Tag: body image

body image · diets · fitness

50,000 Hits and Counting: Why Is “She May Look Healthy But” So Popular?

Tracy I3 Comments

suits-fitness-figure

A couple of years ago, just before I left for a sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands, I whipped up a quick post questioning the health of fitness models. A few days later, when I managed to find a wifi connection on shore (at Foxy’s Beach Bar), the stats blew my mind. The post was racking up hits as if we’d hit the jackpot on a slot machine. Never before had we posted anything that attracted readers to the blog by the thousands.

“She May Look Heathy But.. Why Fitness Models Aren’t Models of Health” is still sailing strong, by far our most read post. Surpassing 50,000 hits over the weekend, it’s had more than double the exposure of the other two old stand-bys, “The Shape of an Athlete” and “Why the Thigh Gap Makes Me Sad,” each standing now at around 24,000. Close behind them: “Crotch Shots, Upskirts, Sports Reporting, and the Objectification of Female Athletes” and “Padded Sports Bras and Nipple Phobia.”

Some weeks, these and a few other of our stalwart reliables get more traffic than any of the new content. But “She May Look Healthy But..” takes first prize. And we’re kind of baffled as to why.

It’s not the tags. We have lots of posts tagged or categorized with some combination of “body image, diets, fitness, health.”

And it’s not as if it’s one of the most indepth or well-written posts on our blog. I cribbed most of it (with credit to the original, of course) from this interview with a fitness instructor who decided to prep for a women’s figure competition. And I got the rest from our friend, colleague, and figure competitor, Shay Welch.

My post made a point that I think is worth repeating: that the healthy and fit look so many aspire to, the well-defined and sculpted body we see in magazines and competitions, is attained usually through not-so-healthy, temporary routines. The routines’ primary purpose is to produce a body that looks like that, not to promote health or fitness. And the look is not sustainable even for the people who achieve it.  It’s how you appear on game day, but not on most other days.

The disconnect between looking fit and healthy, on the one hand, and being fit and healthy, on the other hand, shines through like bright sunlight on a clear day when we read her story and also the experience of Shay, fellow-philosopher, friend, and fitness figure competitor, who told me this:

I usually am at 1200-1400 calories during off season just to maintain (which is about 25 lbs over what I should be on stage) and then at about 800 calories in the final stretch, working out twice a day for around 4 hours.  everyday.  I do a lot of crying and very little sleeping.  Off season is relatively healthy but your body will change weight super easy because the metabolism crashes to nothing.  But the final stretch is super duper uper unhealthy.  But I can’t do any other sports and I love being athletically competitive so I deal.  Most people I know who do this cannot maintain a real job.  They are almost always fitness trainers because they’re the only ones who can really endure this.  I’ve known more than a few people who had to quit their regular job because they became obsessed with dieting and being on stage.  I throw all my trophies away because I am always trying to remember that this is just a hobby.  And no one maintains except professional fitness people and they get paid to starve year round.

The post generated tons of comments. Lots of people agreed with the key idea.

But we also heard from competitors who said that the tone of my post was unduly discouraging.  They defended these competitions and the possibility of prepping in a way that isn’t as difficult, or at least isn’t any more demanding than prepping for any other physically demanding undertaking.

Competitors expressed gratitude for the support of friends and family, talking about how rewarding an experience it’s been for them. Trainers took issue with some of the claims about how restrictive the plans were.

The fact is, you’re not going to convince me that the central point is wrong. Fitness figure competitors, like any other competitors, train for specific competitions. In their case, the goal is to look a certain way for their events, or, if they’re models, for their photo shoots.

They’re the first to admit that they don’t look this way all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not ready to run a marathon all the time either. No one, not wrestlers or power-lifters or rowers, “makes weight” every day.

Where things go wrong is that in the popular imaginary, we have come to associate the way the fitness models and figure competitors look with what it means to be/look healthy and fit.

It’s not just ironic. It’s downright harmful. So no. You are not going to convince me that equating health and fitness with looking like a fitness model ready for competition is a good thing. It’s not a fair or accurate representation of fitness or health.

If that’s the main message people pick up from reading our post, then I couldn’t be happier that so many read it every week. We have a good range of views represented in the comments on the original post, which is why they’re now closed.

We haven’t solved the mystery of why the spotlight lands on that post every day. But we’re grateful that it attracts a steady audience, and we hope that at least some of those readers click through to the other good content on the blog.

Thanks for reading!

body image · fat · interview · media

What’s Wrong with the “Feeling Fat” Emoticon?

Tracy I7 Comments
Facebook emoticons, including "feeling fat," with a chubby face.You’ve probably read by now that Facebook has removed its “feeling fat” status update/emoticon from the list of options. Over 16,000 put pressure on the social media goliath by signing activist group Endangered Bodies’ petition.

This article quotes Catherine Weingarten, the author of the petition, as saying:
When Facebook users set their status to “feeling fat,” they are making fun of people who consider themselves to be overweight, which can include many people with eating disorders. That is not ok. Join me in asking Facebook to remove the “fat” emoji from their status options.
And when it decided to do the right thing, Facebook said:

“We’ve heard from our community that listing ‘feeling fat’ as an option for status updates could reinforce negative body image, particularly for people struggling with eating disorders,” Facebook (FB, Tech30) said in a statement.
But media is just about sound bytes (as I myself discovered in a TV interview that I’ll post below), and neither of these get to the full picture.

