Time for PETA to change their campaign strategy
The male oppressor with the vulnerable and scared female.
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 testing campaign Fighting Animal Cruelty by cosmetics company Lush and About-Face frequent offender PETA. The new campaign by the two companies has become a worldwide phenomenon in a matter of weeks by having a performance artist sit in a Lush store window and undergo cosmetics testing by a male doctor.
PETA’s campaigns are famous for being shockingly sexist by openly comparing women (not all people — women) to animals. At this point, it’s not ignorance that PETA can fall back on: “I didn’t know that putting Pamela Anderson in a bikini on a billboard and comparing her to a cow was objectifying women” doesn’t work as an excuse anymore.
The Lush campaign manager, Tamsin Osmond, has stated in a recent post:
I am very aware and very sad that campaigning groups have capitalized on titillating images of women…on images and storylines that encourage the abuse of women… We felt it was important, strong, well and thoroughly considered that the test subject was a woman… the oppressor was male and the abused was vulnerable and scared. 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 as part of their Because I am a Girl campaign. The 40 second, interactive ad plays on a screen adjacent to a billboard after scanning the faces of its viewers and determining that they are female.
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 lazy).
The findings, published in the June 2012 issue, weren’t very surprising to me. Heavier women were often regarded as lazy, slow, undisciplined, and giving, while thin women were perceived as conceited, bitchy, mean, and controlling.
Even the accompanying image depicts the thin woman as mean! She glares, straight-faced, at the heavier woman, while she subtly smiles at the camera.
Your attention may have been drawn to the fact that heavier women were labeled “giving.” What’s the problem with that? You might be wondering. Ann Kearney-Cooke, Ph.D, tells us, “It just fits into the stereotype that thin women are not that way.”
While weight stereotyping is nothing new, I don’t think I’ve seen many mainstream magazines talk about the ways in which women of all sizes are stereotyped and judged. I’m really glad that Glamour has reached out and contributed to this discussion about how heavy and thin women are affected by harmful stereotypes.
I do, however, have to point out something I found a bit problematic. The accompanying image with the article is typical, at best. It features a heavy woman and a thin woman, but of course they both have long, straight, blonde hair, they are both white, and have skin airbrushed to perfection. Just saying.
Glamour’s “overwhelming conclusion” of this poll states, “All women are now judged by their size.” I don’t think this is anything new, or a secret for that matter. During the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how thin-shaming is just as harmful as fat-shaming. The whole “real women have curves” mantra, for example, suggests that thin women aren’t “real.” What’s up with that? 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 its readers already know – positive body image and positive self-perception are the answer.
The more accepting I am of my body, the less likely I am to feel like this!
A few recent studies that have been published in the past few weeks highlight these issues well. One new study out of UCLA has again proven that strong self-perception is key to the prevention of risky behaviors in teen girls.
The results of this study showed that overweight girls who had high body satisfaction and who were happy with their size and shape were less likely to engage in a range of unhealthy and disordered eating behaviors like fasting, skipping meals, and self-induced vomiting. And extra-importantly, the study also showed that these girls had lower rates of anxiety and depression, which are so disturbingly common among girls with developing eating disorders.
And the best thing about the study’s results was the discussion that these public health experts, dieticians, and professors had, in which they emphasized that for effective, healthy weight-loss interventions for teens who may need to lose weight for real medical reasons (preventing the onset of diabetes or hypertension and increasing cardiovascular health, for example), these programs need to be rooted in positive self-esteem and the enhancement of self-image. When you feel better about yourself, you want to keep taking care of yourself. You are also more likely to want to share yourself with others, and creating positive social networks increases the likelihood that people will have supporters pushing them to stay healthy. 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.
A "Barbie-fied" Katniss: Progressive or Regressive?
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 replicas of Wedding Will and Kate, and the ubiquitous Twilight duo. Part of this assortment also surprisingly included female versions of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
So of course the powers that be at mega-toy-giant Mattel know a good business decision when they see one, and The Hunger Games is no exception. To be fair, the actual doll version has Katniss dressed in her Games attire, her braid trailing down her back, and a mini Mockingjay pin affixed to her lapel. She even has her signature bevy of arrows slung across her back, bow and quiver in hand, boot-clad, and poised for action.
With a purchasing limit of five and a price tag of $29.95, the doll isn’t the doe-eyed damsel typically associated with the traditional Barbie. But I am still skeptical as to whether morphing Katniss into a Barbie reduces all the empowerment and aspiration her character represents. 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 prestigious festivals worldwide—and totally bumming me out.
Get your ordinary Russian girls here!
Oh, I don’t take issue with the fact that the documentary film exists. Nope. My beef is that it verifies just how much our culture still promulgates the notion that for girls, being a model (or in many cases at least looking like one) is the be-all-and-end-all. The top. The best form of existence a woman could hope for. Of course, it’s an age-old myth, but ever since the heyday of the original supermodels of the ’80s and ’90s (Claudia! Christy! Cindy! Naomi! Linda!), it’s been increasingly intense.
