Apparently nothing is worth more promotional value than playing victim.
How long before "fat" becomes as "slur?
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Tyra Banks Says - "Kiss My Fat Ass"
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16 comments:
I've noticed that you tend not to weigh in on the "female apperance" topics. What's your take on this, I'm curious?
What's up Robyn?!
Nah, I'm not usually compelled to say anything about white girl's asses vs black girls asses, or whether Serena is sexy or not.
However, I don't see this as an appearance topic. I see it as identity politics gone too far.
Victim status is awarded and embraced in this society. I see Tyra Banks crying about being "called fat" on her own TV show, while wearing a bikini as an obvious attempt to pander to ... "weight challenged ... women everywhere.
"See. I'm called fat too. I'm just like you. I represent all the fat girls out there who are unhappy because OTHER people think they are fat" ... Now watch this MacDonald's commercial.
I find the entire hypocrisy laughable.
What's your take?
I too can recognize the pandering, however, I choose to respond to a different element of the debate. One that neither begins nor ends with Tyra.
I think the pressures on women to look a certain way are soo great, its become dangerous. The severaly thin preference has even invaded our communities despite our (typically) more healthy self concept and body image. Plainly, little black girls are starvin' and earlin' and thats a problem to me.
We trip off of our hair, our skin color, now our waistlines. I just assume let the Becky's get overly bogged down in that nonsense.
Not that we (the collective we) should walk around lookin' a mess. Not that people dont need to get off their asses (me included as I spend hour 3 in my office, in a chair, on the phone and in front of the computer). But the goals must be reasonable and healthy. A 35 year old women with no meat on her bones (I dont care what color you are) aint it. Many of these women are so damn thin, they dont even have breasts.
It wasnt like this in 1985 or 1990!
Robyn,
The "pressure to be thin" is a myth.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine 70.8% of black women are overweight and 50.2% are obese.
50.9% of all women in America are overweight and 38% obese.
If there is a "pressure to be thin" it aint working.
Characterizing the weight problem as yet another "oppression" of women is disingenuous and anti-intellectual.
People don't feel fat because "others tell them" they are fat. They feel fat because they eat food they can't digest and don't exercise enough.
Anything else is a mere distraction that enables them to continue doing what is keeping them unhealthy and unhappy.
Okay, your right, I'm wrong. No pressure to be thin. Forget that your a man and I'm a woman and thus subject to a completely different set of social forces. You and the trusty New England Journal of Medicine certainly know what its like to be a women these days. I'm imagining the anti carb crusade, the south beach diet, the zone diet and the atkins diet. I'm imagining the fashion industry's unprecented self inflicted reality check that models today are simply too thin. I'm imagining the widespread use of Splenda instead of sugar and the low fat/non-fat everything. The actresses whose bones I get to view on the red carpet dont actually exist and Beyonce didnt report going on a liquid diet to lose 25 lbs in a matter of weeks.
My bad, DV.
And....you call me disingenuous. Well you're inconsistent.
You rant every day that Americans are like sheep conforming to the whims of those you argue control the masses, but when there is a discussion of an actual and documented imposed phenomena (for lack of a better term), you say it doesnt exist.
Whatever!
Damn. Robyn. Talk about wrong page.
My bad.
I thought you asked me my take on Tyra's show. I was referring to Tyra's spectacle and the recent media fad of arguing that "women are MADE TO FEEL fat" as opposed to actually being fat, as pandering disingenuous and anti-intellectual.
It's a cheap "I feel your pain" way to get applause and empathy.
I wasn't talking about you.
I never knew the question was "what is it 'like' to be a woman these days".
Fashion models are too thin? Too thin for what? It must work, women are buying clothes like their lives depend on it.
I don't think the pressure is "on women" to be thin. I think the pressure is "within women" to be thin.
But nah. You right. All the models should look like Star Jones and Rosie O'Donnell. I am imagining the lines at Cosco with women the size of small pick-up trucks pushing 2 shopping carts of processed food, candy and cases of Coca-Cola. It’s the “Fashion Industry” ordering pizzas and picking up quarts of Haagen Daz at 11PM at night.
