Polarized Bodies

Everyone seems to be talking about Crystal Renn these days. The New York Times claims she’s “The Triumph of the Size 12s.” Jezebel says she’s not. And commenters think that having Crystal Renn in 8 page photoshoots is encouraging obesity. So here’s my take.

Photographers and Designers told Crystal Renn she was too fat, now they tell her she’s too skinny. I don’t understand why we feel the need to regulate Crystal Renn’s weight. If they’re looking for a different look, why not find a different person? People are constantly surprised that Crystal Renn doesn’t look fat, but why are we so surprised? According to the measurements I’ve found on the internet it would appear Renn’s BMI puts her in the “normal range” not “overweight” and no not “obese” and no not “morbidly obese,” and we already know BMI is kinda bullshit. So what’s with this freak-out-she’s-encouraging-obesity bullshit?

This to me speaks a lot to the way we think about fat. We tend to think in extremely polarized terms. A person is either fat and thus lazy, ugly, gross, insert-negative-adjective-here, or they are not fat, and thus not those things. This to me is pretty apparent in how clothes are organized. I’m an in-betweenie of sorts on the fat spectrum of clothing sizes. I can range anywhere from a 12 to a 16, depending on the make and cut and what part of my body we are fitting. What’s interesting of course is that the 12s are sold in “normal stores” and the 16s are sold in “plus size stores.”  The clothes that are sold in a size 12 are still flattering, they’re “in,” but the second you get into the 16s you go to ponchos and moo-moos and weird drape-y things in horrible giant prints. I don’t really understand why designers seem to give up the second you get above a 14. Folks just need an inch here or there, and excuse me for being so blunt by why the hell is 14 the size in between “normal clothes” and “plus size clothes” when that is the size the average American woman wears? 14 should be the size we design all clothes around and should be the samples runway models wear–not supposed “plus size models.”

Another thing I’m sort of disturbed by is this whole sexualization and fetishization over the white skin of some “plus sized” models like in Renn’s 8 page spread in Glamour, “You’d Look Even Better Naked” or in the recent “plus size issue” of V magazine. I don’t claim to know why plus size models always have to have white skin and lose their clothes for their photoshoots, but it’s making me wonder. Jezebel tries to put a finger on it in their “So, Why Are Plus-Size Models So Often Naked, Anyway?”

…This is as good a time as any to address the fact that a large number of plus-size shoots feature nudity. Of course, so do many fashion shoots with straight-size models: but because as a culture we associate larger women’s bodies with different meanings than smaller women’s bodies, photographing a plus-size model naked can have very different connotations. Eroticizing a plus-size model is a pretty easy, and in some ways predictable, choice. Do the images rely on the old trope of the voluptuous woman as sexually salacious? Is it just that the stylist couldn’t (or couldn’t be bothered) to pull clothes in the right sizes?

Personally, I’m guessing there are probably many reasons for this focus on naked white plus size models. One is that I don’t think there are enough awesome clothes made and sold for women of a certain size for which the models can model which I’ve already addressed. And secondly, I think when we add the fact that these women are larger than most models, I think photographers don’t know what to do. We’ve already polarized folks into fat and not fat, good and not good. So inorder to demonstrate that “hey she’s not all those bad things we associate with fat”, they rely more heavily on her female-ness, and her white-ness. Instead of showing actual diverse images of beauty, we just amp up old ideas of about Snow White being the fairest lady of them all who spends her life waiting for strange men in the woods.

If you’re looking for actual diversity in fashion, check out the fatshionista community which describes itself as ” a diverse fat-positive, anti-racist, disabled-friendly, multi-gendered, queer-flavored, politically-engaged community, open to everyone” They’re pretty rad and frankly more useful than any fashion mag I’ve ever seen since it’s real clothes worn by real folks.

Read Full Post »

In the PETA-bashing vein…

I think I’ve found another influential form of bigotry in my history. Were y’all raised with To Kill A Mockingbird in your lives? I read that book when I was younger and saw the movie. It was one of the first books that challenged me to have morals. In case y’all aren’t familiar with it the basic premise of the story is that a disabled black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of rape by a lower class white woman, Mayella Ewell. The main character is Scout, the daughter of the white, middle class lawyer, Atticus finch, who defends the black man in court. Through the story we learn that the woman accusing is lying, pressured by her essentially evil father, Bob Ewell. The moral of the story is that Atticus is the best man ever for defending the poor black people that no one will defend from the awful poor white man.

