis, eyelashes growing inward back toward the eye, and might need surgery to correct it. I can't find the source now, so it's just one of those things stuck in the back of my brain. I don't know if it's true; I don't know if it was the reason for her alleged recent eye surgery; I don't know if it was a reason offered, once upon a time, for a potential eye surgery to avoid charges of vanity.
But it seems like a possibility worth mentioning. Because I can pull up stories of other actors and actresses whose faces have changed for health reasons, like the amazing Kathleen Turner, who famously weathered nasty commentary about her weight gain and rumors about drug addiction and alcoholism for years before disclosing that she had rheumatoid arthritis, the steroids prescribed for which caused changes in her appearance. And I don't think that famous people owe us disclosure of health issues, no matter how major or minor they may seem to us.
Famous people also don't owe us an explanation as to why they decide to have cosmetic surgery.
I don't care why Renée Zellweger got surgery on her eyes, provided she did, except insomuch as I hope that she didn't feel obliged to do it because of the gross culture of judgment that has scrutinized and discussed and criticized her appearance for the entirety of her career.
(And no doubt before she was famous, too, on a more intimate scale.)
Predictably, the comments on these articles are the grossest of the gross. Zellweger is unrecognizable. She is hideous. She is vain. Et cetera. I don't need to recount them, because we know the entire song and all its cruel verses and vile refrain by heart.
So, for a moment, let us imagine that Renée Zellweger's primary reason for supposedly getting cosmetic surgery was because of decades of ridicule and venom about the shape of her eyes.
I did this for you, and now you mock me for doing it.
That is a cycle of abuse, being played out in public as a fun game for the abusers.
One might be inclined to argue: That's why celebrities shouldn't change their features, because people will never be happy, will never stop judging them.
But you know my position on that sort of argument: As long as unrealistic expectations of women exist, we shouldn't be punishing the women who try to meet them.
Or tasking them with finding individual solutions to this pervasive, aggressive, overwhelming systemic problem.
Perhaps Zellweger just felt obliged to have cosmetic surgery, if she did, to stay relevant in a career that is profoundly hostile to older women. As a response to unfathomably unfair expectations to defy time and the reality of human existence, a woman who makes the decision to get cosmetic surgery or fillers is making a valid and entirely understandable choice.
Especially when the alternative is: No more career for you bye-bye.
Of course the women who have cosmetic procedures to try to attain the Impossible Beauty Standards demanded by their horrible industry are then punished for doing it, if there is any evidence at all they've done it.
None of this is fair. It's not fair to judge Zellweger if she got cosmetic surgery for health reasons, for reasons of pleasing fans, for reasons of employment, for some combination thereof, for some other reason(s) altogether.
Renée Zellweger looks different now. The only reaction any of us need to have to that is: "Oh. Okay."
Ugly Girl
[Content Note: Body policing; fat bias; harassment.]
Before I was fat, I was ugly.
I've been fat—by which I mean, I was called fat, by people who wanted to hurt me—since I'd quickly developed large breasts by the seventh grade. My soft and growing body was called fat, long before it actually was.
But even before that, I was called ugly.
I remember the first time a neighbor kid called me ugly, and how it felt so surprising. I was maybe seven. We were playing on my swingset, and I wouldn't get off the swing he wanted, even though there was another just like it.
"Your face is ugly," he told me. Matter-of-factly. Casually swaying back and forth with his arm curled around a support beam of the swingset.
I'd never even contemplated my appearance before, and the first time I was obliged to do so was to wonder if I was ugly, like he said I was. I decided I must be. I wasn't sophisticated enough yet to realize there might be other reasons for calling someone ugly, besides the fact that they are.
Thereafter, when one of the boys called me ugly—it was always boys, at least to my face—it stung. Not because I felt like they were being mean, but because I felt like they were simply stating the truth.
