In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Fashion

So should we just start calling high heels “body modification”?

Disclaimer: I’m in heels today, as I am most workdays. They’re really cute Oxford booties, black patent with white topstitching. They’re currently sitting on the floor next to my desk. According to new research, that might not actually be helping.

Researchers at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, have been looking at the physiological impact of heel-wearing on women’s feet–not just the back pain and the foot-crunching, but changes on the muscle and tendon level. Those changes? Significant, they found, and negative and long-lasting.

Fat acceptance, circa 1957

Hell yeah, she can look just as pretty as her less generously proportioned friends.

1957 ad for Chubbette clothing with the headline, "Your chubby lass can be the belle of her class"
Chubbette - clothes for the chunky lass in your life

She can also be as happy as a hit with a rollicking beat, and she can have a tummy and still look yummy. And those dresses are really cute. But, um, Chubbette? What, was “Fatshionista” already taken?

And yes, they are “fashions to make girls 6 to 16 look slimmer,” rather than “fashions to make girls feel cute,” but it could be worse. She could be Tracy Harper, bless her flower-clutching heart.

Auf’ed Is A Word In Every Gender: A Few Reality TV Notes

So here’s the thing: while waiting this past weekend in my just-across-the-block-from-the-evacuation-zone apartment for the threatened transformation of New York from this:

Into this:

…I did not spend my weekend writing posts for Feministe, as was my brief, but instead watching Project Runway.

Project Runway Australia.

I won’t qualify Project Runway as a guilty pleasure. It’s a full-on, bells and whistles, so much fun that even a lapsed Catholic can enjoy it simple pleasure. I started watching the U. S. show in its fourth season, and have been devoted ever since. (Although I do have a few words for you, Mr. Christian Soriano! Love your clothes–but lose the catchphrase.)

But what are you going to do when you’re all caught up on the current season, and still need your “let’s make a dress from tile grout and shower curtains!” fix? Easy–watch the international editions, starting with Australia.

So fiancée and I huddled next to our cats and our “Go Bag” to watch Season Two of PR: A. Which leads me to the subject of today’s musings-posing-as-a-post: reality shows, and transness, and Anthony Capon.

Read More…Read More…

I’m too pretty to come up with a title for this post. I wonder if my brother’s busy.

Unimportant update: Turns out my brother was actually busy recovering from back surgery, which slipped my mind only for a second, I swear. Regardless, he was game to do my homework for me, thank God.

I believe the children are our future, let them blah blah whatever

Screw some homework, amiright? (Actually, yeah, screw some homework. I’m all for education, but I hated homework.) Our girls have better things to do, like listening to Justin Bieber and being pretty. That’s what J.C. Penney thinks, anyway.

I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me

Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out? She’ll love this tee that’s just as cute and sassy as she is.

No, it actually says that. Not even “I’m too busy to do homework,” but too pretty, because prettiness is a barrier to homework-doing ability. Thank God there’s a guy around to take care of that. A fine message for our girls, sure to inspire them on their way into a lovely, dim adulthood.

Thankfully J.C. Penney was quick to pull the shirt and issue an apology:

J.C. Penney is committed to being America’s destination for great style and great value for the whole family. We agree that the “Too pretty” t-shirt does not deliver an appropriate message, and we have immediately discontinued its sale. Our merchandise is intended to appeal to a broad customer base, not to offend them. We would like to apologize to our customers and are taking action to ensure that we continue to uphold the integrity of our merchandise that they have come to expect.

I really, really hate to reject an apology when it’s sincerely given, but… sorry, JCP. Merchandise comes to your stores via your buyers, which means that at some point, someone on your staff said, “You know what would appeal to girls 7-16? A t-shirt about girls being too pretty to be smart and having to rely on boys instead.” And then every employee who touched it between wholesaler and Web site said, “Yeah, that works.” Your merchandise is not intended to offend your customer base, but you have at least one buyer–a children’s buyer–who thinks that that message is “cute” and “sassy” and not offensive. Thank God–for the sake of society–parents seem to disagree, such that the shirt had been marked down 41 percent by the time it was pulled.

