The oh-so-revolutionary image
Now, I’m not going to congratulate Glamour for being fat-accepting. I don’t think they are, at this point. They are probably the most progressive of the current crop of mainstream ladymags, by which I mean they occasionally dedicate a few pages to fierce female political leaders or the epidemic of rape as a tool of war. They’ve got a long way to go in the body diversity and body acceptance department. I’d like to see fat women and women whose bodies are not perfectly proportioned featured without comment in ladymags. Lizzi Miller is “fat” by fashion industry standards. But she’s slimmer and more beautiful than the majority of American women. If you want to be a “plus size” model you better have a knock-out face. Only the rail thin standard models can get away with “ugly pretty.” Miller also has a proportional body, white skin, no visible disabilities… I guess the fashion industry has to take it one extremely slow step at a time.
Even so, the ecstatic responses to Miller’s photo prove that women are starving for pictures of women with “flaws.” And I don’t mean freckles. We are not accustomed to seeing naked female bodies that are not staring back at us from billboards, movie screens, porn or magazines. We see our own bodies in the mirror, and we see the thin, toned, surgically enhanced and meticulously airbrushed bodies in the media. And those bodies are presented as the standard. Is it any wonder women do back-flips when they see something, anything, familiar – like belly fat – portrayed as acceptable and even attractive?
I think the positive reaction to the original Glamour photo just goes to show that ladymags have contributed to women’s self-hatred. Miller has appeared in Glamour before – in a piece reporting the results of their “Exclusive Body Image Survey.”
We at Glamour think your body is fantastic. Tall and gangly, small and busty, muscular, curvy, soft or sinewy—we celebrate it all (lie. – Ed). Men, we discovered, feel pretty much the same way. Trouble is, too many of you don’t.
Well gee, Glamour, we tried, but self-loathing is so fun. Thanks for the “help,” though!
Incorporating a wider range of bodies would certainly be a step in the right direction for the ladymags, and not only because the validation is nice. Tall, slim women aren’t the only women who buy clothes! I would like to see short women with round bellies and small breasts modeling fall trends that will flatter that body type. Fashion magazines are useless to me because no matter how appealing the clothes are, what looks good on the models will not look good on my body. So I just pay close attention when What Not To Wear features a woman who looks like me.
A fat girl extravaganza could be good for the magazine industry and retail clothing sales, but it might also be too little, too late. This could just be a publicity stunt on the part of a media segment desperate to retain relevance. Print media is on the decline. And if women start feeling okay about their bodies, demand for a lot the products advertised in ladymags will fall. Ladymags have a vested interest in keeping women anxious about their looks; it’s how they, and too many other industries, make their money. I guess we will have to wait and see.
Wait, this woman is a plus size? Okay then.
It’s time we got over looking to magazines-or commercial media of any sort, really-to validate our self-images. These magazines don’t exist to reflect the real lives and real shapes of real women. They exist to sell product. If we don’t feel inferior, incomplete or in need of repair and improvement, the product won’t sell. So a piece like this is just bait for us poor insecure suckers. Screw them. I’ll take my money and my search for validation elsewhere.
Oh, how precious! They celebrate all body types! LIE. It’s like the annual “Shape” issue of Vogue. They always have one example of a “short” woman who’s 5’3″ or 5’4″ which is, y’know, average. And this 4’10″ woman gets very annoyed. Also, as you note, never any women/models who have disabilities.
Oh, GOOD FOR YOU GLAMOUR!
Pat yourself on the back, oh wait, you already have.
“Look at us, we’re so progressive, we’ve featured a fat lady in our magazine!”
Yeah, right.
/Christian Bale-type rant
I’ll wait until Glamour addresses the problem of the magazine being MIND NUMBINGLY BORING before I jump on board their train. Regardless the size of the models the copy is still atrocious.
Yeah, ladymag content sucks, which is the main reason I don’t care for them.
If this woman is plus size it must mean she’s 6 feet tall!
@JessMess: Does this mean you and Glamour are effing done professionally?
This has been mentioned in Jezebel threads, but I think it’s worth reiterating. If you can find a spa in your area that has communal women’s saunas, bathing pools, and whathaveyou where it’s customary to go sans bathing suit, go! I’ve been to spas like this on a few occasions, and while I was a little uncomfortable at first, I was amazed at how quickly I relaxed. Being surrounded by real women – young, old, short, tall, skinny, fat, bald vadge, hairy vadge, pouchy, saggy, taught, wrinkled, dimpled, smooth, and everything in between – was a great antidote to the airbrushed-into-cartoon-images the media feeds us. I’d highly encourage anyone prone to negatively comparing herself to these media images to find such a spa and spend some time nekkid with the womenz. It’s great.
