I would look like this woman.
I think most women would, or am I crazy?
I love that she’s speaking out about the Hollywood starletrexia, but how in the HELL did Kate Winslet ever become anyone’s definitition of “not thin”? She’s got curves, but I don’t really think I could call her anything but quite slim regardless.
Every day it becomes more clear how messed up our body image is on a societal level, and how much the entertainment and publishing industries contribute to it. Not to mention how we barely blink at people calling Winslet or Jennifer Lopez or Beyonce “full-figured.”
I think I’ve spent a lot of time turning a blind eye to it, but it’s been bubbling up more and more lately, as I work through my own irritation with my body and my lack of control over how it feels and looks at times.
My thoughts just over a year ago on “entertainment feminism”:
***
I have four issues of Cosmopolitan in my bedroom. I’m going to confess that right off the bat.
Three were bought by me, one by my friend Catherine.
And I’ve been struck (for the thousandth time, mind you) by the incredible cognitive dissonance that women’s magazines — and especially young women’s magazines — create in our lives as females in modern society.
I should note here that Catherine and I read much more than Cosmo. Each of us has books on the go and I have a bigger stack of New Yorkers lying around than I do anything else. Neither of us would be described as vapid, nor do I imagine that most Cosmo readers are; they’ve just ended up reading something that too often encourages them in that direction.
I read the magazine because of the hair and makeup stuff (I’m a die-hard girl — no question, no excuses) and perhaps, on a more subconscious level, because of the “carefree existence” it celebrates.
I don’t really have a life where my biggest crises are romantic ones, or where I get to buy a new wardrobe every season. So for me, Cosmo is escapism at it’s finest. But maybe that’s just the problem. What exactly am I escaping into?
Field and Stream with a tackle box full of lipstick.
I happen to have the current “Fun, Fearless Female” edition, featuring page after page of celebrities who have either kicked a drug or alcohol habit, continued to act past the age of 35 (where they say there are few good roles), or taken on some kind of charity work.
Or not.
Some of them just look great in tight pants.
I suppose that these examples of self-determination are meant to inspire me, but since I know plenty of women who work past 35, have been in recovery, and who work for non-profits, I’m kind of stuck as to how to laud these particular people above the ladies in my life.
Besides — none of them are even all that better looking than my friends, anyhow.
They just have more exposure.
The FFF theme is undoubtedly supposed to lend a feminist cast to a party-girl publication, but the stories never find their way into the regular world, where women do courageous things every day that don’t involve self-tanner.
The effort to appear beautiful, prosperous, well-adjusted, and upwardly mobile is at the true heart of every feature.
Discussion of life issues revolve around not appearing “psycho”; putting your best face forward, whether the end goal is to seduce some man in your Manolos or to succeed at career and social networking.
The problems you might actually have are not dealt with, nor are you encouraged to face them in a meaningful way. You’re supposed to find a way to sublimate them, so that you appear “fun and fearless” as much as possible.
Pop psychology — as touched upon in advice columns and the notorious “Cosmo Quiz” — is the only apparent stab at working through dilemmas and issues.
Even then, the counsel of “experts” never strays far from “do the opposite” theory of solution: if you’re partying too much, stay home. If you don’t party enough, go out. If you can’t meet a man, look better. If that doesn’t work, look even better. If you have a man you don’t want, find another one. If men hurt you, well… don’t get hurt.
And if you have raging childhood issues of abuse that don’t allow you to function normally, give you an intense fear of rejection, wake you with nightmares, and force you into awful patterns that cause you to continually degrade yourself publicly…
Well… you could always try losing some weight.
I know this isn’t news.
We’ve been aware for years that these magazines give women an unhealthy idea of how they are supposed to live and look. The problem is this: they are trying to sell that ideal more than ever as a feminist one.
The whole “Fun, Fearless Female” concept now shows up in all of the beauty/fashion/lifestyle magazines that I read: Helen Reddy with a mani-pedi!
I realize that Helen Gurley Brown started her vanguard rag to target women at the peak of the sexual revolution. This was the power she wanted women to embrace: all the strength and inherent force in their sexual identity.
But — and I say this as a regular reader — it has become a crippler, rather than an empowerer.
Cosmo lauds women in government who push for key gender-sensitive legislation. They profile models who have overcome eating disorders to have “normal” bodies. They encourage self-acceptance.
Then the next page brings a contradiction of everything on the previous one: there is no encouragement to become politically active, but only to be socially active; the models in the fashion spreads look thinner than the recovering model at her worst; and the main thing that all the “life coaching” hints point you towards is not helping yourself, but making yourself worthy of money or a man.
Is this the feminism being embraced by the next generation? The “if I look good and act normal someone will believe in me” school of getting ahead?
They are embracing their sexual power without ever getting to know the non-sexual parts of who they are and without the fundamental proviso that their sexuality cannot be their only playing card in life.
In the end, women are taught to embrace their bodies and minds only to earn the chance to hand them off to someone else — and the validation of relationship/ownership by a mate.
Most of the twenty- and thirty-something women I know are pretty conflicted about how sexual or nonsexual to be, how image-conscious or not image-conscious to be, and how to find satisfaction within ourselves. But on the other hand, most of the women I know are incredibly smart, giving, exciting individuals with, at least the beginnings of good priorities.
The generation below us is the one I am more worried about: the Britney-ites who have heard the message of empowerment their whole lives, and who are now inundated with examples of brazenness, not emotional courage.
I can see the contradictions at 31, but did I at 17?
I spent years working with these girls with my former job and I did my best to help them realize that they are amazing creatures who are capable of great things; great things that have nothing to do with their appearance.
I’d insist that it was okay to be slightly crazy, emotional, frustrating and complex. To not look Cosmo-glamourous at all time. To realize that image — even the proto-feminist image that you find in the glossies today — is only going to get you so far.
At some point, you must develop a soul.
So.
I’ve still got the four issues of Cosmo in my bedroom. I’m still going to read them. But I am also going to have to do a little more thinking as to what impact those issues are having on my issues as a real, live, “Fun Fearless Female.”
Because I am fun.
Sometimes I’m even fearless.
But I don’t always trust or love myself.
And I should probably figure out why.
I’m willing to bet the answer has nothing to do with velcro rollers.
***
What do you think?
