As I just joined a German gym, this seemed relevant to my interests — and it is, but not for the reasons you’d think.
“Rampage” is a pretty specific word — one usually used to imply malicious intent on the behalf of the actor. In this case, it seems it’s chosen in error. If you click through, you find out that the “grotesque,” “hefty,” and “sizeable” woman only began this “rampage” when fellow gym patrons told her she was too big for the sauna, and that people like her would have been “drowned in the Middle Ages.”
I might have a LOUD RETORT to that kind of harassment as well.
Good LORD, the woman was at a health club, doing precisely as I was instructed in the first five sentences of my gym orientation this week.
“We go in the sauna naked in this country, just so you know.”
She made no mention of any size restrictions on this particular custom.
In any event, if you were inclined to fat hate or body shame, why on earth would you do it at a gym? If a stranger meeting your notion of arbitrary physical ideal is important to you, wouldn’t you celebrate their attendance at your health club? Gyms can be intimidating enough, just knowing how to operate all of the machinery without looking foolish — add in this layer of bullying, and it makes braving the gym even more foreboding and less appealing.
Now, the editorial adjectives are added in a Daily Caller reblog of a Daily Mail story, and I wasn’t there — but both stories used the word “rampage,” one that means “to rush wildly about.” Sounds like the actions of someone pretty spry to me.
The woman allowed herself to be photographed for the story and says of her actions, “I did not want to sit back and take the insults and asked them to stop.”
So the women who told her that she was too fat to live are in big trouble, right? Nope. For standing up for herself, the “sizeable” gal is facing “hefty” charges.
Super heroes, princesses, and famous faces — so codified in dress and look, they might as well add the “lady in the triangle dress” from public restroom doors to their club of iconic female imagery.
Iconic, and not altogether free from the gender kryptonite of objectification. And by “not free” I mean, the chick on the bathroom door has the most modest and practical outfit of the bunch.
When I wore them, I felt pretty heroic, capable, a little fearsome. Nothing in Underoo practice mirrored the cinched-in-waist, hyper-sexualized-cartoon of the Lynda Carter costume. Yet, Lynda’s version is as close to the usual graphic depiction of any female super hero as an actual human being can get.
That usual graphic depiction — lots of skin, preposterously small waist, huge cleavage, LOTS OF SKIN gets renegotiated in this awesome series of super women in getups useful for more than distracting the enemy with a rack of doom. More athletic. More tactical.
Closer to Underoos than Victoria’s Secroos. Dig.
Despite their supposed kid-friendly purpose, Disney princesses usually don’t look much different than their comedically misproportioned super hero sisters — Ariel, Jasmine, even the more covered Belle and Meg look like they came straight from a feverish sketch book in someone’s mom’s basement. Except in this update. Slouchy, cool, with a personality bigger than, “Hi! My midriff is an extrovert!”
Sometimes modernity helps our team of Well-known Women. Sometimes, it doesn’t. When you step away from rogue depictions, looking at the actual modern media beauty-factory standards imposed are enough to make Mona Lisa weep.
If not weep, then at least look like an alien. (Not to impose my Earth-based standard on our intergalactic friends.)
So, she wasn’t spared the poisoned pen of Photoshop — but at least her costume looks like she could save the world if she needed to. (If you gave her some straps, anyway.)
“I said, ‘I would like chicken for two please.’ At least I think that’s what I said. You guys are the ones eating it, so you’ll have to tell me if I was right.”
I’m trying. I’ve added a few pleasantries to surround my grunted nouns — and now I’m getting cocky. We went into a crowded (Point 1, attempted speech with an audience) bakery (Point 2, venue with no prior vocabulary) without knowing what I wanted (Point 3, spontaneity.)
I saw a lady ahead of us walk away with a beautiful, crusty loaf wrapped in paper, and I decided that’s what we needed. All of the signs under that part of the shelving had strings of consonants ending in “brot” — bread, that much I knew — so I opted for adjectives over titles.
“Ich mochte lange brot bitte.” I would like long bread, please.
Not, shall we say, elegant, but she didn’t hesitate, grabbing the loaf I was after and ringing it up.
“Ein baguette, zwei euro bitte.”
