Healthy is the New Skinny and the Perfectly Unperfected Project have released two new videos. In the first, Katie Halchishick and I talk about the whole issue of authenticity and beauty — a discussion of real v. fake similar to the one I touched on in this Jezebel piece. The second looks at the issue of bullying in schools, and explains how the PUP program can be part of the solution.
Check out Real Beauty and Bullying in Schools.
Today’s Genderal Interest column at Jezebel: Real Women Have… Bodies. It begins:
Last week, the UK lingerie chain Ann Summers launched a new campaign using what the company claims are “real women” from across England as its models. Theirs is the latest example of authenticity advertising, a trend that dates back to 2004, when Dove launched its iconic “Real Beauty” campaign. In the 21st century, “realness” is now a marketing mainstay. But it’s also become a divisive concept, as those who fall short of what’s “real” are inevitably derided as “fake.”
It’s been nearly a decade since the release of 2002′s Real Women Have Curves, the film that made America Ferrera a star and served as likely inspiration for what Dove would soon develop. As charming as the movie was, the darker implication of the phrase was hard to miss: if real women have curves, then perhaps women who don’t are “less real.” A new double-bind for women was born: those who met the skinny ideal could now be labeled “unreal,” and those who were still shamed for being heavy were now encouraged to take some sort of comfort in being more “legitimate” than their slender sisters. As a result, the real/fake dichotomy became as common — and in some ways, as toxic — as the old virgin/whore dynamic.
I have a piece up at Good Men Project today, looking at the new Man as Object exhibit at SOMARTS San Francisco. It’s an exciting initiative. We May Be Hotter than We Know looks at this exhibit. An excerpt:
Among many other things, I work as a director of a modeling and management agency, Natural Models LA. We represent female models across a broad spectrum of size, from 2 to 20, though most of the women whom we’ve signed are between 12-16. The plus-size modeling business has been around for 35 years, and is both increasingly lucrative and increasingly influential within the broader beauty industry. Though it’s taken a long time, and we still have a long way to go, we’ve succeeded in creating at least some “counter-images” in the media, images that remind us that female beauty is not just found in one size or shape. The co-founder and CEO of our agency, Katie Halchishick, was recently featured in this now-iconic shot in O Magazine. Though in many ways things are “worse” for women, we are slowly getting the chance to see female bodies that deviate from the narrow ideal but which are, nonetheless, stunningly beautiful.
But we’re not “there yet” with men. There is no equivalent “plus-size” division for men. (The few fashion editorials that have featured “larger” men have used amateurs, not professional male plus-size models, who don’t really exist yet.) While agencies like ours work hard to expand the spectrum of what is considered beautiful for women, young men are reminded that if they want to be “hot,” they have little choice but to pursue a single “ripped” ideal.
Of course, we know that not every woman is attracted to young hairless men with six-packs. We also know—even many young men know—that women can be attracted to boyfriends and husbands who have soft tummies or scrawny arms. But we tend to represent that attraction as rooted in romantic connection. In other words, if a woman is turned on by her husband’s concave chest, it’s because she’s so in love with him that even his flaws become virtues. Love is blind, we say, and point to the imperfect bodies of well-loved men to prove it.
In this video from Healthy is the New Skinny, I interview my co-founder of the Perfectly Unperfected Project, Katie Halchishick, about her remarkable O magazine photo. I was having a bad hair day, but no one’s looking at me.
Important conversation about what beauty looks like — and who has the RIGHT to talk about body image issues.
The Daily Mail runs a story built around the “mean girls” Jezebel piece — and ends up suggesting the opposite of my original conclusion.
And at Jezebel, a second story for the week: Can Men Handle Being Ogled? . Excerpt:
Not so long ago, psychologists insisted that most women simply weren’t visually aroused. Women, we were told, might have an aesthetic appreciation for a handsome guy, but they weren’t actively lusting after what they saw. After twenty years of being given permission to gaze on the hot and shirtless (from Marky Mark to Taylor Lautner), women have become more vocal than ever before about what they like to look at — and what they’re thinking about when they look. The old myth that women aren’t visual has been debunked by everyone from Sex and the City to the writers and readers at this very site.
This doesn’t mean that women’s desire is the primary cause of poor male body image. Men’s own misinterpretation of what women want is far more of the problem. (For example, many men don’t realize that their girlfriends might lust after Lautner or Gosling — and still be attracted to their own less-than-perfect male partners. These guys don’t get that desire isn’t a zero-sum game). But whatever the cause, the problem is getting worse. Male vanity, it seems, is here to stay. And the old hope that men’s experience of being objectified might lead them to stop objectifying women has proved spectacularly false.656
It’s Fat Talk Free Week again and I’ve got a couple of posts on the subject of body image and words up at Healthy is the New Skinny today. An excerpt:
You know what’s a big component of self-acceptance? Changing the way we talk about food.