First of all, it’s not just about people with eating disorders and it’s not just about making fun of people. No doubt, Catherine Weingarten said a lot more than that. I’m almost certain of that because the Endangered Bodies offers a more nuanced set of reasons for what the problem is. The petition talks about fat-shaming, body hatred, and Facebook’s influence and reach as a significant social media platform:

Fat is a substance that every body has and needs. Fat is also an adjective – a descriptive word about a physical attribute. Just like tall, short, black or white, it should not be misused to shame oneself or others. However, the fashion, beauty and diet industries have an interest in making us feel insecure about our own bodies and over time “fat” has become a negative word, not a simple statement of size. There is nothing neutral about it. The stigma and criticism of fat and the elevation of thin make them stand-ins for other kinds of words, feelings and moods.

Endangered Bodies sees this fear of fat and idealisation of thinness throughout society as a form of weight stigma, which can have a serious impact on the millions of people dealing with negative body image. Body-shaming and weight stigma are associated with lower self-esteem and disordered eating, an issue that Facebook – being a social platform – needs to take seriously.

I myself blogged about “feeling fat” a long time ago, when the blog was just a month old. There, I talked about the difference between feeling fit and feeling fat. Most especially, we need to be aware that feeling fat has nothing to do with body weight. It has to do with the assumption that fat is bad. When we feel bad about ourselves, that self-loathing can express itself in feeling fat:
It’s a strange and complicated thing, feeling fat is.  It can settle in overnight, or even through the course of a day. Clothes that fit just fine when I put them on in the morning might by lunch time start to feel like they’re pinching and snug, especially if I had a bad morning.  Even the red silk scarf, not a body-hugging item, might not look right when just yesterday it accessorized perfectly. And a general feeling of unworthiness accompanies feeling fat. It’s astonishing and sad that internalized cultural stigma against weight and body type can feed so powerfully into these negative attitudes about oneself.

Remember, feeling fat is amazingly unconnected to actual body size and even percentage of fat. But it is also, for many women I know, the “go-to” feeling when they are unhappy with themselves about something…about anything.  This says a lot about the hold that our culture’s attitudes about weight and body size has on us. Even those of us who are explicitly and consciously attentive to the irrational and unfair social stigma, even working to challenge it, latch onto fatness (real or imagined) as a personal deficiency. It then spirals into an energy-sucking, self-defeating stick that might make a person feel motivated to get active (but for all the wrong reasons) or thoroughly hopeless about exercise because it doesn’t “work” (as if its only purpose is to lose or control one’s weight).

When we can use feeling fat to articulate low self-esteem, as a stick to beat ourselves with, then it’s not funny. It’s sad. One thing I believe is that when we feel fat it’s a good sign that something else is going on with us. And that’s probably not the time to invoke a glib emoticon that announces to the world: “I hate myself right now.”

The social meaning of feeling fat ensures that it’s not simply self-abusive. Not at all. A purely individualistic explanation of why it’s harmful to include it among “impatient, amused, better, discouraged” doesn’t capture the social harm. It’s fat-phobic and fat-shaming.  Even if lots of the people who feel fat don’t appear to others to be fat, they’ve internalized the message that fat is loathsome to such a degree that it’s what they latch onto when they want to express how much they despise themselves in that moment (because, and this is one thing it has in common with actual feelings, it can pass as quickly as it set in). That’s a pretty awful thing for people who others actually do think of as fat.

We live in a fat-phobic, fat-shaming world. In providing that emoticon, Facebook is perpetuating an oppressive social attitude.  The local news came to see me about this today. I said a lot of stuff that was more interesting than what they chose, but if you’re interested, here’s a link to the clip.  They will make you watch an ad first and for that I apologize.

And from the Endangered Bodies’ Fat Is Not a Feeling campaign:

With social influence, power, and reach comes social responsibility. It’s good to see that Facebook can respond appropriately at least some of the time even if they don’t have a very nuanced public presentation of their reasons.

It’s not, as the other person interviewed in my clip said, that they can’t afford not to be “politically correct.” Why do people always talk about “political correctness” as if there is something wrong with simply choosing a socially responsible course of action? That charge that mega-corporations are always having to bow to political correctness is a simplistic and dismissive response to genuine concern about real social harms.

And to those who think that in removing this choice FB has somehow done us a disservice, it’s not some God-given right that everything we experience needs to be expressible in a canned status with a matching emoticon. I’m glad they took it down and I will be happier still when we stop using “feeling fat” as a form of self-abuse and a socially acceptable way of body-shaming in a fat-phobic culture.
body image · diets · Uncategorized · weight loss

Weight Loss, Body Hatred, and the Possibility of Other Motives

Tracy I27 Comments

We spend a lot of time on the blog talking about body positivity and self-acceptance.  But sometimes we also talk about weight loss.  Whether it be for performance reasons, as I’ve discussed (with some skepticism that it makes it “okay” to have it as a goal) and as Samantha thinks about re. her cycling or to get the blood pressure in check, as Natalie has done, there are reasons other than normative femininity to lose weight.

But some people think that as a feminist blog, we should never ever talk about weight loss as something to aim for. Weight loss is associated the the pressure to be thin, oppressive norms, and a generally negative opinion of fat, fat bodies, and fat people. I

Not only that, but we have always taken a strong anti-diet position on the blog. Diets don’t work. The staggering statistics in support of their inefficacy speak for themselves. Almost everyone who successfully loses weight with restrictive dieting gains most (often more) of it back over time. Sometimes it takes a few years, sometimes just a few weeks. It depends on the method — fad diets and highly restrictive approaches to weight loss have the worst outcomes.