BAGUETTE? Seriously? I know THAT one. Nope. Now every time I go in, it’s going to be ‘Oh look, here comes “Long Bread.”’
As for making the long story, short — I have to decide if my confidence extends to a shortening of the hair. A haircut with a language barrier? Brot is one thing, bangs are another…
I do have a picture — I can only hope that “torn from magazine” is a universal language of some sort.
My thoughts on gender and beauty are no secret — most especially the double standard therein. I’m a rabid proponent of making the mirror matter none, for everyone, not just everyman.
I interviewed someone who’d had twin girls recently, and she talked about how she was very careful never to say, “Look how beautiful you look!” but instead praising things they did well, or chances when they’d been brave.
It must not be impossible to raise a girl to be a cool kid who thinks about makeup in terms of how it will help her dress up as Spider-Man, because I’ve seen it happen.
In the realm of “begin as you intend to go on,” that’s what I’m shooting for. A kid who has an imagination and plays and has an identity well outside the ever-encroaching wasteland of photoshop and prizes awarded for what’s on the outside.
Because having your face shine like sunbeams or Spider-Man is much more important.
Keane got Timmy T.’d. Or Christopher Cross-ed, if you’d rather. It’s a weird Buggles tune of musical lookism. In the music industry, it’s all fun and chords until you have to make a video. Keane is the singer, and he’s in the video — sort of. Let’s say you get clearer shots of the Video Girl’s Chucks, than you do the actual artist.
I probably would never have seen the video if it weren’t for Italian MTV — they still do the “M” part here. And the only thing in this video that stands out, other than the Drew Barrymore in Mad Love plot, are the great lengths they go to hide the singer.
Judging from the concert-style sequences, they shot the band performing the whole song. But every time the camera gets near Keane’s face, it’s a quick pan, or a head turn, or cloaked in shadows.
Why? Why is this all shot like he’s in the Witness Protection Program? Is it because his jawline isn’t square enough? Or are his cheeks are too full and his face to soft to belong to a “rock star?”
I wonder if he was sad when they showed him the finished video — especially since the “plot” carried by the actors isn’t all that compelling. I wonder if it was the same feeling Carnie Wilson had when they stuck her in a blazer and full-length skirt on the BEACH.
Or the same way Ann Wilson felt about how they “marketed” her image.
How do we enjoy music, anyway? Last I heard, it was just that — your ears. But consider this: in 1980 Christopher Cross was the first solo artist to sweep all four general field Grammy Awards. In 1981, MTV launched. Not necessarily causation, but they correlate enough to get each others’ mail.
Last night I was half-watching Alcatraz — for LOST and San Francisco nostalgia, mostly — and you have to look no further than the casting for evidence that the gross Jonah Hill dichotomy is still in effect. That is to say, if the genders were reversed, the casting would not look the same.
I adore Jorge Garcia, super hard. His blog, his openness with fans (appearing on fan podcasts, the whole bit) he’s excellent (I mean, look at the tag.) But there is no way this scene would happen with the genders reversed.
“If a person’s image is drastically altered, there should be a reminder that what you’re seeing is about as true as what you saw in ‘Avatar.’”
Software that tells you how faux that photo is. Though it might be even more useful if the program made everyone ‘shopped in magazines, actually blue.
Their work is intended as a technological step to address concerns about the prevalence of highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines. Such images, research suggests, contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.
I have an illogical and unfounded belief that I would be good at skiing, despite the fact that the only snow I’ve ever been around is the kind that gets you snow days. This flight of fancy is notable, as this is the only novel athletic activity I have ever assumed I could do. Usually it’s quite the opposite.
So every year I swear I’m going to prove my assumptions correct or wildly otherwise. Every year I swear I’m going to test my genetically-predisposed, Scandinavianly-constructed, Shetland-pony-sturdy, lower half. Yet, I never have.
Maybe now that the powder is calling from inside the house, and the Alps are like five minutes away, I’ll actually do it.
Though it really seems a shame to bury all that confidence in a heap at the bottom of a mountain.
If you grew up finding your name on souvenir license plates, or if you were Justin R. to someone else’s Justin W., or you never had a substitute teacher get to your name on the roll call and just pause, you can’t possibly understand.
It almost makes me want to blow dry my hair. Almost.
