Ive been having a discussion about the objectification of women in advertising. As these things do the discussion veered off to include BMI, body image and self esteem, which is understandable as these things are all connected. The picture that illustrated it was 8 women in underwear. The two black women looked identical and the rest all white were identical except for different colours of blonde hair. All of them had European, tousled wavy hair. I was discussing this with a woman who conflated this image with women being proud of their bodies and it being healthy. Over many posts I tried to discuss how these kind of manipulated and more importantly in this context, *paid for* models are not choosing to do this in the way that a bunch of girl friends might strip off and go skinny dipping. Its a managed, focus grouped and status heavy image that is the antithesis of pride and as for health, looking at a thin (albeit not emaciated) body with no imperfections tells you nothing about the person. Who knows what they do to look that way (even without photoshop), maybe theyre extremely unhealthy...just thin. Maybe they have a natural tendency to being thin and therefore its not really something to applaud. I stated and repeated that I find nothing wrong with people taking their clothes off and being proud of their bodies, but that in a world where women in particular are laughed at and made to feel disgusting for having an ounce of superfluous flesh (apparently we all agree that being overweight is unhealthy...as if that the only thing that signifies health...and of course being underweight is fine then??) the idea that these women are somehow neutral is laughable. They are status symbols, their appearance of a societal mean of health contributes to the misery of millions of women (and increasingly men). In short, like unfettered wealth making they can only exist while other people are poor. I ended my part in the discussion when she said that that if you take away these images then women may not be represented at all. I find it hard to believe that a woman would have these opinions (I should get out more) and said so. These arent even the models theyre purporting to be! I hate the idea that fat women are *real* women. Thats just a different stick to beat a different group of women with, but while we accept that images like the one below are natural or even representative of the women IN the picture....I despair.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:08:35 +0000
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