And if diets don’t work, why are doctors always pushing us to lose weight anyway? They give all sorts of unsolicited advice, making body weight monitoring a regular part of ongoing medical care even for people who aren’t having any health issues at all.

We reject the whole BMI thing.  And both Sam and I promote the idea of finding activities you enjoy and getting out and doing them, no matter what your size and without having weight loss as a focal point.

We care about metabolic health, and are more likely to encourage everyone to eat more, not less! In fact, I’m not sure we have any posts that encourage people to eat less.

We’ve written about all of this and more. And yet sometimes we talk about weight loss.  And a few people have let us know that it disturbs them. That it indicates to them that we’re not “feminist enough.”

I’m not big on defending myself as a feminist, either to anti-feminists or to other feminists.  But what I want to say here is that Sam and I aren’t just feminists. We’re actually feminist philosophers.

Now, not all feminist philosophers believe exactly the same things. But one of the things that makes us fairly compatible is that we’re both fairly moderate and open to other ways of seeing things. This means that on our Facebook page, for example, we’ll sometimes post content that we don’t agree with,. We might do that just because it makes an interesting point worthy of consideration OR because it’s clearly getting something wrong in an interesting way.

But the real question for me when we post about weight loss, at least where feminism is concerned, is: are their any legitimate reasons for wanting to lose weight, reasons that have nothing to do with hating our bodies, trying to fit normative ideals, or even worse, hating and punishing ourselves.

And I think the answer to that is pretty clearly “yes.”

I think we’re right to be skeptical about medical reasons even though in some cases it could make a difference.  The fact is, so does getting active and developing healthy eating habits.  Weight loss could be a by-product of that, but setting it as a primary goal is probably going to be self-defeating anyway.

Then there are the performance reasons that athletes obsess about. I blogged about racing weight not too long ago. And Sam has talked about wanting to weigh less so she can fly up hills more quickly. In my post, I worried that after a couple of years of liberating myself from weight loss as a goal, aiming for “racing weight” or any kind of weight-related performance improvement could take me back to old bad habits associated with dieting: poor body image, weight obsession, worrying about food all the time, berating myself for eating.

I also worried that you can dress it up anyway you like, but aiming for weight loss for whatever reason is going to have the same results. Wanting to perform better doesn’t mean your weight loss is going to be any more lasting than if you did it for other reasons. Athletes don’t even expect to maintain their race weight or the weight they will compete at on game day through the entire year. It’s seasonal.

So I guess I have my worries about that too. Yes, we can have non-body-hating reasons to want to lose weight. And in the end, I think those reasons can be consistent with feminist ideals. But having different reasons doesn’t change the facts about sustainable weight loss.

Sam has blogged about weight loss unicorns before. They’re the people, and we all know some of them, who lose weight and keep it off. They’re unicorns because they are rare.

And even if someone has reasons for wanting to lose weight that are consistent with feminism, I myself avoid entering into any conversation with anyone where my expected role is to praise them for their weight loss efforts. I pretty much never do that because, as I blogged about here, I do not believe “You’ve lost weight, you look great” is a compliment in polite society. Rather, it bespeaks a kind of body policing. It’s really hard to be explicit about noticing someone’s weight loss (or gain) and not be engaged in body policing.

Weight loss and dieting have long been considered as oppressive tools, contrary to the liberatory goals of feminism. Besides blogging about it a lot I’ve also done a bit of philosophical work on the topic. For me, I know weight loss is a dangerous goal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why some people might want to lose a few pounds for reasons that are consistent with the aims of feminism, among which, of course, are the freedom to make our own choices without being condemned for them.

 

Uncategorized

Why feminism is still needed

Sam B12 Comments

Michael Rowe shared this on Facebook with the following comment: “I can’t help but wonder what it would look like if a male author who had sold 30 million copies of one book (in this case, THE THORN BIRDS, which was made into the second-highest rated miniseries of all time) was eulogized as being “plain of feature and certainly overweight,” especially in the first paragraph of his obituary. I’m still wondering, because I just can’t picture it happening. (Photo by @vanbadham, via Twitter.)”

Thanks Peter K for sharing

athletes · body image

Mine All Mine: How Getting Active Gave Me a New Way of Being in My Body

Tracy I18 Comments

tracy triathlon embodimentHow do you feel in your body?  At home, absent, at war, at peace, comfortable, uncomfortable? I ask this because, since my fiftieth birthday back in September, I’ve discovered that apart from doing a whole bunch of stuff that I used to think impossible (see my post about that here), the most remarkable change over the past two years is internal.

It’s not just internal in a psychological way. It’s more than that.  Feminists talk a lot about our embodied experience. And lately, I feel that my triathlon training — all that running, swimming, and even the detestable biking (sorry — still not loving it) — have altered the way I feel in my body.  For the very first time in my life, I have a sense of my physicality as belonging totally and 100% to me.

I own these activities–every endurance run, every early morning workout in the pool, every struggle on the bike. They’re mine. I do them for me. Not for you or for my parents or my partner or because someone else/society/my employer/Oprah thinks I should. Nope. None of that. No one would blink an eye if I never did any of this stuff again. And yet I do it anyway because they’re things I want to do.