How often do you hear a girl say: “Oh my God, I was so bad at lunch today!” Does she mean she robbed a little old lady on the street? Hardly. You hear that kind of talk, and you know whoever is saying those words ate something delicious (and fattening.) Similarly, if you hear a young woman (or, just maybe, a young man) say “You know, I’ve been good all week”, you know she isn’t referring to having done her homework. It means that she stuck to the diet she set for herself.
But here’s the thing: we need to lose the moral language of food. It’s okay to use the words “good” or “bad” to refer to how food tastes. But it’s not helpful to judge ourselves so harshly every time we indulge in something that is delicious but loaded with sugar or fat. And we’re not really better people every time we hold ourselves back from eating what we long to eat. You’ve heard it said “you are what you eat”, but some of us take that much too far. What we eat affects our bodies, our minds, our health – but eating fattening things doesn’t make someone “bad”, and following a strict diet doesn’t make anyone “good.”
It’s beauty week at the Good Men Project. Founder Tom Matlack has a piece asking Are Women Addicted to Beauty? Editor Lisa Hickey answers at least partly in the affirmative with her powerful Chasing Beauty: An Addict’s Memoir. My take is almost predictable, I suppose: Her Looks, Your Status: Why Men’s Claims Not to Care About Beauty Ring Hollow. Excerpt:
The desire for the approval of other men shapes straight men’s sexual desires. Think of the very reasonable claims of many men that they’re not attracted to size zero, skin-and-bones supermodels. Lots of guys claim, with apparent sincerity, that they love women with “curves.” So why are men so interested in dating skinny models? (A question asked and answered brilliantly in Ted Demme’s marvelous Beautiful Girls.) The answer, of course, is that a great many men care as much about what other guys think of their girlfriends and wives as they do about their own desires. The young guy who claims to love curves may be sincere, but he may also have to endure the taunts of his peers, who’ll call him a “chubby chaser” – or simply remark dismissively, “Dude, your chick’s fat.”
In Guy World, models imbue their beaux with a special and rare cachet in the eyes of other men. And that cachet is more than worth dating a woman with a body type that is less of a turn-on than a great many people imagine. This isn’t true of all men. But it drives a great many guys throughout their lives: from high school boys who sense the homosocial boost of dating a cheerleader to middle-aged men who suddenly start dating “hotties” half their age. Put simply, it’s not about the sex, it’s about the status.
And while we’re talking beauty, let me start plugging Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir, available for pre-order in advance of its October 11 US release.
Note: This is my personal post on the American Apparel controversy. For the “official editorial” I penned for Healthy is the New Skinny on the story, go here.
American Apparel’s “XL Model Contest” has concluded, and we await the company’s announcement of a winner. As of the close of voting last week, the leading contestant for the spot as AA’s first plus-size model was Nancy Upton, whose photo entries seemed cleverly designed to satirize the sexualized, over-exposed aesthetic for which the Los Angeles-based clothing company is notorious. (The CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney, has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment.)
While we wait to find out if Upton will be declared the winner, the media coverage of the contest (and the guerrilla campaign to undermine its intent) has been intense. Lost in the discussion, however, are the voices of professional plus-size models — all of whom had long been openly spurned by American Apparel – at least until the sudden contest offer. (It’s not much of an offer, of course: just a trip to L.A. and a photoshoot. No guarantee of an actual contract.)
(As co-founder of the Perfectly Unperfected Project and a director of the Healthy is the New Skinny program I work closely with the plus-size modeling community. I serve as an adviser to Natural Models LA, a new agency that not only represents straight-size and plus-size models but also pushes for more opportunities for “talent” in the industry’s “no woman’s land” — too small for plus, too “big” for straight-size. Natural just put out a new promo video featuring several of our L.A. based team members.)
Many professional plus-size models did make the decision to enter the contest, despite the fat-shaming language AA chose to use in their promotions (like invitations to send in photos of “you and your junk”). As of the close of the contest, two good friends of the Healthy is the New Skinny campaign, Erin Tinsley and Hillary Officer, were trailing just behind Upton. Unlike the apparent winner, Tinsley and Officer took the contest seriously, overcoming real misgivings about American Apparel’s deserved reputation in order to enter.
Why would professional plus-size models enter a contest in which there’s little chance of a payout? For publicity, sure, but also because the plus-size modeling community is eager to expose the American (and global) public to a more inclusive spectrum of what is beautiful. In an industry where so many models are unhealthily thin (though to be fair, not every size two model is unhealthy), plus-size models want to offer a vision that is both more attainable and more realistic while still retaining glamor.