By the time I reached middle school, with glasses and braces and a face full of zits, being called ugly had become routine. I was called a frog, a pig, a cow, four eyes, pizza face. A cute boy on which I had a desperate, quiet crush wrote in my yearbook on the last day of school: "To a nice but very ugly-looking girl..."
I remember cradling the book in my hands, and reading it, and feeling the hot blush of embarrassment illuminate my cheeks. And then anger, at myself, for feeling anything at all. He was just telling the truth.
None of this should have mattered. I should have understood that my value as a person wasn't predicated on what I looked like, as adults who cared for me assured me. But my value as a person, as a girl, was predicated on what I looked like.
That was obvious. It even mattered to the people who told me that looks didn't matter, who gently suggested a different hairstyle or the use of zit cream or two years of braces. My looks mattered, and I was ugly and needed to be fixed.
For a long time, my only tool of resistance was not letting my looks matter to me.
Not in a badass way. Not in an I'm gonna look like whatever the fuck I want to look like in whatever the fuck way that makes me happy way.
In an avoid mirrors and pictures and pretend I'm basically a brain in a flesh jar way.
In an avoid being visible way.
I tried to be invisible. Even, and especially, to myself.
Occasionally, someone would compliment me on my appearance, and I simply wouldn't believe them. It wasn't false modesty, or self-pity, as my rejection of their compliment was often understandably received. It was just authentic disbelief, firmly rooted in having been told otherwise.
As I got older, and fatter, the insults switched. Now "fat" was the ostensible insult that came first.
But "fat" didn't feel like an insult. It was just an objective observation.
Something about this—about fat being used an insult, with the attendant implication that I didn't deserve to be treated kindly because I am fat; the thing that made me a fat activist; the idea that fat is just an objective and morally neutral description of a body—made me start engaging with the idea of being ugly.
Which is subjective, but I had always treated as objective. At least when it was being said to me.
I had been encouraged to regard "ugly" as a subjective assessment, when it was being regularly deployed against me, but that was never very much help. Ultimately, what was helpful was my belief, lasting since childhood, that "ugly" was an objective fact about me.
As I thought about how I deserved to be treated like a human being even though I am fat, I began to think too that I deserved to be treated well even though I am ugly.
Or not ugly. Or whatever.
A lot of self-acceptance rhetoric involves admonishments to find everyone beautiful in some way, as an entrance to finding oneself beautiful.
Which, in some way, only empowers "ugly" as an insult. And underwrites the idea that beauty is the threshold past which acceptance and love and respect is found.
The place I have reached is this: It's not even that I don't care if other people think I'm ugly; I don't even care if I do.
I can look at myself and see what is there, really there. My splotchy skin, my slightly crossed eyes, my wildly asymmetrical mouth. My arching brows, my long lashes, my high cheekbones. I can see all these things, those that are the markers of valued beauty and those that are the markers of deviation from valued beauty. They are just the facts of my face.
Maybe if I'd always been told I were beautiful, I'd feel differently.
But I don't long to be beautiful. I don't even long to be not ugly. I simply want to be able to look at myself, in the mirror, in pictures, in my reflection in a window as I stroll past, and see the facts of myself. To not value them or devalue them, or use them to value or devalue myself.
I want my act of resistance against a world that values women on their beauty not to be to disappear, but to be visible. To myself, most of all.
All "you are ugly" means to me anymore is that I have been seen.
And having been seen, I expect my humanity to be respected. That is, after all, the reason that visibility is important—to humanize, to acknowledge, to include.
All of the words about how beauty is subjective and everyone is beautiful in their own way and true beauty is on the inside—well, they're all true, but they're also irrelevant, in a culture where there is a rigidly enforced beauty standard and "ugly" is deployed as justification for abuse and neglect.
Being ugly needs to be okay.
By which I mean: Being ugly cannot be a justification for harm.
So I am happy to concede I am ugly, in order that I may argue that I am deserving of nothing less than if I were beautiful. And so is everyone else.
