You’ve probably seen this photo array posted on Tumblr or Facebook in the last month or so with some comment like “hell yeah!” I saw it posted by both men and women, with everyone extolling the curvier, fleshier virtues of the starlets from the 50s (even though it should be pointed out that those women would still be slimmer than the average American woman of today. Fleshy and curvy is always extremely relative).
And then someone my friend MacLoserboy created and posted a male version, and although it clearly fell into the what about the menz? category, I found it eye-opening.
The beauty standard for female stars actually changed from prizing the traditionally feminine look of soft round breasts and bottoms to prizing, well, the opposite (unless, like Heidi Montag in the upper left corner, you have surgery to give you the big, round breasts despite excessive weight loss). Male stars, however, went from more boyish, slender bodies to ripped, super-muscular ones that are practically a caricature of traditional masculinity.
Men are supposed to look more hyper-masculine but women aren’t really looking more hyper-feminine. Does this strike anyone else as odd?
I’ve always said that I thought Western society’s sick glorification of thinness in women stems partially from a misogynist desire to keep women weak and frail and childlike, even as we become more socially and economically powerful than women of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor’s generation. Maybe men are supposed to look more macho than ever before to counter the female empowerment created by women’s lib?
Did anyone else see these photos? If so, what did you think? How did people in your internet social circles respond to them?
I hadn’t seen these before now. I’ve learned over time to strive for less judgyness of bodies of all types — but I agree the idealization of a certain form is worth commentary.
I wonder if our push towards emaciated women’s bodies has more to do with our fat-phobia than a desire to keep women children/dependent? Both are possible factors, I grant you, but it strikes me that what the current-day expectations for men and women have in common is an increasing intolerance for flesh that isn’t ripped or bony.
So true…there’s definitely less tolerance for just regular old flesh, and Maude forbid any of it jiggles.
But muscle at least is associated with health and power, whereas emaciation is associated with nothing but weakness and illness. Only men get to have low body fat AND big muscles…not women. Our culture doesn’t idealize women who look ripped, like Olympic athletes—only those who look frail and under-nourished. To me that speaks to the patriarchial idea of male power and female submission.
The thing that both sets of pictures have in common is a focus on the extreme: skinniness for women, muscularity for men. They’re body shapes that don’t come naturally to that many people. And you can make a lot of money by convincing people that they need to change themselves to fit the aspirational mold using your diet method, pill, supplement, gym, training program, fitness gizmo in order to be confident, find happiness and love, get laid, etc.
Oops, hit “send” before that comment was fully baked. Wanted to add that I agree that the Beauty Industrial Complex is playing on and reinforcing gender tropes (female fragility and male power) in its quest to squeeze every last dollar out of us all. As Becky notes, it would probably be just as profitable for the BIC to glorify extreme thinness for men and a very-lean-but-ripped look for women. But they don’t. I guess my only point really is that I think the BIC has been ramping up it’s attack on men, but the image men are supposed to strive for these days agrees with accepted gender norms.
For both the women and the men, the only way for most people to achieve these bodies is by having your only focus be on that physical development/maintenance. (Most) People whose bodies are not our full time jobs can’t really aspire to that, and shouldn’t have to. (deleted a bunch of rambling here)
Taylor and Munroe were also feminine ideals to which women were supposed to aspire but which they could rarely achieve, so while they are more traditionally feminine than today’s tabloid photos, they were still hard on the self-images of women.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily that women are supposed to appear more juvenile and more like the fragile archetype in response to “actual” (non-media) women being in less traditional roles in increasing numbers, or that societal expectations of beauty as driven by Hollywood tend towards extremes which change with time and which continue to be difficult to achieve. Look at “celebrities” not represented – Kim Kardashian certainly isn’t at that ultra-thin extreme but has crafted (with whatever resources) a figure which echoes traditional femininity.
Also, some women are naturally very thin, and aren’t we encouraged to accept a very wide range of body as “normal” and beautiful?