In the same way that PETA uses sexism to promote vegetarianism, To Kill A Mockingbird uses victim-blaming and classism (and racism?) to combat racism. I have NEVER witnessed in my life a woman falsely accusing a man of sexual assault… it’s hard enough to prove it as it is, it’s not like our legal system works in victims’ favor in the first place… AND YET  my dad and so many people I know immediately jump to accusing a woman for her own rape. This movie, I am sure, planted that seed in many people’s minds.

In To Kill A Mockingbird I see the danger of bringing up “moral issues”. I saw myself loving this story for its narrative about a person who defends the underdog and attributing much of my early formed morals to it… and now I see how the Ewells, the bad guys, just happen to be working class, how Atticus fits the paternalistic white man saving the poor [racial minority] folk archetype told again and again (see Avatar, Pocahontas, Fern Gully…), how the accusation of rape happens to portrayed as something only an evil, conniving person could muster… And yet it’s still one of those movies put on a pedestal as one of “the greatest”.

Read Full Post »

The racial politics of Avatar

The racial politics of Avatar

If Jake’s attraction is primarily sexual, it has to be interpreted through the historical White fetishization of women of color. From the slave masters’ midnight visits to the contemporary exoticization of Asian and Black female sexuality, women of color have served as the leading figures of White sexual fantasies.  In this context, when Jake Sees Neytiri (undeniably, a woman of color), how do we know that he isn’t just seeing a hypersexual body that he can use for his own pleasure?

Read Full Post »

Sixteen Candles

A few nights ago I sat down with my whole family to watch a movie: Sixteen Candles directed by John Hughes (who also gave us Home Alone and the Breakfast Club)

I don’t know what it was about this PG rated “sweet and funny” (Roger Ebert) teen classic; maybe it was the fact that when it came time for “the geek” to rape the beautiful, passed out prom queen, nobody gave it a second thought.  That when the “jock but actually a really nice guy” character says “I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I’ve got Caroline in the bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to,” it’s taken as a sign of his great maturity and sweetness that he doesn’t in fact violate her “ten different ways”  …rather than a sign that he isn’t a rapist and a criminal. That aforementioned Carolina clearly deserves to be raped, after all, she’s a beautiful cheerleader, and it’s about time the tables turned!

I won’t even go into the racism; suffice to say there is a foreign exchange student from China named Long Duck Dong.

If this is a PG rated classic, the kind of movie we show to twelve year olds, the kind of movie a whole family watches together on thanksgiving, the kind of sweet nostalgic movie taken as the antithesis of the violent, misogynistic, torture porn and regular porn and all the other garbage my mom finds so offensive…and it’s blatantly endorsing sexual abuse.

Well, I guess I already knew we lived in a rape culture…

Thoughts?

Read Full Post »

Nicholas D. Kristoff. I’m calling you out.

Kristoff wrote a column this Thursday that addressed a very serious issue. It’s a NYT column about how rape kits often don’t get tested. I was glad he pointed out things, and this issue that is rarely addressed.

That said it weirded me out when he ended the piece with:

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

WTF is that? Not that I don’t expect these sorts of xenophobic, warhawking, Orientalist comments. Because I do– I just expect them to be more subtle. And no one seems to call Kristoff out on this racist bullshit. So Kristoff, I’m calling you out:

That quip was unneccessary. It was racist. It was Orientalist. It is totally part of a larger project to re-demonize Afghanistan. And it shouldn’t have been at the end of your column. The beginning of your column. Or the middle of your column. Thanks for being an ass.

Read Full Post »

Lady whachoo talkin bout

So recently I went to this learn how to network post graduation thing. I won’t say exactly who it was I talked to because I don’t want to jeopardize my career in case someone wants to find this and use it against me. It was a group of older women. The older women at my table (and all the other tables that I could see) were both white. The students at my table, including me, were all South and East Asian.

The younger lady at our table talked about how women have historically been bad at networking. I was like whaa? She clarified by saying that women are better at networking as mothers, not as employees. I was like oh. It kind of made sense. American women didn’t even used to be employees, as in America, it used to be culturally unacceptable until very recently for women to have jobs. So it makes sense that American women, as a group, could potentially be lacking in the kind of assertiveness that is required for successful professional networking. An interesting theory, at least.

The older lady, more authoritative, agreed with her peer. She said something to the effect of, “Yes, that’s true. Especially when you come from a certain country, where if you’re a woman, you don’t just go up to a person and say hello, you don’t just do that.” She went on to look at the student to her left, who had a Vietnamese accent, and nodded understandably at her.

At the end of the meeting, I decided that I really liked both these women who were helping us learn how to network. Overall, they seemed like good people to get to know. But at the time of the above little chat about the inability of women from “certain countries” to network, I felt offended.