This is not a fishing expedition for compliments. It is an argument for all of us to matter, to be valued, to be seen.
I don't need to hear that I'm beautiful. If you want to tell me anything at all, tell me: I see you.
Because there are always going to be people who deviate, significantly, from the beauty standard. And we can talk endlessly about how beauty is subjective, but what I'd rather be talking about is how basic human rights are not.
Jezebel vs. Consent
[Content Note: Hostility to consent; body policing.]
Jezebel—the, ha ha, "feminist" web site—is offering $10K for unretouched photos of Lena Dunham's Vogue shoot. You know, to "start a conversation" about "real bodies" like Dunham's, and how the media distorts them to make them fit the "ideal" feminine image.
As if that conversation can't be started (and has been, um, all over the feminist blogosphere—and as if, for that matter, it hasn't been going on since airbrushing was invented) without denying a woman the autonomy to decide whether she wants those photos released.
Jezebel suggests that Dunham has implied her consent (oh, my) for the unretouched photos to be released, because she's "body positive," appears naked on Girls all the time, and "has spoken out, frequently, about society's insane and unattainable beauty standards." Therefore, anything goes!
Yes, she has. Dunham isn't kyriarchetypically "beautiful." She's made a point of appearing naked on Girls frequently, for, as critics frequently complain, "no reason" (that is, no reason that doesn't involve titillating a hetero male audience, a la Game of Thrones).
But all of that—all of it—is beside the point. Dunham has every right to speak for herself. In contrast: By inviting readers to contribute photos without Dunham's consent, so that Jezebel can publish them as clickbait (whether you're clicking to look at the funny fat lady or to tsk at impossible beauty standards makes little difference), Jezebel is mocking the entire notion of bodily autonomy, for fun and profit.
It's despicable. But I would expect little better from the same media empire that offered a "reward" for any reader who could out the person who gave Magic Johnson HIV.
So, So Good
Despite the unfortunate headline (which she almost certainly did not write herself) and the use of an ablist term in the final paragraph, this piece by actor Ashley Judd about the public speculation about her appearance is amazing.
This abnormal obsession with women's faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.Go read the whole thing.
...News outlets with whom I do serious work, such as publishing op-eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this "story" without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. It's an indictment of them that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time-honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageist, and mean-spirited content.
I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? [...] I ask especially how we can leverage strong female-to-female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn't actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others—and in my case, to the actual public. (I am also aware that inevitably some will comment that because I am a creative person, I have abdicated my right to a distinction between my public and private selves, an additional, albeit related, track of highly distorted thinking that will have to be addressed at another time).
If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start.
In our profoundly sick culture of judgment, one of the most important—so simple, so difficult—bits of social justice teaspooning we can all do is simply refuse to judge other people's appearance, which has ramifications both culturally and personally.
Judgment is, at its roots, projection—evaluating people's deviations from a standard we endorse. We are thus quick to see our own "flaws" in others. Judgment reinforces our own shortcomings, reflects our perceived failures back to us, makes it difficult to love ourselves when we see our own supposed defects everywhere we look.
Loving ourselves, "flaws" and all, is an integral part of dismantling the rigid tyranny of the Beauty Standard, because by embracing our Less Than Perfectness, we refute the obligation to conform to any standard that purports to be universally attainable and demand we be judged by a measure of our own making.
And we grant ourselves the right to be happy in who we are.
It's funny how much easier it is to grant that right to everyone else having once gifted it to yourself.
Letting go of the culturally-imposed compulsion to judge everyone is hugely freeing—a gift to ourselves that makes self-acceptance a helluva lot easier, and a gift to everyone else who steps into our gazes, to whom we can extend the same generosity and esteem.
The most important thing I have ever done for my own sense of value, the most profound kindness I have ever offered to myself, is to take a long look at the deeply unreasonable, inherently condemnatory, nakedly cruel, worth-suberverting, kyriarchy-entrenching, target-moving, can't-fucking-win Beauty Standard in its impossibly unachievable face and tell it to fuck off.