Here’s an action you can take to “uphold the integrity of [your] merchandise” (Abercrombie, Hollister, you might want to read along): educate your buyers. If you have a message in mind that you find appropriate, make sure they know. It doesn’t even have to be explicitly pro-smart chick (although that would be nice), as long as it isn’t the oh-so-empowering “Daddy’s Expensive Little Princess.” With all of the media messages hitting ever-younger girls with the message that the most important thing in life is to be pretty and nonthreatening, it’s hard enough convincing a six-year-old that it’s possible to be smart as well as pretty–or, even better, just smart. Make sure you understand that, and once you do, make sure your children’s buyers understand it too. Give parents a break. It’s not your job to raise the world’s kids, but the least you could do is help instead of hinder.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this sounds like a well-made piece of television heading our way: MTV is debuting a new reality show in October in which a small town girl moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams in the fashion industry. The twist? She’s fat. (Note: the linked article actually lists her weight, so if that’s triggering for you, you might not want to click through. I can only conclude that this particular detail is included because the headline says “plus-sized” and they want to be specific that it’s not “Hollywood plus-sized”.)

23-year-old Chelsea Settles is going to star in what’s being billed as a docu-drama that will “be a viewer-friendly blend of reality dramas like “The Hills” and weight loss programs like “I Used to be Fat” or “The Biggest Loser.”” The show itself will be called Chelsea Settles and chronicle topics like her long-distance relationship, social phobias, and weight loss.

Really: what could possibly go wrong in trying to address topics like mental health and weight loss in a TV show format that is infamous for chewing up its stars and spitting them back out? Set in a city and industry infamous for their complete and total preoccupation with appearances? I’m sure it will be a nuanced, thoughtful interrogation of the issues and everyone will go through a period of profound personal growth, and the horridness of the trailer is just there to set up drama.

If you watch the trailer, (trigger warning for some pretty serious fatphobia) it seems like Chelsea is a lovely young woman of color whom other people are trying to make miserable in the name of achieving her dreams. There are some truly peculiar shifts. In one clip, Chelsea is being fat-shamed by some random bypassers yelling that she’s fat, and that’s framed as cruel. But she’s also shown eating fast food and then that immediately cuts to a lecture from a physician about her need to lose weight and eat better. She’s bullied by various personal trainer types and shown crying about how much she loathes her body. Apparently, the right to pick on someone for their weight is reserved to people with letters after their name or at least six pieces of matching fitness gear.

The show’s also framed with the expectation that we should all understand why Chelsea hates her body: because she’s fat. It’s a very public struggle with body image and disordered eating (also mentioned in the trailer). I’d note that other MTV reality TV shows have also featured women who dealt with major body image issues, but here it’s pitched as a particular issue only because Chelsea’s fat. The Hills (to which Chelsea Settles has been compared) featured Heidi Montag, whose own body image issues are so well known that the top Google suggestion for her name is followed by plastic surgery.

From the very beginning, Chelsea is told that fashion is a very image conscious field and ties this to her weight. (Curiously unmentioned is the fact that she’s a woman of color, which almost certainly plays into the image consciousness.) It seems as though the only way she will ever be successful is if she loses weight, so that’s the focus of the show: getting her thin enough to be able to work in fashion. I have no doubt that people are being honest with her when they say she’s got to be thin (or at least significantly thinner than she is at the opening of the show) in order to be able to do the kind of work she wants to do in LA, but man alive, is that depressing.

I would really love it if we could have a TV show that featured fat characters without the fat being a gimmick. I would also love it if Chelsea could find her way in life and in her chosen profession without being tormented about her weight or being told that it’s completely dispositive to her success. I doubt MTV will be showing that, though: a young, happy, fat woman, makes peace with herself and finds professional success? I mean, the latest story about Jennifer Hudson is that she’s prouder of her weight loss than she is of her Oscar. That makes it sound like that even achievement is wholly secondary to being thin.