It’s not a pressure to be thin that’s a problem. It’s a pressure to eat that appears to be the problem.
Speaking of which – what you doing next Saturday? I was thinking about getting some people together for drinks maybe dinner. You know Barefoot on Third?
DV -
I am with Robyn on this one (somewhat). You are quite dismissive of the intense pressure on women to be thin, but it's there, it's ubiquitous and it's destructive. It's the view, ingrained in girls from birth, that they must always look their best to attract and keep a man and being thin is considered part of that package.
Here is the paradox. We are in a consumer-oriented, short-cut, shallow culture that has competing pressures. The stats about obesity you cite are probably correct, but they are the other side of Robyn's argument.
Food companies produce and market food that is shit, that is not easily digestable, but is quick and easy, etc. Then a woman, in her panic to remain thin notwithstanding consumption of constant crap, spends billions more on make-up, fad diets, plastic surgery, etc. One industry feeds the other. Of course most women don't become thin, because they are looking for short-cuts instead of really making lifestyle changes. Hence, the stats you cite. But the stats do not negate the existence of the pressure.
In the mentoring program, we work with the girls specifically on body image issues and it's already deeply ingrained in 12-year-olds. Shoot, men have it these days too.
Great points, Dina.
DV,
I do know Barefoot on Third. I'm down. Let me know the details when theyre set. Thanks for the invite. If your still wavering on the location, I have a suggestion, Nics in BH. VERY COOL PLACE with great live music (done by us).
That was me above.
For young girls to look their best, Insurgent, is a very healthy pressure indeed.
I take issue with the “Pressure to be thin” (victimhood du jour) argument because it does not empower women. It pacifies them. It implies being healthy and thin is unrealistic. It sends the always marketable message to women: “Men are responsible for the way you feel, now get that big bag of potato chips and 64oz Mountain Dew”
If men who robbed banks were allowed to blame it on “the pressure to be rich” the jails would be empty.
I can hear them now. “Your honor. You don’t know what it’s like to be broke. Women treat you like dirt. The media is always pushing these happy, good looking rich guys in convertibles. I jussss wannna Escalade your honor!!! Is that soooo baaaaad!!”
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Its a battle to the death with you, DV. Sigh!
"Look your best" does not equal 90 lbs with bones showing. Thats my only point.
The essence of your argument is that people must take personal responsibility for their choices, actions and the consequences thereof, and with this sentiment I wholeheartedly agree.
But DV, you have no idea how deeply the pressures run. Just like you had pressures on what it is to be a "man", we women had certain pressures. Of course, we should all do our best to transcend those pressures and move beyond them so we can lead healthy and constructive lives but, again, that does not change the fact that the pressure is there. Admitting its existence is not an affirmation of its validity.
where is the pressure coming from? inside of your heads? no. outside of yourself. maybe this is where the problem starts. maybe we need to put a block or barrier up against so many random and obviously harmful things that we allow to penetrate our space.
I know, but then someone will say, But I WANT to watch that or a WANT to read that magazine and so ergo, if you do what you want to do and the media slugs do what they want to do, we will turn right four times and be back where we started.
the only person/thing you can control is you.
DV, your analogy about the bank robbing is textbook. I will be using that.
A man's job is to save a woman from herself.
Deconstructing the projected monsters of female self doubt is a never ending task.
It puzzles me when women imply I cannot possibly "know" how deeply a woman feels, become "I am not a woman".
Au Contrare Mon Frere
It is exactly because I am man, that I can know how a woman feels. Not only do I know how she feels, I know how to deal with it. What do you think I've been doing for the past 20 years?
9 times out of 10, what she fears (feels pressured by) is not the real villain. Exposing boogeymen and challenging the rationalizations of deflected blame is an act of love.
A man must develop a tough skin to endure the initial storm of her wrath. Provided he can hang, he is later rewarded by the light generated by her growth and comforted by her newly found strength.
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