Today in Kyriarchetypes
In case you'd forgotten (ha ha how could you even if you wanted to?), Hollywood is steeped in white privilege. And thin privilege. Also sexual objectification. And Photoshop. Plus other things that are in various ways Not Good!
[Click to embiggen.]
I will just quickly note, once again, in spite of its being an unceasingly vomitous font of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, ablism, fat hatred, rape jokes, violence, bullying, and other sundry bigotries and hostilities, Hollywood (meaning the entertainment industry, not the town) is nonetheless yet regarded as a bastion of liberalism.
It's funny how much "Hollywood liberal elitism" looks like an Ayn Rand wank-fantasy.
Impossibly Beautiful
One of the basic (but unspoken) tenets of the Beauty Standard is that famous women (and men) must mask all indication of their humanity. No laugh lines, no frown lines, no blemishes, no evidence of aging, no having too much hair there or too little hair here, no fat, no sag, no varicose veins, no moles, no marks, no crooked toes, no imperfections no flaws no scars no errant freckles even if they are beautiful because no deviation from the arbitrary standards of Perfection.
It's a heinous enough expectation for the cover of a magazine, when an intern with Photoshop will be tasked with clumsily erasing all trace of documentation that a mortal human being exists behind the carefully constructed veneer. But these days, when half the population's walking around with an HD camera and a high-speed internet connection in their pockets, suddenly celebrities are expected to not be human even in person, even in extreme close-up.
Hence: BuzzFeed's "10 Scary Celebrity Close-Ups." I'm not going to provide a direct link, because fuck giving them traffic for that; you can find it easily enough if you're so inclined. It's a gallery consisting of extreme close-up images of nine women, with one close-up of Iggy Pop, as if everyone's holding Iggy Pop and the latest Hollywood ingenue to the same beauty standards.
This picture of Zooey Deschanel—whose indefatigable service as every hipster dude's Manic Pixie Dream Girl is now being rewarded with the predictable sneering backlash once the dudes who drooled over her discovered she had the temerity to not, as it turns out, be their private property—is typical of the gallery:
Granted, the grey bits rattling 'round my brainpan have been freed from The Matrix, so my perspective is very
I also, for the record, see a beautiful woman. But my opinion of Zooey Deschanel is irrelevant. What matters is that there's no such thing as an objective beauty standard.
And then there's this: It's incomprehensibly fucked up that evidence of a woman's humanity is considered "scary," by any means of observation. But this contempt for visible humanness in close-up reveals something extremely ugly about the nature of objectification: People who want to fuck Zooey Deschanel express repulsion at seeing her face up close. "Eww—you got intimacy all up in my remote objectification! Gross!"
The real problem with these images, and their insistent revelation of humanness, is not that they are "scary." It is that they challenge the viewer to embrace the humanity of women.
Which I suppose might be terrifying, if you're not used to thinking of women as human.
Enough already. Enough.
The Bluest Eye
[Trigger warning for racism; colorism.]
[Image from KTLA news segment; post title from Toni Morrison's novel of the same name.]
Because in this age of Impossible Beauty, no one can ever be beautiful enough, Dr. Gregg Homer of Stroma Medical in California is developing a laser procedure that will turn brown eyes blue:
[Homer] announced on KTLA-TV that he had come up with a laser procedure that removes the brown pigment, known as melanin, in the iris. Once removed, the blue color underneath is revealed, giving the person blue eyes. Homer said the procedure takes about 20 seconds.Despite Homer's assurances about the safety of the procedure, which may be available within two years, Dr. Robert Cykiert, associate professor of ophthalmology at NYU Langone Medical Center, told ABC News that the laser treatment is "risky" and "very likely to cause a high pressure in the eye, known as glaucoma," which could be temporary or permanent, and can cause permanent vision loss.
