I am superhappy 130lb (130 is a massively over-represented number for them for some reason) white cis girls are happy with their bodies, I really am. But that shit is hurting me now, especially when they’re so fucking smug about it.
This sounds fucking harsh. It probably is. But the moderator isn’t harsh enough on sizeist comments and it makes me furious.
Ditto! Especially because I think the “join the revolution/stop hating your body” framing is exclusionary of trans folks and people with disabilities, who have historically been underserved by mainstream feminism. I had an interesting conversation with i-am-the-lighthouse about it yesterday that I meant to continue but got too busy for… it’s on the agenda. It’s a shame “Join the revolution/critically examine media messages of beauty standards!” is so much less catchy. Maybe “interrogate beauty”?
I love “interrogate beauty”.
Reading about this fatphobic new “body image” tumblr has been interesting because I have been reflecting on my own activism and wondering if I have been practicing body image activism that is not inclusive. I totally get how the “just love your body, dammit” can be dismissive.
All I wanna do is smash these hurtful beauty ideals but the more I learn, the less I’m sure it’s only about beauty. It’s about gender and class and race and ability and sexuality too, absolutely everything is connected.
I’ve only been following you a few months, but if I had seen anything that rang any alarm bells, I’d have called you on it (in a respectful way, of course).
It’s my perception that having personal experiences with multiple oppressions in my own life makes it easier for me to see where other people might be left out. I’ve been having conversations out in meatspace with friends who feel alienated by the LYB movement for various reasons, too, so I’ve been ready to say this online for awhile.
I think “interrogate beauty” has the ability not only to encourage women to examine the way media interferes with or complicates the way they relate to their bodies (which is the primary focus of “stop hating your body,” as I understand it) but to go one step farther and question why beauty is the way it is, and why it’s even necessary. So we’re not just enabling individual women to free themselves from beauty standards, but then to turn around and say, “What ARE you? What are you DOING here?”
Because beauty, as dictated by the media, encompasses gender and class and race and ability and sexuality. You can only be truly beautiful if you have a certain amount of symmetry in your face and perfectly clear skin and great hair and you’re thin and cis and non-disabled and directing your beauty at white cis het men (which implicitly makes you straight) and white (or else your beauty is framed as “exotic” in a totally racist way). It’s all about gender performance, but you can only perform gender the right way if you meet all of these prerequisites.
And it’s all about getting women to BUY things! Well, it’s about getting us to buy things, and it’s about taking up enough of our brainspace that we don’t have time to think about how we’re decorative objects and that’s fucked up, because we’re too busy making ourselves decorative.
Western culture has become really bizarre. Too bad I have to go back to working on biochemistry now.
Oh yes, yes. All of this!!!
I love tumblr so much and not so much for reblogging whimsical pictures (although that’s fun!) but because of conversations like this <3