Is that reasonable? Does it make sense for me to be annoyed at this white woman for pointing out what she sees to be the truth? And isn’t it kind of the truth, in objective terms? That women from South and East Asian countries aren’t given the latitude to be bold in professional settings? Was this lady being racist, in talking about the passivity of Asian women? Part of me is saying “Yes” and the other is saying “No.”

Furthermore, am I being racist to readily accept that women from South and East Asian countries are forced to assume less-than-assertive roles in their societies’ workplace? I lived in India for 13 years and what I saw completely validates her statement. Should I hold my horses before I extend this observation to large, heterogeneous parts of the rest of the world? Are “Asian” women, whatever that means, actually not passive? Is it anti-feminist to think of them as passive? How is “passive” being constructed in this case?

What is really complicating the picture here? I am so confused. Readers, and I know there are millions of you, feel free to chime in with insights.

Read Full Post »

more on eve ensler and imperialism

three cheers for eve ensler?

lucie this may be of particular interest to you

i know that we are trying to be more congenial on this blog but if people want to have long debates about this please email me. and if you dont know what my email address is, i guess ask someone who might? (sarah) i dont wanna post it here.

Read Full Post »

Vagina Horriblogues

The play was worse than this edit

So I just watched, for the first time, Mount Holyoke College’s production of The Vagina Monologues last night. (Find script here) I was expecting to feel encouraged and heartened by the play. But throughout the whole damn thing, I wanted to get up and leave. It was just awful. I hate this play. I’m feeling pretty angry right now, so the stuff I write is not gonna be eloquent or totally thought-out. All the fuck yous are directed towards the author and the characters (and sometimes, the actors who performed it) in the play, not to anyone on this blog (yet, unless someone says something that would make me say “fuck you” to them but I think I’d be more civil to you people because you’re my community). But here are some preliminary thoughts.

The Vagina Monologues are a huge step back for feminism. And here is why (not in order of levels of offensiveness):

1. It glorifies motherhood. One of the last scenes is about how it is so beautiful to watch a bruised vagina covered with shit and blood, giving birth, and being tired right after having given birth. Lady, stop staring at other people’s tired, oppressed vaginas. And stop telling women that having babies is wonderful. It is not. It fucking sucks. I wouldn’t know personally, but this is what every mother says to me, before feeling guilty and quickly saying how much they love their children. I know you love your children, mothers. But that is not the point. The point is that pushing their too-large heads through your too-small vaginas is a fucking sucky-ass way to do it, and it hurts, and what the fuck is this patriarchal glorification of women’s vaginas not only being beautiful (i.e. to be used for sex) but also useful (to give birth). How wonderful! Now you can have whatever you want, men, because women are in cahoots with you because of this stupid play.

2. It condones rape. A 24-year old woman molests a 16-year old girl, and the girl is all happy and loves it because she realizes that she doesn’t have to hate her vagina, that she can be a happy lesbian without depending on a man. Nice job. Now you have to depend on sketchy older women to show you how to really do it. I know how to do it myself, thank you. I have been molested, and I have been raped, but I know perfectly well how to pleasure myself. I learned it on my own, and I don’t like the message that other people have to validate my genitals for me. This is a mixed offense, because I do like the fact that the girl finally is over her past of being raped by a man, and over her past of a repressive mother telling her not to touch her “coochie snorcher.” But more often than not, if you are a sketch older women who molests a younger girl, it’s not going to turn out that way. She’s probably going to feel weird and guilty and molested. It is not a good message. There is also this other scene in which the woman is like this ditzy lady, and she’s talking about how this completely plain person “Bob” first made her see how her vagina is beautiful. Bob is a fucking asshole. He takes off her clothes, even though she says she doesn’t want that, and stares at her genitals for “almost an hour”. He says to her panting, “you’re so beautiful” while staring at her vagina. BOB YOU FUCKING SUCK AND I HOPE THAT YOU DIE. WHY ARE YOU EQUATING THIS PERSON’S BEAUTY WITH THE BEAUTY OF HER PUSSY? Why do you refuse to have sex with her without forcing off her clothes first? It’s not like she hasn’t already given you permission to have your way (see rape) with her. It ends up a happy story, with the woman finally loving herself and her genitals, all due to Bob. Again, I wouldn’t suggest this strategy. Bobs of the world, take warning: do not take off a woman’s clothes when she doesn’t want you to! I don’t care if you’re trying to show her how beautiful she (i.e. her vagina) is!!!!!! It is a form of sexual assault, and it’s more likely going to end up making her feel weird, guilty, and raped.