"We use a laser that's tuned to a specific frequency to remove the pigment from the surface of the iris," he told KTLA.
The change is irreversible because, once removed, the melanin cannot grow back.
Sound scary? Homer says he's been working on the science for 10 years. He told the news channel that he and his team had 15 ranges of "sophisticated" tests to make sure there is no eye tissue damage during or after the procedure.
Taking extreme risks to one's health in pursuit of beauty is not new, of course; there have been several high-profile deaths from plastic surgery procedures in recent years. And, like other procedures developed to facilitate conformance to a kyriarchtypal beauty standard, the bluing of eyes reinforces privilege. Homer is unabashed in his privileging of blue eyes:
"The eyes are the windows to the soul; [there's] this idea that people can actually see into it—a blue eye is not opaque. You can see deeply into it, and a brown eye is very opaque, and I think that there is something meaningful about this idea of having open windows to the soul," Homer told KTLA.Silly narratives about blue eyes being more "readable" are nothing more than codswallop used to justify the privileging of blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness, though not every person with blue eyes is white.
In both some white communities and some communities of color, there is a privileging of lighter eyes—blue, green, hazel, light brown—over dark brown or near-black eyes. It's a variation on colorism, which privileges light skin over dark, and has its own legacy of bleaching and lightening and lasering similar to the one Dr. Homer is trying to build for eye color. Light eyes, pale skin, hair that is light and fine and straight—these are all privileged to create a kyriarchetype that treats everything else as "exotic." As other. As less than.
Suffice it to say, I find Homer's "revolutionary" new procedure to be deeply problematic on multiple levels. Discuss.
[Commenting Guidelines: There are lots of women and men who like to play around with eye color using contact lenses, and, should that become part of the discussion, I would ask commenters to bear in mind what I said here: "Quite evidently, we each have a responsibility to think critically about our individual decisions, and not pretend they happen in a void even when we make choices for no one's pleasure or security but our own. Just because one is doing something for hirself doesn't magically turn it into a choice without cultural implications. But it's eminently possible to critique the culture in which individual choices are made, and the cultural narratives that may affect our decision-making processes, without condemning those individual choices. Or the people making them."]
This is a real thing in the world.
The "Smooth Groove" Camel Toe Prevention Product
Soon to be sold, one can only hope and assume, at the finest Emporiums of Self-Hatred near you!
Yes, ladies with vulvas, this is the product you didn't even know you needed for a problem you didn't even know you had until it was given a grody name by the LadyBody Police. Just slip the "Smooth Groove" (gross) down your pants and—voila!—the evidence of your womanliness has been sufficiently masked so that people aren't offended by the fact that you have a vulva.
"Camel Toe" is, of course, supposed to be fundamentally different and uniquely unseemly because, um, because, uh, because, well, never mind that. It's just suuuuuuper yucky, and ladies are definitely supposed to bear that in mind while purchasing pants that should perfectly hug the curves of their rear-ends while, simultaneously, perfectly masking the contours of their labia.
(See also: Bras snug enough to enhance cleavage but not create the monstrous appearance of "side boobs" or "back fat.")
Over at xojane, Jess rightly notes that the "Smooth Groove" is "not just good for a laugh; it's also an illustration of how industry can manufacture and then fulfill a need by making you insecure about your body."
And "insecure" is frankly too polite: The "Smooth Groove" website asserts that camel toe is "the most embarrassing taboo there is for us girls." Got that? Evidence of female body parts is "the most embarrassing taboo" for women. We should not merely be insecure about our bodies, but ashamed of our very womanhood.
I can hardly conceive of more emblematic, or more horrible, substantiation of the profundity of institutional misogyny in our culture than the admonishment to be perfect women by denying and treating as shameful evidence of our womanhood.