How is that different from what I felt like before? If you’ve been a regular reader of the blog from the early days, you’ll know that despite my repeated attempts to let go of the need to look a certain way, I’ve experienced my share of challenges in the body image department.

I know it’s kind of  big yawn for lots of people when small women with average sized bodies who can easily buy clothing off the rack at any store say they don’t like their bodies. But it happens and it’s painful and — anyway, I stopped blogging about it awhile back because I too find it tiresome.

A couple of weeks ago Canada had a shock when a well-respected and popular radio host from CBC radio was let go by the broadcaster because, in their words, they had learned something that made it impossible for them to continue their relationship with him.

As the story unfolded in the days following the announcement, numerous women came forward with allegations that the host had sexual assaulted and/or harassed them. For a few days, news about the firing and subsequent allegations was only thing that showed up on my newsfeed.

And for the first time perhaps ever, Canadian news was dominated by discussions of sexual coercion and the importance of consent.  We also had a national conversation about why sexual assault goes unreported so much (like this and this one, “I didn’t report because fuck you”). In every paper. On every television broadcast. On all the radio stations.  On Facebook and twitter and in the hallways of workplaces, conversations over lunch, telephone calls with people who lived in different parts of the country.

So what does this have to do with a new way of being in my body?  Well, you know, it just made me realize the extent to which it’s a rare thing indeed when a women feels confident ownership of her body — like she doesn’t owe anyone anything and she gets to say “no” and let it mean “no” (not “maybe” and not “let me talk you into it” and not “are you sure?” and not “maybe later” but “NO”).

And when we don’t feel that confident sense of ownership, it’s hard not to feel insecure about choices that may upset people or make them angry or, heaven forbid, disappoint someone or not meet their expectations. And hence the level of coercion and coaxing that lots of women endure (by the way, said radio host’s alleged actions were a lot more serious than coercion and coaxing).

And so to discover a domain where that shit doesn’t happen is like a small miracle, like finding an oasis in the desert or something like that.

And that’s what diving in with both feet into some athletic activity that I love has done for me. It’s like hello. Who’s been keeping this big secret from me?

Has discovering a physical activity you love changed the way you live in your body?

 

 

 

 

body image · swimming · training · weight loss

Why Swim?

Tracy I15 Comments
Swimmer in lake. Image credit: http://www.beaverlakeboaters.net/events/swimmers-trek-40-miles-to-beaver-dam/
Swimmer in lake. Image credit: http://www.beaverlakeboaters.net/events/swimmers-trek-40-miles-to-beaver-dam/

Regular readers of the blog will know that I am totally in love with swimming. So when Sam sent me this post “5 Reasons Why Swimming Is the Perfect Workout for Weight Loss” I kind of bristled. Why? Posts like this rub me the wrong way because they make it sound as if weight loss is the only good reason to do it.

What if swimming turned out to be great for our health but not great for weight loss?  Should we then ditch it?

But back to the five reasons. Here’s what the article says:

1. Burns calories

You can burn much more calories swimming than could while you walk or run. An average built person can easily burn 400-500 calories in a 60 minute session of moderate-intensity swimming.

2. Works out your muscles

The different strokes involved in swimming requires a good amount of muscle power. This gives your muscles a good workout every session. Those looking out for a muscle building workout should try high-intensity swimming as this can adequately stimulate your muscle growth.

3. Tones you out

Swimming no doubt exercises your whole body. When you swim your arms, shoulders, back, core, glutes and legs get a thorough workout thus toning them effectively.

4. Boosts metabolism

Any activity that burns calories and gets your heart rate up also boosts your metabolism. This makes swimming the perfect metabolism boosting activity. An active metabolism in turn aids fast weight loss.

5. Motivates you to try harder

The swimming attire usually requires you to strip down to bare minimal. This motivates you to train harder to look good in your swimwear.

I’m not going to quarrel with the first four things on the list.  It does burn calories, work out a variety of muscles, gives you a good total body workout, and as much as anything that gets your heart pumping it boosts the metabolism.

But that last reason? Really?  Swim suits are skimpy, so if you want to look good while you work out (see Sam’s post on looking cute while working out), you’ll be motivated to train really hard if you swim.  Strange logic.  In fact, emphasizing the minimalism of swim wear is more likely to discourage people who are body conscious from ever stepping onto the pool deck.

A bunch of good reasons to swim are missing from this list, and these aren’t all about weight loss.  Swimming is a non-impact activity, so it’s easier on the body than running.  It provides excellent cardio, so helps build a strong and healthy cardiovascular system. And that promotes endurance.  One of the things I love most about swimming is that feeling that I could go on forever.

I much prefer this post by Master’s swimmer Alex Kotisch: 9 Good Reasons Why You Should Get in the Pool. Among the reasons:

1. Heart Helper
Swimming provides unparalleled cardiovascular conditioning, provided you practice consistently and with good technique. While other forms of exercise may be more effective at elite levels (such as running or cycling), incorporating swimming into a cross-training routine and pushing yourself in practice will result in overall improved fitness.

2. Balance Your Build
Swimming builds longer, leaner muscles that complement the shorter denser muscles that develop from weight training. These “swimmer’s muscles” also help boost metabolism to keep calories burning longer.

3. Cross-training
Swimming not only boosts cardiovascular capacity while increasing muscle strength, but it also gives your body a break from higher-impact activities like basketball, running, and weightlifting. By creating a balanced workout routine, athletes avoid injury by allowing their body time to heal, while not forgoing daily training sessions.