(my partner’s comment was that Ryan Reynolds should aim for Brad Pitt’s body instead and take acting lessons with all the free time he would then have – I think he missed the point)(he did point out that Keira is quite ripped though – clearly very low body fat but definite muscle definition)
I wonder if the changes in on the male side have to do with the availability of things like steroids. It seems like the extremely muscular form has long been idealized in males — from the Sistine chapel to superman, there are a lot of very ripped men in art, but until relatively recently there weren’t the special drugs and equipment to allow actual men to look like superheros.
Hmmm . . . I’d seen the female version before, but not the male response. My gut reaction was kind of eye-opening in and of itself. Where I found myself nodding along with the point of the female graphic (tell ‘em sister!) my uncharitable first reaction to the male graphic ran along the lines of “it just is.” I guess I was able to see the point of the female graphic more quickly since I’ve spent time unpacking all the negative cultural conceptions about female beauty but I (as a heterosexual female) had never stopped to think about how society also programs my expectations of a potential partner.
As far as how the standards themselves compare, it’s worth noting that both genders are trending toward less body fat in their sex symbols. The men are a bit more bulked up, but the only way to get that kind of muscle definition is to reduce abdominal fat, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Ammunition against the supposed obesity epidemic?
My coven discussed the female version on Sunday. Consensus was that looking like Liz Taylor was no more ‘achievable’ than looking like Keira Knightley and also sexiness is far more than just the ‘pin-up’ vs. ‘fashion skinny’.
Yep, Plum Pie and I and our cohort debated this intently over cake and also agreed that there’s something instrinically wrong about only see women’s bodies as something to be seen as ‘hot’ by other men. It ignores the impact women have on each other, it reduces them to all about be ‘fuckable’ or ‘unfuckable’ and it allows for there to be only one idea of beauty for women, which makes the other several billion feel crap.
I’m going to have eat some more cake and ponder if this still applies now that I’ve seen the male version.
I would really like it for all folks to take a step back from the “Yeah, you tell ‘em!” response to think through why these pictures are deeply troubling. While I applaud the problematizing of the current push for frightening thinness in current celebrity women, to hearken back to a different era still places women in a context of the “most desirable” body type. Fat women, disabled women, queer/trans women, and women of color are NOT being represented as desirable or beautiful. Their absence speaks volumes.
Each set of photos (for the women) push standards and boundaries of beauty. I find the meme appalling, even if it has a “good” message. It continues to demarcate what is an acceptable body, privileging thinness (to varying degrees) and whiteness above all else. All of my students in our Women’s Studies class just “looooooove” this. It reflects nothing but privilege, exclusion, and cultural expectations about bodies. It serves to norm bodies and provide social scripts about who is acceptable.
/end rant
I would love to get dialogue going about why these photos are troubling. Also, the men’s one is also problematic but for a different set of reasons.
@Joyneptune Thanks so much for articulating this! I was thinking about it again on the way to work today, about how troubling I find the implicit judgment that the first set of women are somehow NOT sexy, while the second set (the 50s-era set) are. What message does that send to women who are, for one reason or another, flat chested, narrow-hipped, etc? That they don’t get to be sexual?
I completely understand the cultural pressures that go into folks latching onto these images and cheering them. But like you, I think we should put on our media literacy/criticism hat and think about what not-so-nice messages these images are sending, and the continued silences concerning whose bodies are desirable.
In my book, we ALL get to be “sexy.” Full stop.
“In my book, we ALL get to be “sexy.” Full stop.”
Thanks Anna, exactly. All of this “my body is normal (whatever that means) but yours isn’t” is just body snarking dressed up as a higher purpose. Whatever direction it goes in, it’s not helpful (for example, hatin’ on larger body sizes or smaller body sizes).
At the end of the day it’s just one more divide and conquer where we can’t just leave each others bodies in peace and stop judging them. Plus they’re not so inclusive after all, as was mentioned above.
I may be sensitive to this as over the years I’ve gotten people making comments to me about how I must have an eating disorder to be so thin. That’s not so fucking funny when you’ve loved people and seen them go through hell with actual eating disorders. Plus, a helluva lot of crap ever since puberty for having ‘no boobs, no hips’. Why am I supposed to wear an uncomfortable underwired and super-padded bra just to resemble someone’s idea of what a woman is supposed to look like? So I’ll be “hot”? Am I supposed to be grateful when some asshat guy says I’m “hot” because I’m “so skinny”, and then says something nasty about women who aren’t, like I’m getting a crap trophy of sorts for being on the winning team? It’s all so fucking stupid and petty.
