Body Size Liberation (Warning: Nude Photos)
Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 7:59 pm(NOTE: I almost posted this in the thread about child dancers, as a response to one of the posts there, but I believe it would be inappropriate and incendiary in that spot, so here's its own spinoff thread.)
The famous Glamour pic:
I believe this splashy PR event, and the fact that it was considered one of the biggest developments in the fashion industry in years, serves mainly to show how far we are from acknowledging and respecting natural body shapes and ending Fashion's war on women's flesh.
The women called "plus-size" in the putatively revolutionary picture are of average proportions. Without exception, they all look to be around the current medians for size, height and weight.
Just have a look around you next time you're on the bus. These are not "plus-size" women.
Presenting them as "plus-size" in practice achieves the reverse of the liberatory claim. It does something that mags like Glamour have always done, by design: try to make all women think they're fat (or "plus-size").
Glamour's "plus-size" venture may have been well-intentioned, but hardly visionary. Perhaps unconsciously, a fashion mag found a roundabout way to justify its presentation of emaciated girls who need an IV line stat as beautiful and highly desirable, while anyone with meat on them is still fat fat fat.
Note further that the non-fatties presented as "plus-size" are all herded together in one photo (let's not overdo it!) and they're naked (you're not expecting us to make clothes for such beasts, are you?).
You'll excuse me if in this I catch a whiff of "separate but equal." Glamour's "plus-size" action was to body liberation what calling Joe Louis a "credit to his race" in the 1930s was to the civil rights movement: a condescending, self-congratulatory pretense from the challenged elite, a means to maintain control by adopting the position of the one who grants, noblesse oblige.
Now I don't regularly read the mag so I don't know, but if anyone's checked: have subsequent issues of Glamour featured more "plus" (normal) sized women since this supposed breakthrough? Or are they waiting for a 10-year-anniversary Plus-Size Redux?
In addition, the photo in no way loosens the hegemony of the sterile, standardized fashion aesthetics. These women as depicted by Glamour are not hairy or short or unprocessed. They don't have the odd pimple or wart. The lighting comes from all the usual directions and completely "fills" the subjects. Even the body language and expressions follow set conventions. As pictured, beyond the fact that they seem to be eating well, these no-doubt beautiful women do not fall outside Glamour's hegemonic beauty ideal (and they're a pretty white crew to boot).
I must apologize. Even to write this much on it gives Glamour too much credit as an authority. As corporate media, they're merely reacting to an ongoing loss of power as the means of media production are more and more back in the hands of the fatties and other proud and real, un-airbrushed, un-photoshopped human beings. So they're trying to coopt the trends.
Here's a real example of size liberation - not just plus-size - and it's probably more beautiful than any picture that's ever appeared in Glamour, and the women as attractive sexually as any who have ever appeared in Glamour (at least, as presented in Glamour according to the rules of the hegemonic aesthetic) :
lightningBugout wrote: ...one of the biggest developments in the beauty industry in the past few years was Glamour's November 2009 plus-sized supermodel feature:
http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2 ... every-size
The famous Glamour pic:
I believe this splashy PR event, and the fact that it was considered one of the biggest developments in the fashion industry in years, serves mainly to show how far we are from acknowledging and respecting natural body shapes and ending Fashion's war on women's flesh.
The women called "plus-size" in the putatively revolutionary picture are of average proportions. Without exception, they all look to be around the current medians for size, height and weight.
Just have a look around you next time you're on the bus. These are not "plus-size" women.
Presenting them as "plus-size" in practice achieves the reverse of the liberatory claim. It does something that mags like Glamour have always done, by design: try to make all women think they're fat (or "plus-size").
Glamour's "plus-size" venture may have been well-intentioned, but hardly visionary. Perhaps unconsciously, a fashion mag found a roundabout way to justify its presentation of emaciated girls who need an IV line stat as beautiful and highly desirable, while anyone with meat on them is still fat fat fat.
Note further that the non-fatties presented as "plus-size" are all herded together in one photo (let's not overdo it!) and they're naked (you're not expecting us to make clothes for such beasts, are you?).
You'll excuse me if in this I catch a whiff of "separate but equal." Glamour's "plus-size" action was to body liberation what calling Joe Louis a "credit to his race" in the 1930s was to the civil rights movement: a condescending, self-congratulatory pretense from the challenged elite, a means to maintain control by adopting the position of the one who grants, noblesse oblige.
Now I don't regularly read the mag so I don't know, but if anyone's checked: have subsequent issues of Glamour featured more "plus" (normal) sized women since this supposed breakthrough? Or are they waiting for a 10-year-anniversary Plus-Size Redux?
In addition, the photo in no way loosens the hegemony of the sterile, standardized fashion aesthetics. These women as depicted by Glamour are not hairy or short or unprocessed. They don't have the odd pimple or wart. The lighting comes from all the usual directions and completely "fills" the subjects. Even the body language and expressions follow set conventions. As pictured, beyond the fact that they seem to be eating well, these no-doubt beautiful women do not fall outside Glamour's hegemonic beauty ideal (and they're a pretty white crew to boot).
I must apologize. Even to write this much on it gives Glamour too much credit as an authority. As corporate media, they're merely reacting to an ongoing loss of power as the means of media production are more and more back in the hands of the fatties and other proud and real, un-airbrushed, un-photoshopped human beings. So they're trying to coopt the trends.
Here's a real example of size liberation - not just plus-size - and it's probably more beautiful than any picture that's ever appeared in Glamour, and the women as attractive sexually as any who have ever appeared in Glamour (at least, as presented in Glamour according to the rules of the hegemonic aesthetic) :