It doesn’t matter how many exposés come out, or how many times Tyra cautions her America’s Next Top Model wannabes that modeling is hard work (they have to do bikini shoots in the winter, memorize lines to Cover Girl commercials and “smize” all the damn time, after all).
At this point two generations of women (Gen Xers and Millennials) have been brought up in a world where models are among the most celebrated and most financially well-off women in the world. So is it any wonder that many of them (cue Russian cattle call of skinny, fair teens) want it for themselves? 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 Francis’ weight.
When I looked like this, it was my cold attitude people made fun of...
Some of the actual posts I saw included: “Wow, Betty, you’ve…changed,” and “Betty, you appear to have grown a lot since last year!” and “Now I know what Betty was doing for the past two years – eating!” These were spoilers for me, so when I eventually did see that week’s episode, I wasn’t as shocked by her changed physical appearance as other viewers were.
Betty’s character on this popular series has always largely revolved around her preoccupation with her appearance, which was built upon her experience as a fashion model and a mother who she admits controlled her food intake as a child. It was also predicated on the time period in which she was living: Although women were gaining professional experience and garnering the benefits of newly emerging feminism, their value was still very much judged by their appearance.
So is it any surprise that Betty views her weight gain with not only such disdain, but also with such vocal derision?
When she finds out that her weight gain is not the result of a thyroid condition or tumor, she says, “Nothing like being put through the ringer to find out you’re just fat.”
And it appears that although Betty Francis lives in the 1960s, people living in 2012 agree with her (shocking, I know). So I can’t say I was shocked to come across an entire Twitter account devoted to Betty’s weight gain, with the name “Fat Betty Francis”. Continue reading
In the space between old and new: Irish girls, the body, and self (part three)
[Ed. note: This article is Part Three of a three-part series about the intersection of secular and religious culture in Ireland and the effect of those forces on Ireland's young women. Here's Part One and Part Two.]
Ireland’s small size and historical lack of political and economic power, as well as its location between the United States and Britain (two dominant, wealthy, image-driven cultures) necessitated that it fall more in step with westernized-secularized ideals. Its other option would have been to take the lead with Catholic values, as the Church and Vatican originally hoped.
Our familiar world…
The Church still possesses the power to shield young Irish people from matters of sex: from its limiting of health education in schools to the enduring impression it has left on older generations who continue to reinforce its position.
Nonetheless, mainstream media continues to challenge this. In the U.S. and U.K., media pervades all aspects of Irish public and private life. The power and influence it has on younger generations of Irish people mirrors the power and influence that the Church once had in previous times. Recurrent media messages and imagery have become the basis for a universal language that is now so widely familiar, and so much a part of everyday life, that it is taken for granted.
Lana Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans” video: More drowning than denim
Cleverly unclear cover art: Tender touch or simulated strangulation?
Lana Del Rey’s recent video release for “Blue Jeans” is deeply disturbing on so many levels. The cover art preceding the video’s debut channeled a messed-up Little Mermaid meme where an inert Lana lies in a questionable stage of consciousness as a disembodied, tattooed hand stretches for her jugular.
I guess I was hoping the video would prove my suspicions wrong and showcase this individual tilting her head back tenderly, priming to caress her face. Unfortunately, this was not the case and the release of the video provides minimal clarification on the cover art.
Shot in black and white with a poolside setting, a retro one-piece-swimsuit-clad Lana watches the heavily inked object of her desire strip down to his skivvies from a voyeuristic corner.
It’s hard to say exactly what the aim of the video is, besides the fact that it is clearly evocative and creepy. There is a lot of kissing and cavorting in the pool, underwater body shots and a duo of alligators thrown in for good measure. A strange scene starts with a clip of the love interest reaching for her throat, but a beat later cuts to him sticking his fingers into her mouth in an eroticized fashion. Continue reading
Barbie goes bald… but don’t tell the “normal” kids.
Oh, Barbie. Such a complicated relationship you have with women. More than any other doll, Barbie is considered the iconic American toy of girls in the U.S., and is most well known by her critics as not being able to stand up on her own two feet if she were a real woman. Now, she’s going bald.
Hi, I'm Barbie. As usual, I remain the pinnacle of beauty that everyone wants to emulate.
In recent years, Mattel has tried to tackle the claim that Barbie isn’t a particularly great role model by giving the doll a series of “careers” that are fairly diverse – engineer, teacher, architect, news anchor, dentist, vet – but of course, Barbie always remains looking very much same. Extremely skinny, with long flowing blonde locks, huge blue eyes decorated with sparkly makeup, and a plethora of fashions to help – of course – make her over! (Warning – I like the color pink, but the Barbie.com web site is… overwhelmingly, dauntingly pink.)
But apparently, one thing – just one, mind you – about Barbie is going to change. After a campaign launched on Facebook to make a bald Barbie received over 150,000 “likes,” Mattel agreed to make a bald Barbie. The description of the group says that the goal of a bald Barbie is to “help young girls who suffer from hair loss due to cancer treatments, alopecia, or trichotillomania,” as well as “for young girls who are having trouble coping with their mothers’ hair loss from chemo.”