@joyneptune: Getting a dialogue going about why these pictures are troubling is precisely the reason I posted them and solicited reactions. It’s clear from the post that I don’t endorse one beauty standard over another. What I’m interested in is how and why the standard has changed and what that says about society and women’s role in it. A patriarchy will always police women’s bodies and “sexiness”—that’s a given. But to me it’s still worth looking critically at the different images it uses to do so, and why they evolve.
Hmm. To me, at least, society seems to conflate thiness with, I guess, I’d call it “discipline.” Granted, not all women like the ones on the top row starve themselves or do other things to limit their food intake (some of them probably eat like farm animals!). However, there does seem to be a strong belief in society in general that if you are quite thin, you are discliplined, has extraordinary self-control, ect. Thin has become a barometer by which we can judge all the OTHER qualities of a person. Personally, I tend to think that is a reason why such thiness is now idealized, as opposed to the rounder or curvier shape. A larger woman can be perceived as lacking awareness, confidence, self-control, ect. Maybe that’s why the tabloids seem to love getting shots of larger celebrity women eating – because it reinforced what we suppose we already know about her.
Interesting thought, Drahill. I’d add that thin has come to equal well off. Whereas in the past, plumpness showed that you could afford to buy all the food you wanted, thinness today shows that you are so well off that you can eat the highest quality, healthiest food.
this discussion reminds of a slogan that we used in a women’s collective meeting:
“Sexy is as sexy does, not as sexy looks”
following Drahill’s line of thought about discipline, I find it interesting that body discipline may imply the discipline with which someone applies to their overall life, yet the discipline to achieve what can be unachievable (be it ripped musculature, bodacious curves, etc) to my mind doesn’t allow the discipline to act in other areas of development (eg mind, mental health, following passions/ hobbies/, etc)
If I may add the male perspective…
I think there’s a disconnect between what women think men think is attractive, and what men actually think is attractive. I’ve never heard guys talk about how hot Kate Moss is, or Keira Knightley, or Nicole Richie, or any of the waif-like women whose pictures you’ve posted. And Heidi…she’s the subject of far more scorn than lust.
Men talk far more about, say, Scarlett Johansen, or Halle Berry, or Gisele, or Brooklyn Decker, Marisa Miller, etc, all woman with real curves. I’m sure there are exceptions, but the vast majority of men consider the Marilyn-style figure FAR more attractive than someone so skinny you fear you may be stabbed by one of their protruding ribs.
I’m late to the party, but Becky, I think your idea that as women become emancipated, ideals of masculinity become even more demanding to distinguish men from supposedly man-like women is fascinating. I really think you might be onto something there.
I’ve recently started thinking a bit more about just how hard it is to be a guy nowadays (not to do a ‘what about the menz’…but sort of!). But I do think that a lot of men suffer under patriarchal gender expectations, and most of them (outside of, say, academic circles) lack the vocabulary with which to describe that situation. It is a shame…
I found your blog through HoydenAboutTown, this is an interesting post!
@Not Mr. Big: I hear similar comments around men (interested to hear they’re saying this when I’m not there too, I always suspected it was some sort of awful pat-on-the-head gesture b/c I’m curvy). Anyhow I’d bet that a majority of modern women would also find the retro men’s bodies pictured above more appealing than the modern men’s bodies (though plenty of women are into totally ripped guys). Many women will actually grimace at the near-body-builder male six-pack or humongous pectorals. I’ve noticed many successful porn actresses are not extremely thin like successful movie actresses. I agree there is a disconnect.
This is an odd connection to make but I read that the greatest Olympic figure skaters of the early 20th century would never even qualify for regionals today. Every record set was beat the next time around so that expectations rose every year; also the pool of qualified skaters to choose from got bigger as the sport gained legitimacy and people got access to training, so the best became the best-of-the-best. Now we simply expect superhuman Lutzes or whatever.
The analogy to celebrity looks would be that once an extreme is shown on camera it becomes normal, so you have to find something more extreme. Not only that but these body types, more than the retro ones, are something you have to work at, so it keeps people buying food, gym memberships, and diets, etc., etc., and doing so well into their sixties, at least. Capitalism, I guess. And a million other things, but this comment has probable gone on long enough.