4. Increased Flexibility
A heated pool relaxes muscles, increasing flexibility and enabling important stretching. Also, after intense lactic-acid-building endurance workouts (running, cycling, weights), an easy swim helps flush out toxins preventing muscle tightness and soreness the following day.

5. Strengthen Your Core
Swimming develops core body strength because it utilizes all the body’s muscles simultaneously. Although 70 percent of a swimmer’s effort comes from the upper body, kickboard and fin workouts can provide an excellent leg workout.

6. Endurance
Swimmers are able to swim longer than they can what they could sustain doing other activities. With the right technique, a swimmer will be able to train for longer periods of time than if he/she were running and, as a result, more calories are burned.

7. Adventure
Swimming has branched out from the darkened, indoor community pools of yesteryear. Many new health club chains offer clean lap pools, and local communities are finding renewed interest in outdoor facilities during the summer months. Seek out available natatoriums in your area (swimmersguide.com) and if you are able, locate a natural body of water (lake, ocean, pond, or quarry) and explore the joys of open-water swimming.

8. Social Outlet
Imagine meeting the man/woman of your dreams, and seeing what they look like without their clothes on for your first date! That’s one benefit, at least, of joining a Masters team or triathlon training group. In addition to the possibility of romance fueled by mutual interests, team programs offer peer motivation and professional coaching to provide you with increased performance results.

And finally, the last reason is: weight loss.

9. Weight Loss
“People who consistently swim strenuously enough to be out of breath when they finish and elevate their heart rate do burn calories and lose weight,” says Jane Moore, M.D., a physician and active swimmer from Tacoma, Washington. “The key is to push yourself a bit.”

“Putting on a swimsuit and appearing in public should also motivate one to shed a few pounds,” says Kris Houchens, head coach of the YMCA Indianapolis SwimFit Masters.

Again, there’s that ridiculous comment about having to appear in public in your swim suit.  Ugh. I’m all for promoting the other reasons to swim, but highlighting the horror of looking “unsightly” in a swim suit is, as I said before, much more likely to discourage people from taking a dip than it is to encourage them to work harder in the pool. We need to get people to the pool first.

I swim because it makes me feel energized and strong. I love the rhythm of my breathing when I swim, and the feeling of gliding through the water. I also find it a very meditative activity. I’ve blogged about that before.  Also, though I’m not the fastest swimmer in the pool, I am faster than a lot of people, and that makes me feel good.  It’s also amazing to take it out to the open water in the summer.

So for all the great reasons to swim, dive in! The water is fine!

body image · equality · fashion · Uncategorized

The Tata Top, Normalized Bodies, and Feminism

Tracy I10 Comments

Sam wrote about “Nipple Phobia and Padded Sports Bras” way back in the early days of the blog. There she lamented the ubiquity of the padded sports bra (indeed, the padded bra more generally). Where we used to be able to find lots of unpadded bras and sports bras, nowadays it’s a real search.

Part of the reason for this, hypothesized Sam, is that we are caught in the grips of nipple phobia. We don’t want to see them or show them.  As Sam said, they’ve become what the visible panty-line used to be — an unsightly reminder of the natural bodies that actually live under our clothing.

Enter the Tata top.  This bikini top got a lot of press last week on-line.  From a distance, if you’re a white woman with an average sized chest wearing the light-tone Tata, it looks from afar as if you’re going topless.

Tata bikini top for light skin and pink nipples.
Tata bikini top for light skin and pink nipples.

I say if you’re a white woman because the medium tone and dark tone Tatas are not yet available. They are expected to ship in mid-August.  I say if you’re “average sized” because at present the tops are only available in small (A-B) and medium sizes (B-C). Anything larger than a C-cup is also on backorder, with this apology to larger women from the creators: “LARGE CHESTED LADIES…WE UNDERESTIMATED YOU BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”

The Tata top is supposed to help fight breast stigma, topless inequality, and nipple phobia.  According to this Daily Beast article, it’s meant to help fight gender inequality. That makes it sound like a feminist statement if there ever was one.  The article continues:

The underlying goal of the bikini, however, is meant to desexualize the idea of female nipples and eliminate gendered double standards. Why should it be laughable, or even uncomfortable, for a woman to bare her breasts in public?

“By censoring an image of a woman’s chest and not a man’s it doesn’t end with removing that image from your platform,” Graves and Lytle conclude. “Whether you like it or not you are confirming that YES, a woman’s nipples are indecent and are something that need to be kept covered. You are endorsing that train of thought. You take yourself out of the business of providing a forum for free thinking and place yourself in the position of deciding what is immoral and what isn’t.”

So why, then, is there such an outcry among some feminists about this top?  Well, there are a number of reasons. The most common is that the first iteration — marketed to and for women with bodies that are white and slight — sends an unmistakable message about normative bodies.

The Jezebel article ends with this remark: “Like many aspects of modern-day feminism, right now, this one’s only available to women with light skin and disposable income. But the inventors of the Ta Ta Top promise that more colors are coming soon.”

The medium tone Tata top, available in mid-August.
The medium tone Tata top, available in mid-August.

The various attempts on the website to apologize, first to the “large-chested ladies” whom they “underestimated,” and then to women with “medium” or “dark” skintones don’t really succeed in overcoming the oversight. To the women with different skintones, they offered not so much an apology as a promise that the medium and dark tops will arrive and an excuse as to why they aren’t yet available:

Will you have other skin tones?

