Salacious Sexiness in the Name of the “Larger” Feminist Ideal

Body image disorders are definitely a serious concern, but as a public health issue absolutely pale in comparison to the obesity epidemic. What we’re seeing today—with one third of all Americans clinically obese and another third overweight—is the direct result of a corporate food industrial complex that decades ago shifted its focus from mechanical efficiencies in the service of overproduction to strategies of pressing customers to overconsume. Supersize everything, eat more all the time, eat more everywhere. The system designers of Burger King or WalMart don’t think of people as customers so much as participants in the conveyor belt, components of the production line; and as with every other station of the factory, their performance should be pushed to their greatest capacity.  At best, the “big is beautiful” message is opportunistic pandering to demographic fact, at worst it is selfish propaganda attempting to persuade people that their participation in this commercial enterprise does not place them in any danger.

But I think there’s an overlooked but fascinating facet to these images, totally unrelated to weight or health, that I think is at the center of their aesthetic claim: the proposal that the average woman, the well-adjusted, happy and fulfilled average woman, is perfectly comfortable being luxuriously exhibitionistic for public consumption. I don’t know. It seems as though the corporate mindset that would discourage your sense of propriety, from protecting you dignity, is the exact same mindset that’s encouraging you to have another cheeseburger. Like, “Come on, don’t be so stuck up. Just have fun with us.” 

While this trend IS observable, I question the validity of sizing.  The assumption is that a size 6 of today is the same size 6 of 20-30 years ago.  My limited exposure to women’s fashions as a male through my wife, indicates the size scale is a sliding scale…adjusted to meet temporal fluctuations in women’s perceptions of what is going to boost self esteem.  Analysts in the fashion industry are well aware of this.  As in: OH I CAN STILL FIT INTO THAT SIZE 6!  YIPPEEE!

If you think those women are fat, you haven’t been to the mall recently.  A super-sized meal and a diet soda is not cutting down.    If all you’re doing is sitting all day, 1200 calories is plenty.  That means one burrito is *the entire day’s caloric intake*.

Stop eating.

    –bks
 

This marks the first time I have visited BagNews in some time. I came here from a small ad on Hullabaloo. Guess why?

good observation. I keep wondering about the relation of model size as it goes to the fact that Americans are heavier than ever have been.  And, if you look at photos of 80s and 90s “supermodels” they are much larger than the runway type seen today.

There ought to be a term for this, the way that trying to build awareness/acceptance for one good thing (being comfortable in your own skin in all body types) ends up trading on (and betraying) another value. Peta promotes vegetarian/veganism but only by playing right into the objectification of women. Lego tries to promote building among girls (fantastic!) but only by dumbing down their legos and playing to the worst aspects of gendered toys.

It doesn’t work the same from the other way around. Capitalism racism and patriarchy all re-enforce each other. Trying to fight against any single evil ends up too often meaning playing into another one.

I’d like to find the right technical term for this.

Right. If you’re also male, it exemplifies Karrin’s point about these ads and the exploitation of the male gaze.

Though to be fair the bag ad had a caption that said what the article was about, it wasn’t just the pose.  If it had said “people getting naked for peta” or something else I’m not interested in I wouldn’t have probably clicked through because that doesn’t interest me as much as the topic of feminism.

But the image definitely has the exploitative effect.

I think the message about body image is more important than any perceived sexist-porn-exploitation being touted by the majority of observers here. Plus magazine is intended for a female audience. If men find the pictures titillating, that’s at least partly because men find practically anything involving even modest expanses of female flesh titillating. Oh, well. In the meantime, young women are starving themselves to try to meet an unrealistic standard set by the fashion industry – a standard in which beautiful women’s bodies are a cross between children’s bodies (slender, wispy, underdeveloped), and men’s (super-flat abs, no hips, skinny thighs).

Yes, obesity is a huge problem. It’s another side to the incredible state of dietary dysfunction in which our society is mired. I don’t think it’s wise to say one problem is more important than the other, though. They are both disorders which need to be addressed.

Sizes have changed over the years, but notice the magazine is comparing sizes over one decade. They haven’t changed much in this last decade  - if they had, I’d still be wearing an 8 although I weigh 5-6 pounds more today than I did 10 years ago. I buy 10s now. (Incidentally, I think the differences over the last 50 years are exaggerated. Some people say today’s 6 is yesterday’s 14. That would suggest that I’d be wearing something like yesterday’s size 18? Nah. A 135-pound woman did not wear a size 18 in the 1960s, I promise you.) There’s also an interesting sizing dynamic related to the price of clothing. Expensive lines tend to label sizes a little smaller, so in some shops an 8 is a little big on me; in others, the 10 is too small.

And all this dithering over sizes and exploitation and which problem is bigger obscures the point of the article. The model considered ‘plus’ by the fashion world today is in fact smaller than the average American woman; the preferred model is unrealistically thin. The fashion industry needs to stop with the anorexic look. And maybe allowing normal women to see that they can be beautiful and sexy will help to create a world in which the fashion industry is less destructive.

I’m on board with the critique of social norms and the objectification of women, but the bafflement as to why PLUS doesn’t attack the hand that feeds it is puzzling.

“ just why are women fighting so hard for access to this particular feminine ideal?”

Well, paychecks, industry acceptance, and glamor, to name a few. Perhaps the writer misconstrued the purpose of the spread and/or the magazine. Despite the feminist empowerment rhetoric, what it–and Elle in 2010–did is quite different from what Jamie Lee Curtis did. The ostensible audience for PLUS is models, would-be models, agents, agencies, sellers, etc. It’s mission is not at all to disrupt the game, but to remind everyone that plus-sized women can and will play the same game, and to convince certain parties that the plus-sized game is profitable, too.