There are people who will argue that a "little thing" like the "Smooth Groove" is not problematic, and that it is not misogynistic. But if "misogyny" is to have any meaning at all, a product that encourages women with vulvas to treat them as gross, as embarrassing, as less than, that implicitly exhorts us to rip our womanhood from our humanity, that admonishes us to deny, to be ashamed of, our womanhood, in part or in whole, thus requesting of us to subvert our own humanity, must be regarded as deeply, and evidently, misogynistic.
This is why I am a feminist: To ignore subversion of my humanity is to participate in my own marginalization. And that I cannot, will not, do.
[H/T to Shaker Raaven.]
Another Month, Another Celebrity Mom Who Doesn't Know How to Use "I" Language
Entertainment publicists evidently continue to fail their clients by not advising them on the value of "I" language to avoid alienating existing or potential fans: In August, we had Jennifer Garner telling us "There's no deeper want for a woman" than to be a mother; in September, we had Gwyneth Paltrow informing us that "everything you thought was an achievement really is nothing until you have a kid"; and now Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr offers: "Becoming a mother puts everything into perspective. You become more comfortable in your own skin."
Such a little thing makes such a big difference: If only she had said, instead, "Becoming a mother put everything into perspective for me. I became more comfortable in my own skin."
Because, of course, lots of women (though not all), in fact, do not feel more comfortable in their skin after giving birth, because of the ridiculous beauty standards dictated by the kyriarchy that devalues the permanent changes pregnancy/childbearing brings to many (though not all) female bodies.
The suggestion that any woman who struggles with body image after pregnancy axiomatically lacks "perspective" is both cruel and wrong on its own, but it's hilaritragically absurd given the context:
In the publication, Miranda poses naked, showing off her pert butt while lying on a bed and proves she has fully recovered her figure after giving birth.Perfect. Shame body-conscious mothers for their angst while tacitly exhorting them to compare themselves to a carefully staged, lit, photographed, and airbrushed photo of your own perfectly posed naked body.
I don't hate the players; I hate the game. But, fuck, Miranda Kerr et. al.: I really wish you wouldn't play the game quite so goddamn hard.
Impossibly Beautiful
Below is a picture of Sarah Jessica Parker, a woman who is effervescent, smart, has had extraordinary professional success, and is legendarily stylish.
Parker arrives for the screening of Wu Xia in Cannes, May 14, 2011. [AP Photo]
Whether she is beautiful has always been a subject of much debate, because she does not conform perfectly to traditional definitions of beauty. It will not be debated in this space, because to debate it is to tacitly concede that there is some objective Beauty Standard, some platonic ideal of feminine beauty, and that conformity to that ideal is an issue of character.
What matters is not whether any of us find Sarah Jessica Parker beautiful; what matters is that, yet again, Marie Claire has found her to be not beautiful enough.
Just over a year ago, I wrote a piece about a Marie Claire cover featuring SJP in which her famously wrinkly hands were Photoshopped to look like babydoll hands stuck on the ends of the arms of a confident 45-year-old woman. Now she is on the cover of their September issue, and they've done the same damn thing to her again.
[Click to embiggen.]
Compare to the image at the top of this post, in which SJP's unretouched hand is visible as she blows a kiss to fans.
That Sarah Jessica Parker has a life rich with family and friends, and is a successful actress on stage and on screens small and large, a savvy businesswoman, and a well-respected arts advocate and philanthropist, isn't enough. She hasn't yet earned the right to be Who She Actually Is on the cover of Marie Claire, because Who She Actually Is isn't good enough if she's got WRINKLED HANDS at age 46.
I have wrinkled hands not terribly unlike SJP's. Marie Claire would evidently like me to be ashamed of them. Fuck that. I love my hands, and I love Sarah Jessica Parker's hands, too.
The real ones.