@Joyneptune – Totally agree with you. When we’re deconstructing the way that mainstream “beauty” standards have changed, it’s crucial to note that despite the fact we’ve made progress against discrimination over the past several decades, the “ideal” body types according to the media are still usually white, thin, presumably straight and cisgender, young, and class privileged. Just look at Vanity Fair’s recent release on up-and-coming actresses; it’s almost all-white. (Colorlines tried to remedy this by using the magazine’s cover to highlight young actresses of color: http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/vanity_fairs_hollywood_issue_saves_black_actors_for_the_back_cover.html)
[trigger warning for discussion of eating disorders and sexual assault below]
@Not Mr. Big – I appreciate that many straight men don’t idealize women who either eat/diet unhealthily or who fall into a minority of women whose naturally very thin body type most people couldn’t emulate without resorting to unhealthy eating/dieting. I’m sure that your reassurance is well-meaning. The problem is that this still frames the conversation around men’s desires and/or what society finds attractive. It a) creates an unnecessary hierarchy between body types and poses the argument in such a way so as to discount the great diversity amongst people’s desires, and b) doesn’t actually help people who are doing unhealthy things to try to change their body types.
Many of my women friends and relatives have suffered through eating disorders. (Quick disclaimer: In talking about this, I’m definitely not trying to say that all super-skinny women like those in the pictures have eating disorders. And in fact, some women who have eating disorders aren’t or don’t become super-skinny for a long time.) Their partners’ pleas for them to stop hurting themselves did little to help. That’s because eating disorders are very rarely about trying to be attractive to one’s partner/people in general. Eating disorders are about control, about trying to have complete control over your body because you’re afraid of having no control over other things (like how people perceive you and how that might impact your social or professional opportunities, or as a way of feeling like you’ve regained control over your body after being sexually assaulted. I’ve known several women who developed eating disorders after being sexually assaulted and they all said that it was an admittedly unhealthy way of trying to reestablish the feeling that they had control over their own bodies.) I’m saying this because I don’t want people to think that telling someone who has an eating disorder that men (or whomever the person is attracted to) prefer a curvier body type will prevent them from engaging in unhealthy, self-destructive, out-of-control eating habits. The way to help is to express concern over the fact that they’re out of control and endangering themselves.
Well, I guess I wasn’t finished!
I wrote, “I agree there is a disconnect.” I think it is a disconnect between what body we’re attracted to, and what body we want to be. I think the 50′s women’s bodies were bodies the audience (i.e. men) would desire. The very thin figure in media nowadays represents what women aspire to be. There are still plenty of slightly curvy women on film, especially marketed toward men. But the very thin figure stars in tabloids, runways, and “chick flicks,” all of which are aspirational fantasies aimed at women, where thinness represents achievement.
*I am vastly generalizing because I’m interested in looking at “sex sells.” Luckily for the human race no small amount of people are attracted to all sorts of non-Hollywood-bodied people. And I’m not wanting to dismiss thin women; I’m merely talking about how the idea of thinness is sold.
Just to quickly clarify, though I know it has been a few days. I really want to push the discussion beyond the idea of “too thin.” Conversations surrounding women’s (in particular) bodies in patriarchal cultures are always problematic.
I want to sincerely thank @Beckysharper for bringing these images to light to begin the conversation. It is a very necessary and important step.
I’m frustrated by talking about a “thin” model or someone who is “too thin.” I want to discuss fatness and race and sexuality. Not in the terms of “real women” with “real curves.” Because there is always a line of demarcation in that discussion. Either you are “too thin” to be a “real woman with real curves” or you are “too fat to be a woman with real curves.” I genuinely want to move the dialogue of what is “too thin” to a dialogue that is about loving bodies, even the fattest bodies, without the lines of demarcation of what constitutes “real women.” This conversation needs to include an analysis of images and identities not represented by the women (or men for that matter) in the pictures above, who are ALL white, thin, able-bodied, class privileged, heteronormative, and young.
In short, I want to explode the boundaries of beauty, using these images as a starting point of critique and change.