But this attempt to broaden the spectrum of beauty regularly meets with ridicule, anger, and pushback. The ridicule comes from some of the more reactionary wings of the industry, including the organizers of last year’s New York Fashion Week who told plus-size denim designer Jessica Svoboda that they “didn’t want to see a bunch of elephants stomping on our runway.” The anger comes, with no small degree of justification, from many women who are horrified that plus-size models are still so, well, small. Working with Healthy is the New Skinny, I often hear comments like this: “This makes me feel so bad. I’m a size 18 and if even the larger plus-size models are smaller than me, what does that make me? A whale?” Or: “I expect plus-size models to represent real women and girls. We all know that high fashion models are much thinner than normal, and that they have unattainable bodies for most of us. But plus-size models should look more like the average. If size 8 or even 10 is plus-size, that’s just wrong.”
And the pushback comes from those who are critical of the notion that the modeling industry can be redeemed. For many of my feminist allies, for example, broadening the beauty standard is putting lipstick on the proverbial pig. Meghan Murphy writes this week:
While I think it is true that there is a very limited version of beauty in our culture, particularly when we look to mainstream media, and that this impacts the self-esteem of many women, young and old, I don’t think that the solution lies in sexualizing and objectifying ‘curvaceous bods’. I mean, it’s not as though bigger women aren’t objectified and sexualized anyway in our culture. It’s not as though bigger women aren’t raped or treated as sexual objects just as skinny women are. I don’t think there is any reason at all to cheer for this contest (even if a pretty awesome lady won the contest by subverting and mocking it)…
In other words, the fashion and modeling industries are so fundamentally at odds with women’s real liberation and happiness that any attempt to try to transform these businesses will either meet with failure or be slickly co-opted. Best not to try.
I’ve never liked American Apparel’s clothing, and honestly, find Dov Charney to be the creep de résistance of the rag trade. I don’t like the way the XL campaign was promoted, and I admit to admiring the clever and creative way in which Nancy Upton satirized the whole process. Despite that, I also stand in strong support of the individual professionals like Erin and Hillary who entered the contest seriously. Modeling is, after all, a profession like any other; it requires skill as well as beauty. (AA would have done best to reach out directly to an agency that books plus-size models.)
I also remain passionately committed to the principle of incremental transformation. Organizational or personal change happens through a combination of external pressure and internal reflection. The campaigns I’m involved in work both within and without the modeling and fashion industries, pushing relentlessly, creatively, and to some, frustratingly gradually for a more inclusive, healthier, more sustainable (and attainable) vision of beauty. To the extent that the conversation around the AA campaign moves us closer to achieving that vision by broadening opportunities for women to model outside of the traditional size-range, this is real progress.
Though I originally published this piece at Scarleteen, Healthy is the New Skinny reprints today my Letter to a Teenage Girl. Excerpt:
It’s important too to note that however much skin you are revealing, you are never responsible for another person’s inappropriate behavior. Save for the blind, we are all visual people. We notice each other. There is no right not to be seen. But there is a right not to be stared at with a penetrating gaze of the sort that makes you feel deeply uncomfortable. While it may seem that you get those leers more often when you’re showing more skin, you’ve probably noticed that you get those creepy stares at other times as well. And the key thing you need to know is that men can control their eyes — they really can — and women can control their judgment. Your body is not so powerful that it can drive others to distraction. (And yes, if we’re honest, sometimes we wish that our bodies were that powerful, particularly if it meant drawing the attention of someone to whom we are attracted!) If some men choose to be distracted by you, that is their choice, a decision for which they (not you) are solely responsible. No matter what anyone tells you, you need to remember that.
It is not inconsistent to want to be seen and not be stared at. You know the difference, I suspect, between an “appreciative look” (which can feel very validating) and the “penetrating stare” that leaves you feeling like crawling into a hole. While people are not required to give you the former, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to avoid giving you the latter. It’s also not unreasonable to want guys your age to be interested in you, and want the creepy old ones to leave you alone. Remember, it’s not hypocrisy or naïveté on your part to dress in a way that you hope will get you that positive attention you want without also bringing the negative attention you fear and loathe.
My column at Healthy is the New Skinny focuses this week on tattoos and piercings:My Body Belongs to Me. Excerpt:
An eyebrow or lip piercing that seems to “mar” a pretty face is a way for the owner of that face to say, “Hey, this belongs to me, not you.” That’s a powerful and appealing statement.
I’m not saying that teens only get tattoos as an act of rebellion; it’s obvious that there are as many reasons for getting tats or piercings as there are people who get them. But there’s no question that the desire to mark the body as one’s own (rather than one’s parents, or one’s peers, or the fashion industry’s) is a huge part of the appeal of permanent body modification. But tattoos or piercings aren’t for everyone. Without judging or criticizing those who do choose to tattoo or pierce, we need to work harder to give young women alternative strategies for taking public ownership of their bodies. Whether inked or not, every girl deserves the reminder that her body belongs to her alone.