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By way of reminder: Comments that try to suss out what changes, exactly, were made, and even comments noting that, for example, the removal of laugh lines because they are ZOMG wrinkles actually robs a face of its character or humanity, are welcome. Discussions of how "she looks prettier/hotter/better in the candid picture" and associated commentary (which would certainly make me feel like shit if I were the person being discussed) are not. So please comment in keeping with the series' intent, implicit in which is the question: If no one can ever be beautiful enough, then to what end is the pursuit of an elusive perfection?
If We Really Lived in a Post-Feminist World...
...banning advertisements that are explicitly designed to fool, manipulate, and body-shame women into buying expensive products that cannot possibly deliver what is promised via the sneakery of Photoshop would be the rule, rather than the exception.
Well done, MP Jo Swinson.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Actual Headline: Doctors dispute Megan Fox no-Botox photos.
Actual Opening Paragraphs:
Cosmetic doctors dispute the claim by actress Megan Fox that photos she published last week are proof that she is not using Botox.Actual Title of Accompanying Slideshow: Megan Fox: Pretty, Then Sexy, Now 'Done.'
Some doctors said the photos show a face in which the effects of Botox injections are slowly wearing off. Many others said one photo (top left) displays such unnatural wrinkle patterns that the image apparently has been digitally altered.
"Looks like Megan is just as talented with Photoshop as she is in entertainment," said plastic surgeon and blogger Dr. Nicholas Vendemia of New York.
In case it's not self-evident, let me be perfectly clear: The point of this post is not to invite speculation about whether Megan Fox uses Botox, nor to invite judgment on her appearance (or talent, or choices, or anything else).
The point of this post is to highlight what a ridiculously fucked-up culture we live in, where a woman is put under enormous pressure to alter ("improve") her appearance and simultaneously put under enormous pressure to pretend she puts absolutely no effort into her appearance at all.
And if a famous woman gets chemical or surgical procedures, she is a vain harpy. And if she does not, she is a grody wrinkled hag. And if she says she hasn't had such procedures, whether she has or hasn't, her image will be publicly scrutinized for "proof" that she is a liar by doctors whose livelihoods are predicated on women's insecurities about their looks.
This is a sick, sick game that women are asked to play, and if there is a better incentive for not playing it than even Megan Fox isn't beautiful enough, I can't conceive of it.
This is a real thing in the world.
[Trigger warning for misogyny; body policing; colorism.]
Product Description, from the website (to which I'm not linking, but it's easy enough to find if you're so inclined): "My New Pink Button (tm) is a temporary dye to restore the youthful pink color back to your labia. There is no other product like it. This patent pending formula was designed by a female certified Paramedical Esthetician after she discovered her own genital color loss. While looking online for a solution she discovered thousands of other women asking the same questions regarding their color loss. After countless searches revealing no solution available and a discussion with her own gynecologist she decided to create her own. Now there is a solution!"
Comes in four shades: Marilyn ("the lightest of our colors; good for beginners who want to make a slight change fresh color change in their appearance or those who are very fair skinned"), Bettie ("This shade blends with a woman's own skin tones to bring out that 'sexy hot pink, I am fired up, look'"), Ginger ("will combine with darker skin tones to bring forth a real rosy tone"), and Audrey ("For the woman that loves to be daring, we bring you "Audrey"! This is the deepest, darkest color that we offer to give you a bold burgundy pink color. Perfect for everyone, and your own base color will determine the depth of this shade. Tonight its Show time!!").
What a wonderful way to honor our female icons—by appropriating their names to slap on a product designed to make women feel insecure about their vulvas.
I don't guess I need to mention that not every woman in the world has a pink vulva to begin with. (Or even a vulva at all.) There are many women—including many fair-skinned white women—whose vulvas are on the brown spectrum. Equating pink with whiteness and youth is flatly wrong.
But obviously a pretty common (and sinister) marketing ploy.
[H/T to @alikichapple.]
Impossibly Beautiful
[Trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing.]
This is a picture of Christina Aguilera—who is, IMO, extremely talented and pretty damn cool—which the Daily Fail used as a launching pad to write this heap of fat-hating and body-policing horseshit.