Absolutely but first we need to prove a market! Investing money and ending up with one TaTa Top is funny. Investing money in three tones and ending up with 2,000 TaTa’s is slightly less so. The more we sell the more tones and more styles we will able to offer. Take our TaTa Top poll to help us decide which direction to take next.

The dark-toned Tata, available in mid-August.
The dark-toned Tata, available in mid-August.

This is not a new issue by any means.  The “What’s Your Nude?” campaign raised awareness about how difficult it is to find “nude” bras in brown skin tones. See “Not MY Nude: Why I Started the Brown Bra Scavenger Hunt.”

The “What’s Next?” poll on the Tata website focuses on extra small and extra large sizing and the turns to fashion, with four different piercing choices.

I also heard some people raising the usual questions about initiatives that raise their profile by aligning themselves with charities to support the already over-supported cause of breast cancer research. It might sound callous to roll one’s eyes whenever yet another thing promotes itself by raising money for breast cancer research, but the pink ribbon thing has many detractors, who complain about “pinkwashing”:

The term “pinkwashing” was coined by Breast Cancer Action in reference to companies that either promote breast cancer awareness without donating at all, are deceptive or not transparent about where any funds raised go, or put a pink ribbon on a product with known or suspected links to cancer.

For the ins and outs of the debate, see this Forbes article on “The Pinkwashing Debate: Empty Criticism or Serious Liability.”

By far the most interesting comment came to my from fellow feminist philosopher Kristin Rodier, who took issue with the claim that linked body exposure to freedom, and who very quickly asked about the range of sizes available. In order to further elaborate the point about exposure as freedom, she sent me Kelly Oliver’s paper, “Sexual Freedom as Global Freedom.”

The paper focuses on the Western “rhetoric of liberating ‘women of cover.”  Oliver argues that we in the west have reduced women’s freedom “to freedom to to dress (especially in revealing clothes for the eyes of others), governed by market forces of fashion and consumerism.”  She further claims that “this view of women’s freedom is used to justify military action elsewhere, and to reassure Western women of their own freedom at home. The rhetoric of liberating women elsewhere conceals women’s oppression here at home while at the same time reassuring us that we are liberated.”

How does the Tata top fit into this picture?  By purporting to address the issue of women’s oppression through a top that mimics maximum exposure of women’s upper bodies.  We may not (yet) have a achieved full gender equality because men can go topless while (for the most part) women cannot, but the Tata top is here to save the day.

As reported on Salon.com: “Ladies, now you can free your nipples without going topless.”  This focus on freedom belies a very Westernized perspective that, indeed, doesn’t even apply to all Western women.

I think the original limited offerings of this item only to light skinned women with pink nipples and A-C sized breasts demonstrates well whose nipple freedom “we” as a society will tolerate. Not everyone’s exposed skin is equally welcome, and when non-normative bodies are exposed, there is a different social meaning, a different kind of statement being made. It’s not just “fun.”

I get the impression from the website and different articles I’ve read that the company is not quite sure how to market the top.  The equality card is one angle. But they also claim to be wanting to normalize the breast and nipple so that they’re de-sexualized. Somewhere on the site it talks about normalizing the sight of women breast-feeding in public, which certainly is a worthwhile cause.

But the website isn’t wholly on board with the desexualization of the breast, and in fact when I first went to the website last week it included a “warning” that said: ““Disclaimer: Wearers are cautioned to be prepared for the onslaught of pick up lines it is sure to elicit.” That message, which seems to celebrate the top as an expression of sexuality, has since been removed (or at least I couldn’t find it when I went back).

I also think that the top is likely to have more applications as a novelty item than as an item that plays a huge role in achieving gender equality.  I think the size and skintone gaffes, as well as the more pointed perspective expressed in Oliver’s paper about how Westernized this idea of freedom through revealing clothing, raise serious questions about the top’s capacity to promote an inclusive feminist agenda.

 

 

 

 

 

 

body image · media

On Thigh Gaps and Photoshop

Tracy I7 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, it was a Target junior model in a bikini.  Then, it was a plus sized jeans ad for Old Navy.  What did these two have in common: an oddly suspicious thigh gap.

Let’s start with exhibit one, from Target:

thigh gap photoshop target

If that’s not an example of photo altering gone wrong, then I’m doing an Ironman Triathlon this summer!  The other alternative is that this is how the bikini bottom is supposed to fit.  Gee, I hope not.

The image and commentary went viral. A Target spokesperson later apologized for the “mistake”:

“It was an unfortunate error on our part and we apologize,” Target spokesman Evan Miller said to ABC News, adding that the photo had been removed from Target’s website.

I’m curious what, in their view, the mistake actually was?  Was it badly altering the picture in a way that put Target in the running for worst photo shop gaffe ever?  Or were they truly apologizing for the very idea that they would need to add or accentuate a thigh gap on an already slender junior model?

The thing was almost so laughable as to make people pass over the actual harms of this type of thing.  I myself had an eye-rolling reaction more than a blood-boiling one.  But the fact is, on a junior model, modeling bikinis to an already body-conscious demographic, we could use some body acceptance.  We like to make fun of bad photoshopping, but this photo is evidence of a mindset.

The mindset defines what an acceptable body needs to look like in a bikini.  But no one is going to look quite like that in a bikini (thankfully, not so much because of the thigh gap but rather because if your bikini goes down your legs a couple of inches at the inner thigh, it’s not fitting properly.  If you like that look, you can get a boy short. Just saying.).

