Posts by Stacey

Fat shaming: The judgment’s in the jargon

Fat-shaming, like sexism, takes many different forms. Rarely do we hear blatant declarations that “fat people are ugly/lazy/etc.” With the dialogue of “health” currently trending in pop culture, it becomes easier for advertisers, writers, and producers to integrate the language of fat shaming into their finished products under the guise of appropriate diet and fitness. Continue reading

How can we stop playing the comparison game?

Last week, a cover appeared on Time magazine that rocked the parenting world, the body image blogosphere, and my Facebook feed (I am a breastfeeding mother with many parents in my social circle). The cover featured a mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son next to the provocative caption “Are you mom enough?” Inspiring responses abounded—my favorite, by Continue reading

Tequila 1800 will make you a man!

Did you know that alcohol has a gender? Well, in case any of the other examples written by myself and other fellow About-Face writers hadn’t convinced you, 1800 Tequila is here to really drive that message home. In a series of ads meant to emphasize the supposed purity of this brand, two specifically stand out Continue reading

Lush cosmetics anti-animal testing campaign demonstrated on women

Note: This blog originally claimed that PETA was partnered with Lush in this campaign. This information is false and we deeply regret the mistake, and sincerely apologize for the error. If it looks like violence against women and it smells like violence against women, is it violence against women? Nope. It could be the anti-animal Continue reading

Facial recognition ad targets women to raise awareness

A new facial recognition powered ad has been installed at a billboard bus stop in London as part of an innovative advertising initiative. The best part? It’s for an amazing cause! Plan UK, a non-profit that brings educational opportunities to children in developing countries, has decided to invest their advertising dollars in facial recognition technology Continue reading

Glamour poll finds thin women stereotyped as mean, heavy women as lazy

Glamour magazine conducted an exclusive survey in which they asked more than 1,800 women, ages 18 to 40, to imagine an “overweight” woman and a “thin” woman. They were told to imagine that they know nothing about either of the women, and to choose from pairs of words to describe them (such as ambitious or Continue reading

Body judgments begin… almost at birth!

One of the reasons I went to graduate school was because I wanted to gain a better understanding of why women and girls develop disordered eating behaviors, what makes them worse, and most importantly, how to prevent them. And more and more research is telling us what many of the media experts at About-Face and Continue reading

A pop culture paradox: Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen as a Barbie

BarbieCollector.com has announced the arrival of the Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen clone, but replicating the character as a Barbie doll feels at odds with the very essence of the character’s power. Joining the ever-growing pop culture collection, the Katniss emulation is sold alongside other blockbuster-inspired dolls: classic favorites like the belly-baring I Dream of Jeannie doll, royalty Continue reading

Mad about modeling

A new documentary called Girl Model, which follows the path of 13-year-old Nadya, a self-proclaimed Siberian “gray mouse” and “ordinary girl” who gets plucked from a sea of other lithe hopefuls by an American mercenary model scout and sent to Japan to try to make it big, is making the rounds and winning accolades at Continue reading

‘Fat Betty Francis’ caricatures a complex character

Along with many other Mad Men fans, I eagerly awaited the show’s return last month after an extended hiatus. I wasn’t home for the season’s second episode that aired on April 1st, but all it took was one quick glance at Facebook and Twitter to see what that episode’s theme supposedly was – Betty Draper Continue reading