@tall-girl: The YMCA locker room totally did this for me. Every possible permutation of what the female form looked like and we all just hung out. Also the first time I saw women with mastectomy scars just walking around with bare chests, which demystified the whole “OMG what happens when you have breast cancer?” question. (Answer: It’s not nearly as bad as you might think)
I wonder if part of the reason we’re so susceptible to ladymags and their woman-hating images is that our Western society doesn’t encourage women to hang out naked. If we don’t see other women’s totally normal naked or close-to-naked bodies on a regular basis, does that make it easier for our woman-hating media culture to sell us on the idea that the skinny, airbrushed models are the way to go?
@Becky: I think you’re onto something. My first naked spa experience was in Budapest, and the nudity friendly spa I’ve been to a few times in the US is a Japanese style spa.
Growing up, aside from going to the beach (which we didn’t do a lot) the female bodies I was most exposed to were in magazines. I definitely felt like that’s how I was supposed to look, but didn’t. Seeing the bodies of real women helps me remember that my flaws are not really flaws, they’re just part of being human. And it’s almost infectious (in a good way) to be around women who are comfortable in their own skins.
I don’t know what happened to me but all of the sudden like 3 years ago I started to notice all the fat happy women in the world with loving partners of various shapes and sizes and since then I feel a lot more immune to the strange and narrow preferences of the beauty mafia. It’s just not reality that you have to look like a model to be loved and desired, or that looking like that will get you love and desire. If the beauty mags are catching up to that reality, I imagine it is because of their dropping bottom lines. I’m probably never going to spend my hard earned pennies on beauty rags but I might be willing to buy clothes I might not have considered if they show different kinds of women wearing them.
@BeckyS: It’s very interesting that you mention women who have had mastectomies. I had one 19 years ago, and since then I’ve been very careful never to expose the scar in a dressing room or locker room for fear of upsetting and frightening other women. Maybe I was wrong. I’m going to rethink this.
And this is why even posts that agree with each other are valuable!
Oh, also, when I was in law school and was pregnant with our first child, I used to go to swim at the university pool. Most of the other swimmers were undergrads who looked quite horrified at my belly. I thought it was pretty funny. I can only hope I inspired a few women to use birth control!
@mischiefmanager: I think you’d definitely get stared at a bit, but not necessarily in a bad way. I suspect a lot of women are just curious as to what mastectomy scars look like. I know I was because breast cancer is talked about a lot in our society, but while many women have mastectomies, we rarely see what the physical scars look like. I think not knowing is more frightening than knowing that it just looks like a scar–it’s not hideous or mutilating or defeminizing anything like that.
My aunt had a mastectomy several years ago and had reconstructive surgery. When it was healed, I asked if I could see the new breast and we talked about it. I probably wouldn’t have done that had I not been comfortable with mastectomy scars after having seen a few in the YMCA locker room.
So yeah, I vote for education by example if you don’t find it upsetting.
*tears up*
*but in a good way*
Good God. This woman’s not plus-sized. She’s a perfectly healthy weight. They’re making a big deal about how she weighs 180 pounds… she is almost 6 feet tall.
If she is fat, then at 5’4″ and 120 pounds, I’m downright chubby too. /eyeroll
@ Becky & Mischiefmanager – That’s what I love about this blog. See meaningful exchanges like that. (((Beck&MischiefManager)))
And as for the “plus-sized” stunning model in the photo – that looks a lot like a post-baby bulge/flap. Especially after a C-section, when nerves to the lower part of the belly can be damaged, lots of women get that little flap. Which makes it even more offensive to caste her as “other.” Clearly if she’s post-reproduction, she’s not as sexy and interesting as pre-reproduction-type, skinny-ass models. Makes me so angry.
@tallgirl, BeckyS: isn’t it interesting how the things that a lot of women fear because they don’t want to expose their “defective” bodies – wearing a bathing suit, or getting naked at a spa or in the locker room – are the very situations that show us the diversity of real (vs. airbrushed) women? When I go swimming, I can’t help but marvel at all the different variations on the human form. It seems so absurd, then, to hold up one body type as an ideal everyone should aspire to.
@elibard: ((((()))) yeah, the first thing I thought when I saw that picture was that the folds on her stomach just look like she’s had a baby or two. The muscles never lie flat again, even if your weight is totally not a problem.
Of course, these days, women are supposed to run out and get their tummies tucked as soon as the baby’s out so they can have perfectly smooth flat bellies. We’re supposed to go right back to being the sexy little dollies we were before baby! I just HATE that.