Co-sign everything Joyneptune just said. I appreciate that BeckySharper posted these pics and got the ball rolling, too! The images are provocative and deserve discussion, and the reaction’s been interesting to read. And while I do think it’s necessary to explore why ultra-thinness is currently being marketed as an “ideal” body type (and to reassure ourselves that being all other body types is also desirable and okay), I’d like to see the conversation expand to include people of color, LGBT people, fat people, people with disabilities – everybody.
One of the reasons why these images frame the conversation around whiteness is because they’re comparing today’s “beauty” standards to those of decades past when the media and our culture’s aesthetic “values” were even more white-centric/Eurocentric. It’d be hugely problematic to post a current picture of a thin Black actress over a vintage picture of a curvier white actress and ask, “When did this become hotter than this?” That juxtaposition would have racist overtones because we don’t live in a post-racial society. Such an image might raise significant points about intersecting forms of oppression (ex. curvy women of color are doubly marginalized, etc.), but it’d still be problematic/racist either in its implication or outright declaration that women of color are “less desirable”.
But then, if we’re just deconstructing the mainstream’s most mainstream “beauty” ideals, then it’s accurate to acknowledge that our society was and IS racist and white-centric. There’s a history behind why all of these idealized people are white. Just to pick a random example, let’s take Nat King Cole. Sure, lots of white women swooned over Cole’s crooning voice, but expressing admiration for or attraction to him was taboo. Cole was physically attacked by three members of a hate group (the White Citizens Council) in the middle of a concert in Alabama; after being attacked and so disrespected, he swore he’d never return to the South. Cole was the first Black television presenter, but his variety show could never secure a national sponsor. (When the show was canceled due to lack of said sponsorship, Cole responded to the situation by saying, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”) His neighbors in California objected to and organized against his presence in the neighborhood. He wasn’t even allowed to touch white female guests on his variety show (though I think he may have broken that rule a couple of times, if I recall correctly); remember, this was around the time that Emmett Till was murdered just for whistling at a white woman. These kinds of injustices were commonplace for celebrities of color until and during the Civil Rights movement. White people felt threatened by Cole’s prestige and by the idea that a man of color – especially a dark-skinned Black man – was handsome and desirable. If Cole was handsome, desirable, wealthy, and powerful, then he posed a sociopolitical threat to White people’s unfair and unwarranted power + privilege. Despite his talents and charm and good looks, can you imagine a white-owned major magazine label with a white target audience advertising Nat King Cole as the epitome of masculine sexual beauty in 1957? There’s no mainstream representations idealizing a person of color from that era to which we could compare today’s celebrities. This isn’t to say that we couldn’t recognize the desirability of old school celebrities of color and name them as examples of sexual beauty, anyway. But again, the “when did this become hotter than this?” meme seems to be critiquing the mainstream media’s choice of idealized “beauty”, which was/is inherently discriminatory.
This history laid the foundation for the ongoing racism informing our culture’s “beauty” standards. Just to focus on discrimination in the media, not even getting into other issues (like Arizona’s ban on Mexican-American studies, the study that showed male Black students are singled out for harsher and more frequent discipline than other students, etc.)… White and light-skinned people are still held up as the most desirable. People of color still have fewer privileges and opportunities in the arts. People of color are still relegated to stereotypical roles in many cases. White people are still acting in colorface and stealing roles that should have been played by actors of color (Jake Gyllenhaal, Prince of Persia, cough). Just look at Viola Davis discussing racism in Hollywood here: http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/viola_davis_is_this_years_frontrunner_for_best_actress_the_help.html and here: http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/watch_viola_davis_tell_charlize_theron_she_doesnt_know_what_shes_talking_about_video.html
And the problem within this problem is that we haven’t more fully acknowledged these political realities in the context of our conversation yet. I’d be really curious to see response memes! Like “when did this (problematic/discriminatory beauty) become hotter than this? (marginalized beauty)” Or better yet!! “Why isn’t this person (pic of person of color/person with disabilities/fat person/LGBT person/tattooed or body-modded person/etc.) considered just as attractive and valuable as this person? (insert pic of problematic/discriminatory beauty)” Who and what that the mainstream looks down on do you find attractive?