In my last blog post, I wrote about things on Facebook that irritate me and identified a continuum ranging from mild annoyance to substantial aggravation. Well, I forgot a level. Every so often, Facebook irritation moves beyond annoyance, blows past aggravation and takes me straight to anger. These are the things that get me so fired up I go to sleep fuming about them, wake up thinking about them, and feel compelled to write about them.
This montage of photos makes me angry. Maybe you’ve seen it; it has been making the rounds.
As you can see, the image juxtaposes photos of bikini-clad modern day celebrities, looking thin, with photos of retro starlets looking not as thin. The tag line asks, “When did THIS become hotter than THIS?!”
I am puzzled that this image is getting such play. Is it crying out “repost me, repost me, repost me!”? If it is, I can’t hear it. Haven’t we figured out by now, with the richly diverse world we live in, that what is and isn’t “hot” is very much in the eye of the beholder? I’m not sure I get the point of this image and the incessant reposting of it, unless it is simply to elevate one type of woman, based on how her body looks in a bathing suit, by tearing down another type. This is a lose/lose situation, and that’s what makes me angry.
Almost every time I’ve seen this image, it has been posted by a woman. The comments that inevitably follow are also largely made by women, and they always have the same tone: “Amen, Sister!” “It never has been or will be hotter!” “They look like skeletons – gross!” I get the sense these women think they are celebrating “real” women’s bodies and advocating for accepting women’s bodies as they are. Oddly, they seem completely blind to the fact that they’re doing the exact same thing they claim to be against – judging women based on their physical appearance.
Since when are thin women not “real”? I know plenty of women who are thin. In fact, I’m fairly thin myself. I think I’m real. I feel pretty real. I have a job, a husband, a kid. My days are filled with the challenges of balancing work, family and personal time and interests. I get tired; I sleep. I get hungry; I eat. Am I real? It seems run-of-the-mill real to me. Here’s another thing about me: I don’t like being judged based solely on what my body looks like anymore than the fat girl, or the super tall girl, or the short girl, or the girl with freckles.
I don’t think my body is perfect, but I do love it. It takes me from point A to point B in the world pretty effectively. It runs, it does yoga, it plays with my son. It brought my son into the world and that’s pretty amazing. We all have things we like about our bodies and things we don’t like as much. The fact that we put so much focus on physical appearance is the problem.
Objectifying any woman or group of women is objectifying all women. The more women post photos of skinny girls with catty comments or spend precious time and energy criticizing Angelina Jolie or celeb du jour for being too thin on the awards shows, the more women are making it okay for someone else to criticize Adele or any woman for being fat. Media is brutal on all women – they’re equal opportunity objectifiers. One tabloid headline blasts Jessica Simpson for looking fat in her high-waist jeans and the very next is all over Keira Knightly for being too thin. “Is starlet X expecting? It looks like a baby bump! Does Starlet Y have an eating disorder? She looks awfully skinny!” We all know how it goes.
I recently saw Miss Representation, a 2011 documentary film directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The film explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power, influence and leadership by portraying women in narrow and often disparaging roles. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” is a major theme of the movie, and our society’s media is not providing positive role models for women and girls to see.
Rarely are women the protagonists of mainstream movies (only 16% of film protagonists are female). Apparently it is a firmly held belief in Hollywood that people want to watch movies about white men and aren’t interested in watching movies about women, particularly strong women who talk to each other about something other than men. What about Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Catwoman, Charlie’s Angels? Yes, there seems to be a whole new genre of action movies featuring women as heroes. Unfortunately, these female protagonists are even more sexualized than the traditional love-interest-of-leading-man roles. Caroline Heldman, a Professor of political science at Occidental College, calls this trend the “Fighting Fuck Toy,” which is an image that is both sad and hilarious; a cross between an action figure and a blow-up doll. “Press the button on my back for badass karate-chop motion!” “Squeeze my thigh for realistic hip-grinding action!” “Pull my hair and I say more than 20 phrases: ‘Take that!’ ‘You’ve been a very bad boy!’ ‘Oh, baby!’ and more!”
I was also shocked by a statistic the film shared about the ages of women in mainstream media. I don’t recall the exact percentages, but the gist was this: the majority of women on television are under the age of 31, while the majority of women in this country are over the age of 45. One of the academics interviewed for the film said something to the effect of “judging by what you see in media, women might as well cease to exist when they turn 40.” Upon hearing this, I clutched my husband’s hand and gave him a panic-stricken look out of the corner of my eye. Yes, I’ll be turning the big 4-0 this year and I will admit I’m a little distraught about it. Now I think I know why: Growing up around media that doesn’t show many examples of women over 40 makes it feel a little like I’m going to cease to exist. I’ve begun to, tongue-in-cheek, call 2012 my “cease to exist year.”
While I consciously know I won’t vanish into thin air when I hit 40, I do know I’ll continue struggling with the results of media’s disparaging and limited depictions of women. That has been going on my entire career. I’ve blogged before about the scarcity of women in highly influential leadership positions in my chosen field – one that is generally thought to be “dominated” by women, at least in terms of sheer numbers. It amazes me to hear people say we’ve gotten past sexism. Are they just not paying attention? When I returned from my three month maternity leave, a high-ranking employee of my organization asked me how I was enjoying motherhood. I told him it was wonderful and I was enjoying it more than I ever imagined I would. He shook his head and said, “Yeah, I’ll never forget what one of my first mentors told me: ‘Never hire a woman of child-bearing age.’” In addition to being sexist, his sentiment doesn’t even make sense. I’m still at my job, working as hard as ever. Besides that over the top example, I notice I am frequently interrupted by men in professional settings and my ideas are disregarded more often than the ideas of men. I know it isn’t just me, as plenty of female colleagues share similar experiences. A friend who is in a high-level leadership position talks about having everyone at a meeting dismiss her suggestions, only to embrace the exact same ideas when they are brought up by a man later in the same meeting.
My friend Llysa Holland recently shared a fascinating article called How the sex bias prevails by Shankar Vedantam. It describes the experiences of two transgendered Stanford University scientists, both of whom underwent sex changes fairly late in their lives – one from man to woman and one from woman to man. The experiences they shared in the different ways they were treated before and after their sex changes are striking. The article posits that perhaps we cannot truly see sexism at work in our society and how it impacts our lives without women being able to experience life as men and vice versa. The scientist who went from being a woman to a man had this to say: “By far, the main difference that I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect: I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man." (The italicized emphasis is mine.) The scientist who transitioned from man to woman said this about the differing interpersonal dynamics: "You get interrupted when you are talking, you can't command attention, but above all you can't frame the issues.” This sounds all too familiar.
When smart, successful women can’t get through a sentence in a professional setting without being interrupted, why do we, as women, spend so much time adding our voices to the dull roar portraying us as nothing more than bodies – either too fat or too thin, love-interests, and “Fighting Fuck Toys?” We’ve been well-trained to objectify ourselves and other women; that’s why. We’ve grown up in a media-saturated world that surrounds us with images of how women are “supposed” to look and learned that our value is dependent on whether or not we meet that standard.
How can we get past being critical of ourselves when we apply the same judgmental eye (with the standards simply flipped) to other women? We can’t pick our brand of beautiful and then disparage the rest without opening ourselves up to the same kind of criticism. Let’s stop obsessing about whether Fergie’s tummy-pooch means she’s expecting or if Katie Holmes has an eating disorder. Let’s stop circulating images that compare and judge women based solely on their physical appearance and start concentrating on framing the issues, shall we? That would be hot.
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