3. Very few (I think there were two, out of a cast of about 25) women of color chose to participate in the play, which a friend pointed out could have just been coincidence. She said that there also weren’t very many blondes who were acting in the play either (actually there were, I checked). But I think that women of color are probably offended by the play, because a) it doesn’t reflect their concerns and b) because it contains terrible racist expressions. For example, during the dominatrix sex-worker’s monologue, she talks about how much she loves it when women moan. Then she proceeds to pornographically demonstrate the moans of those women she has pleasured throughout her career as a sex-worker. She does an impression of the “power moan”, the “clit moan”, “the vaginal moan”, the “combo clit-vaginal moan”. All fine and good (not really, she was objectifying herself and other women, in order to give the play a measure of commercial success. Nice job compromising yourself so that the play can sell. Really. I hate you, stupid person). BUT THEN, she does the “African American moan” during which she moans in a really deep voice and at the end of it, says something that I can’t quite catch, but that I’m sure plays off some racist stereotype about African Americans. Nice job. You fucking suck and I hate you. How dare you perform this shit? How dare you try to say that black women moan differently than white women? How dare you homogenize a race like that you racist assholes? The message was that black women moan this one specific way, when feeling sexual pleasure. While white women can choose between a vast array of moans. I wasn’t aware that they were reserved, lady. I can’t even go on, this is such bullshit, I’m not sure how to express the violent rage that I am feeling, not sure how to express what is wrong with this particular monologue apart from what I said above. (It is worth noting that in the version of the script that I have posted a link to above, there is no mention of this “African American” moan, so that is just Mount Holyoke actors finding their new unique own way to be racist. But there is one of a “semi-religious” moan during which the sex-worker is supposed to say “oy-oy-oy” like a Jewish person. At my school, the sex worker character said out loud “Jewish moan” and then she did the horrible “oy-oy” and I wanted to kill myself. Nice job being racist again, Vagina Monologues, you never fail to disappoint.)

4. It reduces women down to their genitals!!!!!! (see #2, the example of Bob and the ditzy lady). WOMEN ARE NOT THEIR GODDAMN GENITALS. There’s all this bullshit in this play about how you are your clitoris, how you are your vagina. Fucking bullshit. Shut the fuck up. This is what men say to me everyday of my life. That I am nothing more than my ability to give, and receive, sexual pleasure. I know that receiving sexual pleasure for women is this new thing that they’ve never been allowed to do before, and it’s this like revolution that should make all women happy and take advantage of it. But this tactic of “don’t worry, it will feel good” is bullshit. This is rapist rhetoric. How the fuck is this play being championed as the messenger for the women’s rights movement? This play oppresses women, and oppresses me. I’m fucking angry.

5. There is this overt sexualization of women the whole fucking time they’re talking about sexual pleasure. These women are slithering all over each other in this horrible commercialized way, to indicate how receptive they are to sex, and how their discoveries have brought them so much sexual joy, which they are expressing with promiscuity. The kind of promiscuity that turns on straight American men. IS THIS GIRLS GONE WILD THAT I AM WATCHING? Actors (and no I will not call them actresses even though they’re women) of Mount Holyoke, are you fucking kidding me? Why are you coming onto the damn stage wearing high heels, tight clothes, corsets and fishnets, and talking to me about how I’m supposed to relate to you, to be “liberated” and “sexual” like you? I don’t fucking wear fishnets. I wear men’s clothes and sneakers. I am not going to put on your ridiculous torture-get-up and go around championing women’s rights while simultaneously promoting the values of the patriarchy: i.e. the constant talk and constant use and constant display of the vagina. I don’t like to use my vagina. I don’t want things inside of it. It hurts. I don’t want babies coming out of it. That would also hurt. (I do like using my clitoris, just to let you know Lucie, because I know you don’t want women throwing out the clitoris with the push up bra, and obviously I don’t want that either because glorifying the clitoris is way more okay than glorifying the vagina, in my opinion). I don’t want TO HEAR A BUNCH OF APOLOGISTS FOR FEMININITY, for torturous push up bras and high heels. Femininity deserves no apology. It is horrible and it is a tool against women (see Irene’s post about what makes her heart sing).