Okay, on to exhibit two. The plus sized jeans ad from Old Navy:thigh gap old navyThis one is more interesting because Old Navy denied that they altered the photo. What they did do, they said, is pin the fabric back on their body form before taking the picture. According to this report:

In a statement, Old Navy says the thigh gap was not caused by photo manipulation.

“At Old Navy we strive to show our customers the most accurate representation of how product fits the body. This includes pinning garments on body forms to show how they will actually appear. While we do remove these pins in post-production, we do not use any photo-altering techniques to deliberately distort the actual look or fit of our product.”

Sure, but then the question is this (and you’ll have to forgive me if I sound ignorant of the ways of the fashion industry, because I am):  why not have body forms that fit the clothes you’re selling, or model the sizes that fit the body form you’re using?

Somehow the idea of pinning back excess fabric on a pair of jeans to “show how they will actually appear” just doesn’t sound like the right approach. If I have excess fabric somewhere where it’s not supposed to be in my pair of jeans, I assume (and again, I’m no expert) that those jeans don’t fit me properly.  It’s never occurred to me just to pin the excess back. But that’s just me.

And maybe I’m just so jaded or beaten down by the barrage of photoshopped images that come at me every day so fast that I can’t even process them, but I have trouble even getting all riled up any more.  Instead, I’m just weary and a tad confused.  It was one thing when we used actual models with genetics that put their body type out of reach for most of us. But photo shop has taken this thing to whole new lows of unreachability. Real people just don’t look like that. It’s seriously messed up.

body image · yoga

Naked Yoga: TMI or Good for Body Acceptance?

Tracy I21 Comments
Nude yoga instructor in a yoga pose on a mat during a nude yoga class.
Nude yoga instructor in a yoga pose (variation on child’s pose) on a mat during a nude yoga class.

Yesterday Sam posted this piece about a co-ed naked yoga studio in New York.  Here’s from the article:

The studio offers various combinations of clothed, naked, same sex, and coed classes. And regarding the naked sessions and Tantric Yogassage offered: “If you are looking for an orgasm, you are in the wrong place,” the Bold & Naked website states.

“By shedding their clothes and practicing yoga in the nude, students literally drop the masks and labels they hide behind all day,” the website says. “Practicing yoga naked frees you from negative feelings about your body and allows you to be more accepting of your physical imperfections.”

It’s not for people “on the make.” Instead, it’s for getting free with yourself, comfortable with and accepting of your body in all of its imperfect glory. These are values I can get behind. And I love yoga. I love being nude (you can read about that in my post about how a nude vacation helped me with body image, here).  And I’m totally comfortable (based on same experience) being around other nude people, whatever their gender might be.

Yet my reaction to nude yoga is: um….no thank you.  And based on the Facebook page comments, I’m not alone (commenters, I hope you don’t mind if I quoted you):

“Stomach turning.”

“Never in a billion years. No no no.”

“To each their own. But FUCK NO for me.”

“Just no.”

“I don’t want to see that.”

” Umm, no. You can let your ‘mask’ off at home if you want, but in a studio or gym, I’m not interested in seeing the real you.”

A few more “no no no” comments and “yuck” comments and a comment about how unhygienic it seems.  A comment about how distracting it might be. One outlier who would be open to the idea and another who points out that nudity is our “natural state.” But generally there’s the view that it’s just “too much information.”

It’s interesting to me that people, myself included, have such a visceral reaction to naked yoga. For me, I just can’t imagine doing downward dog with no clothes on.  It would make me feel both vulnerable and perhaps a bit too aware of my sagging, aging body parts–and perhaps those of others.

But vulnerability is a good thing in a safe space, and I get the impression from the article that they’re interested in making this a safe space. I hope the issue is more about vulnerability than revulsion and body rejection.  Something about yoga in particular, rather than nudity more generally, makes doing it in the nude seem especially vulnerable-making. I mean, it’s not just downward dog, but there’s also badakanasa (cobblers pose), reclining hero, and even child’s pose. Lots of spread legs, in other words.

And why not be aware of my body exactly as it is?  Do I really want to think of it and the bodies of other people with revulsion?  Absolutely not.  Recently I listened to my radio documentary about my first trip to a nude resort. It’s entertaining and has a happy ending. But I was terrified about the prospect of going.

As I listen to it now, though, I see that a lot of my terror had to do with body-rejection and body-shaming. I said at one point that some bodies perhaps should stay covered up–they might be “hideous” I said.  When I hear that now, I cringe.

I had a whole fixation with the possibility of nude volleyball and all the jiggling body parts I imagined it might involve.  But now I think, “so what?” That’s what the human body is like.  Why can we not deal with that.

The reaction to the nude yoga post made me think of those fears I had, and about how many of them had to with attaching a revulsion-factor to the naked human body. As it turns out, my experience was quite the opposite. In a matter of days, I was completely comfortable with nudity–my own and others’.  I had no judgment concerning bodies–they’re just bodies. Some might be especially beautiful, but none was the least bit hideous, regardless of size and shape.

I think this negative gut reaction to naked yoga says a lot about where we are in our social world with the naked human body, especially bodies that are “imperfect.”  And for sure,  the first class or two would be awkward and maybe a bit giggle-inducing. But it wouldn’t take long before people started to sense a freedom and acceptance of the naked human body—their own and those of the others in the class. And that would be a good thing.

