Fotoshop by Adobé will solve ALL your beauty problems.
Back when I was an editor at a tech magazine in San Francisco and Adobe representatives would come to demo the newest version of Photoshop, I found myself thinking, “Wow, women just Photoshop themselves every day — except it’s called makeup and cosmetic surgery.” In short, tech was imitating life. The maker of this satirical commercial for “Fotoshop by Adobé”, Jesse Rosten, had the same idea.
Most of the products in the fake Fotoshop line (Healing Brush, Liquify, Hue/Saturation, but not “pro-pixel intensifying fauxtanical hydro-jargon microbeat extract featuring nutritive volumizing technology”) are real tools in the program Photoshop. If you want to see them in action, check out this video by Dove.
My favorite quote: “You don’t have to rely on a healthy body image or self-respect anymore.”
Also, how cool that it was directed by a man! Thanks, Jesse, for helping make the point that Photoshopping — and our beauty standards — are completely unreal.
Maxim magazine considers feminism a disease to be “cured”
Maxim's handy guide to "curing a feminist"
I’m not a fan of Maxim magazine, and one glance at any of their covers will tell you why. Geared towards a hyper-masculine gaze – the intense sexualization of the models, the constant reinforcement of the message that women’s role is one of sexual servitude, the comparisons of women to toys, puppets, or food items – the singular, narrow definition of beauty is really too much for me to handle.
Recently, I was reminded of one of Maxim’s egregious offenses that deserved some revisiting. Continue reading
1940s ads: Fat-shaming is rooted in skinny-shaming
I sometimes wonder if the cultural obsession over weight, physical appearance, and body-shaming is something new — something that may have emerged in the past couple of decades as a trend that will crest, and then, hopefully, diminish. Unfortunately, this hope was dashed when I came across a string of old advertisements that were published during the 1940s. Take a look:
Ring in the new year without body shame
Looks like that apple could lose a few pounds.
The New Year is upon us, and with it comes the pervasive, and often heavily marketed, promise of a better tomorrow. About 40% of American adults make at least one New Year’s resolution. Goals range from drinking less to reading more books, but unsurprisingly, in our body-conscious culture (in which rates of both eating disorders and obesity have risen dramatically), the most popular resolution is weight loss. A 2006 ABC News poll shows 45% of American adults cite weight loss as a New Year’s resolution — 55% of American women and 36% of American men. Continue reading
Can the Radio City Rockettes be revolutionary?
The high-kicks are ever-present in the Christmas Spectacular
The Rockettes have long been revered as a glorified group of long-legged eye-candy, but recent changes to their traditional dance numbers claim to be challenging the show’s status quo.
A recent New York Times piece “Rockettes: Rebooted for a New Era” highlights an attempted shift in the theme of the famed showcase and the function of its illustrious Rockettes. Continue reading
Does eating Dove chocolate really have to involve “confession”?
On rare occasion, the media isn’t blatantly in-your-face sexist, racist, or ageist. In fact, it’s the more subtle messages, especially those which appear to be about female empowerment, that are harder to scrutinize.
Take this Dove® chocolate commercial, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUBchloHPmM Continue reading
Lady Gaga’s “Marry the Night” video makes the psych ward seem hot
By now, Lady Gaga fans have probably already seen her latest: a fourteen-minute opus that is allegedly a music video for her song “Marry the Night”. I say “allegedly” because the song itself doesn’t even start until nearly nine minutes in, after an extended sequence where Gaga narrates about trauma and we get to witness her smearing Cheerios all over her body and wearing a maxi pad as a bra, in what I can only assume is her usual songwriting process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cggNqDAtJYU Continue reading
H&M heralds the dawn of the “virtual mannequin”
One of these things is not like the other! Oh, wait...
Between print media, TV ads, and virtual promotions, we media watchdogs have seen it all — rib cages, spines, cleavage, you name it. Though the women portrayed in most catalogs are typically white, unhealthily underweight, and sexualized, we could at least find solace in the fact that their bodies were their bodies — a.k.a, not computer-generated stock photos.
Yep, that’s right folks. H&M used a single, completely computer-generated model in order to promote its swimsuit and lingerie lines. Unsurprisingly, the model body is white, with sizable breasts and protruding hipbones. All H&M had to do was switch the heads atop the body and voila! — a “new” model to promote a different item of clothing. Continue reading
NBC’s Parks and Recreation promotes feminism for everyone
Amy Poehler as working woman and feminist Leslie Knope
As a media consumer, I usually have more to criticize than praise. Our televisions are constantly filled with stick-thin celebrities, diet ads, and negative messages about women’s bodies. So when a show has a woman-positive, even feminist message, it deserves recognition.
Enter Parks and Recreation, a sitcom about small government in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. In a recent episode, “Smallest Park,” simple-minded assistant Andy decides to take a class at a community college. By randomly pointing to a page in the course catalog with his eyes closed, he chooses Introduction to Women Studies. Continue reading
Lesbian storylines make a desperate grab for Sweeps Week TV ratings
The OC's Marissa and Alex shortly before their much-hyped first kiss.
Sweeps Week, the week(s) during the television season when Nielsen ratings data is collected (most recently at the end of November), is not known for quality. What it is known for are live episodes, celebrity cameos, character deaths, cliffhangers, and of course, the infamous shark jump. But beyond these trivial stunts, a disturbing trend has emerged: the Sweeps Week Lesbian.
I am not referring to coming-out episodes (see: Ellen, 1997), but rather the television trope involving one of the main female characters entering into a relationship with a negligible minor female character or guest star.
Signs a lesbian relationship may be purely for ratings include: a promo stressing the moments leading up to the Sweeps Week Lesbian kiss, one of the involved female characters stressing how different kissing a woman is/how soft her lips are, and one or more of the male characters acting shocked but pleased upon learning about the lesbian relationship. Continue reading