6. The play’s whole shtick is about how women shouldn’t be scared to look at their vaginas, and shouldn’t have hatred for it. This is a good point. But you know what? Although women’s self-hatred of their bodies does have to do with men making them feel bad about themselves, I think probably a good reason for women not looking at their vaginas is because THEY ARE MOSTLY IRRELEVANT TO OUR LIVES. All my vagina is good for is having sex with men, and giving birth, and providing an outlet for menstrual blood. THAT IS ALL IT DOES FOLKS. THAT IS NOT WHERE I FEEL MOST OF MY SEXUAL PLEASURE. THIS IS A MYTH FORMED AND PERPETUATED BY THE PATRIARCHY, men, who want you to use their vaginas to have sex with them. Why did this stupid author not name this thing the “Clitoris Monologues”? Though there is some mention of clitoral pleasure here and there, it is hardly the centerpiece of the play. I don’t fucking want to use my vagina. A vagina isn’t even like a thing, it is a space, it is a potential space, which can be opened when it is forced open by a penis or a baby. And I’m not fucking interested in fucking men or giving birth to babies. Fuck you.

7. It is steeped in materialism. Example of the girl who wants comfortable, luxurious consumer products for her vagina, like cotton panties built in with a French tickler, or fur-covered stirrups to put her feet inside when she is having a gyno exam. SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID IDIOT. I HATE YOU AND I HATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU. Do you know who is weaving the cotton for your damn cotton panties??? IT IS WOMEN IN SWEATSHOPS. Do you know where the fuck fur comes from? FROM CLUBBING SEALS TO DEATH. You are probably not even a vegetarian!!!!! I don’t even understand what the fuck this stupid fucking asshole is talking about. She wants to perpetuate the oppression on minority groups such as sweatshop workers and animals, so that she can fulfill her glorious American-style consumerist attitude towards her beloved vagina. Nice job white American feminist imperialist. No, actually, I was kidding, you didn’t do a nice job. I loathe you.

8. It makes fun of women!!!!!!!!! Feminism is about how women want to be taken seriously, you assholes!!! There are these insane monologues, by characters that are oblivious of their comedic value. There is a character who gets really upset because she thinks she’s “lost” her clitoris. She’s a full-grown woman, might I add. I think its worth noting that the patriarchy does make some women go crazy, and have crazy fears like this. But most women know perfectly well that they can’t lose their clitoris. It doesn’t fly away if you’ve done something bad. Of course, the whole audience erupts with laughter when she is expressing her fear (I can’t find this part on the script either, but I know I heard it last night). How silly, insane, and hysterical this woman is. Let’s laugh at her, and her concerns. And she isn’t the only silly, insane, hysterical woman on the play. There are a number of them, who all say ridiculous things to be funny, so that the play can be commercially successful. I’m incredibly unhappy with this. Enough laughing at women!!!!! Enough using them to make profits at their expense! Enough using feminism for monetary gain! ENOUGH. Just stop it. Don’t laugh at me. Don’t make me sound funny, and insane, and flighty, and womanly. We already have to fight that reputation. Don’t trivialize my concerns, sexist assholes.

9. At the end, there was this really upsetting slideshow about women who have been systematically raped in the Congo as a war tactic. And I suppose maybe it is good for us all to be aware of this happening. Every year, the people who do V-Day pick a different cause, apparently. But then, it ends, leaving us nothing but the assumption that “this needs to stop.” I distinctly felt that “these men are barbaric” but I don’t want to have to be made to feel like that. This stupid slideshow made these women seem like victims who couldn’t do anything in their lives, and the men seem like horrible barbarians. “Dark hordes,” to use the words of Bq. Homogenization. It didn’t say so explicitly, but that was the message. Is looking at this slideshow, and being made to homogenize the men (as nothing but barbarians) and women (as nothing but victims) of other cultures, and then forgetting all about, at all a good thing? NO it is not. It’s bad. (um not really expressing things well here, I have to go do hw real quick) If you want to help women in the Congo, you have to help men too. You have to learn a shitload about it, read and write and talk, and go there and be there. Don’t donate $3 and hope that it helps. Maybe the money is going to go towards the elites with power, who may choose to hurt the victims even more. Do you really know where your donation is going? Have you looked it up? Have you done so much as a cursory internet search? This message of throwing some money at a situation and hoping that it helps to make it better is a terrible message. There should be people at this play who know a lot about it, who give a speech, who lead workshops, who discuss books, on the topic. At any of these ridiculous plays, atleast there should be that measure of follow-up to atleast partially redeem the imperialist know-it-all attitude. (I would like to thank Bq for her dialogue with me, which shed light on all that I discuss in #9, which I was previously almost completely unaware of.)

There’s probably a lot more that I’ve totally forgotten to mention. As I said, I hate this play. It is a step backwards for feminism, and for humanity. And worst, it is considered one of the biggest progresses that the women’s rights movement has produced, which is obviously a really dangerous misunderstanding.

Read Full Post »