Both forms of yoga I do, Iyengar and hot, involve getting up close and personal in different ways. In Iyengar yoga, there’s a lot of hands on helping each other, sometimes in positions that outside of a yoga class might seem compromising. In hot yoga, each of us is on her or his own mat, but people really are wearing as little as possible. They’re practically naked anyway.  To me, nude yoga just pushes this body comfort one step further. And that’s a good thing. It’s really odd to me that after leaving the hot room, the women who were wearing almost nothing hide behind their towels while they get dressed. Suddenly, shame creeps back in.

When I got back from my nude vacation, I felt good about my body. But it didn’t last. My analysis: clothing actually makes it harder to accept our bodies.  A nude yoga class might be just the ticket for keeping that positive body image going year-round.

body image

Revisiting the Thigh Gap: Thin Body Shaming Isn’t Okay Either

Tracy I24 Comments

judging-any-body-is-wrongWe talk a lot on the blog about body-shaming and usually it’s code for fat-shaming.  But thin bodies can also be “shamed,” and this has been brought to my attention a few times in recent weeks.

In December, I showed the film, Arresting Ana, to one of my Women’s Studies classes. It’s a documentary about the potential criminalization of the pro-Ana (pro-anorexia) movement in France.  At one point, they show a billboard campaign in Italy [first campaign shown in this link] that was meant to scare women out of being anorexic.  The billboards depicted an extremely thin model posing nude, with the caption “No!.”

At the time of the photo shoot the model, Isabelle Caro, was recovering from near death from her eating disorder. According to her interview in the film, she weighed 75 pounds in the photo.  Isabelle Caro has since died from her eating disorder at the age of 28.

When the lights came on and we started our discussion, several of my students said that they found the billboard campaign and the discussion of Isabelle Caro’s body to be body-shaming. Yes, she was skinny–deathly so–but the idea that simply showing her body would be enough to shock contains an implicit negative judgment.  The judgment is something along the lines of: NO ONE should want to look like this woman.

Then, remember when Jennifer Lawrence got called out for body-shaming by Jenny Trout?  I picked up on that, claiming it was a bit harsh.  Well, one of our readers pointed out that one of the quotes was incomplete. Jenny Trout quoted her as saying this: “I’d rather look chubby on screen and like a person in real life.”  The full quote was actually this:

I don’t really diet or anything. I’m miserable when I’m dieting and I like the way I look. I’m really sick of all these actresses looking like birds… I’d rather look a little chubby on camera and look like a person in real life, than look great on screen and look like a scarecrow in real life.

I think the context is important.  But unfortunately it’s not totally redeeming. Why, because it tilts in the other directions. Now, thin women are “scarecrows.”  Not so nice either.

And just recently, someone wrote in on my old and still oft-read post, “Why the Thigh Gap Makes Me Sad.”  The commenter said:

I take exception with the remark that the girls “look like they could use a few good meals.” Naturally thin people can eat good meals and still look the same. Eating more food does not necessarily equal gaining weight, and frankly, telling someone they look like they need a good meal is just as rude as telling someone they look like they could afford to lose a few pounds.

And you know what? She’s right. The comment that they look like they could use a few good meals oozes with judgment and the presumption that I know better. Point taken.  My comment was an instance of body-shaming.

Until these few incidents, I confess to never giving the body-shaming of thin women much thought at all. Yet it happens a lot. Even in a culture where we prize thinness, it’s just not true that “you can never be too thin.”  Media leaps on celebrities when they gain weight, for sure. But they also leap on celebrities who lose weight.

There’s a whole thing about Angelina Jolie — a media obsession with how thin she is and calls for her to “eat a sandwich.” This article talks about skinny-shaming and how unhelpful it is.  Shaming in general isn’t a great strategy for altering behavior.

It is most certainly true, for example, that Isabelle Caro had a severe eating disorder and was not a healthy woman. She herself says as much in the film, Arresting Ana.  But as Dr. Gail Saltz, writes in her article about “skinny-shaming”:

Skinny-shaming, calling someone — celebrity or otherwise — “emaciated” or “stick thin,” or telling the person to “eat a sandwich,” as the cliché goes, is as unhelpful as fat-shaming. It is our skewed view as a society obsessed with being thin that left us open to commenting on Jolie, forgetting that any extreme in appearance can be a difficult and painful place to be (just ask any adolescent).

A loving discussion from someone known and involved can be a life-saver, whether you are too thin or too overweight. If you notice your friend is seeming to shrink before your eyes, you could try saying something like, “I’ve noticed you’re looking quite a bit thinner recently, and as your friend, I just wanted to check in. If something’s wrong, please know I’m here to help you.”

But comments from the public at large should avoided — or, at the very least, used to empathically understand a real issue that may be going on for many women.

Notice how she says this kind of approach should only come from an empathetic friend. It’s just not okay for complete strangers to approach people. It’s really no one’s business. And body-shaming is not the kind of approach that will help.

Is and expression of concern necessarily body-shaming?  People who appear overweight often report that they take “concern” as intrusive.  We have a difficult time separating judgments about weight from judgments about health.  Does it go the other way, where extreme thinness is concerned?  I’m not entirely sure.

So body-shaming is not okay in either direction or for any reason at all–there are all sorts of ways to body-shame that have nothing to do with size.  At the same time, the thigh gap does still make me sad. But it’s not because of the way it looks. It’s more because in many cases, engaging in disordered eating is the only way to get it.