Aguilera is said to have "piled on the pounds" and "ballooned" in size. She "was in great shape," but is now "curvier than ever," as if being a woman with curves is a bad thing. They guess at the exact amount of weight she's gained, and declare her "to be the heaviest she's ever been, barring her pregnancy in 2008."
All of this, as if it fucking matters. As if it's anyone's business. And as if Aguilera, despite being maybe 10 pounds heavier than she was earlier in the year, doesn't hew more closely to the Western Beauty Standard than the vast majority of women on the planet.
Which is kind of why this article is particularly heinous: It's about a classically beautiful woman with a face and body most people will find ridiculously attractive, being picked apart in a public way for a perceived flaw, thus implicitly communicating to all the women who read this article that even Christina Aguilera isn't beautiful enough.
Now buy these expensive beauty products and diet pills and exercise equipment and vitamins and liquid diet mixes and make-up and lunchtime cosmetic surgery procedures and skin firming potions and tooth veneers and hair extensions and girdles and spray tans and eyelashes and depilatories and everything else we can make to fix you up, you ugly bitches. Because you're sure as shit not as good-looking at Christina Aguilera—and even she's garbage.
This shit is despicable.
And Christina Aguilera rules.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that saying, "She looks better now!" or "Real women have curves!" (nope), or some variation thereof is just the flipside of the same type of body policing being criticized. This post isn't about creating a space to do more of the same.]
Impossibly Beautiful
[Trigger warning for discussions of body size, body hatred, and image manipulation.]
[Click images to embiggen.]
On the left: Singer Katy Perry holding a media conference on Aug. 2 in the rooftop pool of the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark in Singapore, where she's performing at the open-air music festival Singfest 2010. [Reuters] On the right: Katy Perry on the cover of Rolling Stone. [Image via.]
The airbrushing out of her "belly" is not merely terribly done; it's also just the most ridiculous body-hostile bullshit. I can't count the number of female friends I have seen grabbing at their waists while sitting down and lamenting, frequently with unbearably sad expressions of self-loathing, that they were "fat" because their slender stomachs pooched almost imperceptibly when they sat down, like human bodies are designed to do.
These pictures are lies. They are not images of women whose bodies are "better." They are images of women whose bodies have been Photoshopped.
The real Katy Perry is beautiful. The Rolling Stone covergirl Katy Perry is Impossibly Beautiful.
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Please note: There are quite obviously legitimate criticisms to be made about Perry's work, but that is not the subject of this post and such comments will be considered off-topic.
By way of reminder: Comments that try to suss out what changes, exactly, were made, and even comments noting that, for example, the removal of laugh lines because they are ZOMG wrinkles actually robs a face of its character or humanity, are welcome. Discussions of how "she looks handsomer/hotter/better in the candid picture" and associated commentary (which would certainly make me feel like shit if I were the person being discussed) are not. So please comment in keeping with the series' intent, implicit in which is the question: If no one can ever be beautiful enough, then to what end is the pursuit of an elusive perfection?
[Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40., 41, 42, 43.]
Impossibly Beautiful
Now for dogs!
[Click to embiggen.]
That terribly, terribly photoshopped shit actually appears on the Ralph Lauren website. Along with another terribly, terribly photoshopped image of the same forlorn dog, who evidently looks less forlorn than the original pooch cast to suffer through a photo shoot clad in a Ralph Lauren shirt.
"Get me the head of a Labrador! This filthy mutt has no papers and is too fat!"
It's not like sticking the head of a Lab onto what looks like the short, squat body of a bulldog is objectively a big deal (although it's so poorly done that RL ought to be embarrassed)—but there is something I find bitterly amusing about the fact that RL treats its canine and female models with the same contemptuous indifference: If one part isn't right, just replace it with another. They're all the same, anyway.
[Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40., 41, 42.]