Sad to say, this seems an example of feminism co-opted. In as much as the spread was a protest at all, it was against not having a fair share of the existing business. Aside from the attention-getting nudity, it is consistent with every other in that issue, in that it trades in and depends on the same glamorized titillation that is the life blood of mainstream fashion magazines.

I’m on board with the critique of social norms and the objectification of women, but the bafflement as to why PLUS doesn’t attack the hand that feeds it is puzzling.

“ just why are women fighting so hard for access to this particular feminine ideal?”

Well, paychecks, industry acceptance, and glamor, to name a few. Perhaps the writer misconstrued the purpose of the spread and/or the magazine. Despite the feminist empowerment rhetoric, what it–and Elle in 2010–did is quite different from what Jamie Lee Curtis did. The ostensible audience for PLUS is models, would-be models, agents, agencies, sellers, etc. It’s mission is not at all to disrupt the game, but to remind everyone that plus-sized women can and will play the same game, and to convince certain parties that the plus-sized game is profitable, too.

Sad to say, this seems an example of feminism co-opted. In as much as the spread was a protest at all, it was against not having a fair share of the existing business. Aside from the attention-getting nudity, it is consistent with every other in that issue, in that it trades in and depends on the same glamorized titillation that is the life blood of mainstream fashion magazines.

It’s funny. Touching base with my Managing Editor, who sets up the Digby ad, she’s convinced that nobody reads the caption but just click through based on the image. I’m more inclined to agree with you – that it does make a difference. That said, however, I’m also thinking Shadow04 is male and the greater rate of traffic today from the ad is based on the photo more than the photo combined with the context of the caption.

It’s funny. Touching base with my Managing Editor, who sets up the Digby ad, she’s convinced that nobody reads the caption but just click through based on the image. I’m more inclined to agree with you – that it does make a difference. That said, however, I’m also thinking Shadow04 is male and the greater rate of traffic today from the ad is based on the photo more than the photo combined with the context of the caption.

You realize that being overweight is a health hazard, right?

So is being anorexic.

I have to say, I’m amazed that the great majority of comments are by men, and that they seem to encompass two themes: that the photos exploit women, and/or that being overweight is bad.

Look, depicting women as beautiful and sexy is not always exploitive. Naked women selling cars, liquor, cigars, even toilet bowl cleaner? Exploitation. Sexy women selling clothes? In our youth-obsessed world, this is to be expected. Sexy women demonstrating that all sizes and shapes can make a claim on beauty? Not exploitation.

At 5′4″ and 135 pounds, my BMI is 23.2, well within normal-weight guidelines. But if I were to be a runway model I’d be a Plus. So young women reading fashion magazines are not being urged to maintain a normal weight; they’re being told they have to maintain a below-normal weight. And from some of the answers here, it would appear that a measurable percentage of the male population agrees! How can you guys not see that this is a problem?

Stop focusing on the bare-naked ladies and whether or not they have too much flesh, and try to zero in on the point! The fashion industry should be featuring women of normal, healthy proportions, and not women who are starving themselves.

(As to the argument that Plus magazine is an industry magazine, I’d have to say Not so much. There aren’t enough Plus-size models to keep a magazine afloat. Plus is intended for larger women who love fashion. I dream of the day when someone starts publishing a magazine called YaYa for grandmothers who love fashion.)

That’s a gorgeous woman by any definition.  Anybody who doesn’t think so definitely has issues…..I don’t even mind the heels

I saw mainly the age difference between the two.  The older,  heavier one,  controlling the faceless girl or woman child.  First I thought mother – daughter,  then I got a  creepy pedophilia vibe our ideal model being not just stick thin,  but a creature we can do with what we want and don’t have to see her face.

Which speaks not to the ad so much as to the standard of beauty being set by the fashion industry – women should be tiny, childlike, fragile, helpless.

Interesting, also, that you assume the larger woman is older. I’d bet on them being very close to the same age. Of course, in the fashion world, age is everything and the only desirable age is young, young, young.

what crap!  get over it.  people all over the world are starving.  half the country is out of work.  we are involved in two vicious wars and this is what you are upset about?  a naked woman?  the “male gaze”.

I definitely noticed the caption on the Digby ad. As mentioned by @corbindallas, if it had been a naked PETA person ad I wouldn’t have bothered. While the image caught my eye, the caption made me click, since I wanted to read the post and, of course, the comments.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t just a male thing and people in general just click on salacious pictures of women.

You can tell your managing editor at least in my case I do read the captions on the digby ads since they’re really useful for determining context.  Naked pictures of women included.

“Naked women selling cars, liquor, cigars, even toilet bowl cleaner?
Exploitation. Sexy women selling clothes? In our youth-obsessed world,
this is to be expected. Sexy women demonstrating that all sizes and
shapes can make a claim on beauty? Not exploitation.”

I agree with this.

What is weird is from the perspective of a male, I also feel like I the viewer am having my very basic instincts exploited in all cases.  I certainly am willing to put up with it for the last one since it’s a more noble cause than trying to sell me crap.

and with all of that going on you still had the time to tell someone else what to do with their blog!

Men love who they love and it is rarely about size. Women have done this to themselves. If women got bigger men would love bigger women. These super models every women wants to look like are just coat hangers.They are there to show off the newest fashions and trends in clothing. Some men want a woman that looks like she needs a meal, but how many really? This is about women judging women, not men judging women.

I agree with you, while keeping in mind all those guys out there getting hair-plugs and Viagra.