I have a very distinct memory of the summer I became obsessed with the glamour zine. We were on a beach trip and my Mom had given in to my begging. I must have been 10 or 11. I think I was so fascinated because I thought I would be in on some secret of the reality to come as I entered middle school and high school - a hint of what lay ahead. Little did I know that glossies don’t depict anyone’s reality and that my preteen obsession would dissolve into that “stirred-up euphoria” (Wolf, 62). – a swirl of titillation, self-loathing and longing for rebirth as beauty.
I have to admit I was already being raised by women (and men) with rampant body issues that they had unintentionally passed down to me through confusing bundles of contradictory messages. However, it is still fair to say that the images these alluring pages contained did nothing to help me out of my teenage destiny of “cultural schizophrenia” (Douglas, 9). Each picture was a still of some captivating story belonging to the beautiful heroine. If I didn't look like them, I would never be deserving of such life. And so I was a perfect consumer. The “transfer of guilt”(Wolf, 65) advertisers aim to produce was embarrassingly effective on my young self. I sought absolution through whatever path they subscribed.
Through my long relationship with this sort of media, I have found very few alternative body representations. There is one alternative image from a magazine that has stuck with me for ten years. Notably, it was from an article on body image and not from an advertisement. It was an image of Jamie Lee Curtis in my mother’s issue of More. It touted the line "in a very real way, she's never been more naked". In the photo, she was not photoshopped, made up or cut down to size with the help of a computer program. She stood in her underwear and minimal makeup and smiled. I looked up the picture recently.
There’s nothing offensive about it and she looks alright but I remember at the time feeling that there was an element of the obscene here. I got the same butterflies I felt when I looked at the book about sexual health Mom had left in the bathroom closet for our perusal. By this time, at the age of fourteen I’d been looking at scantily clad images of models and actors in zines for years -- it wasn't a discomfort with her being in her underwear. No, there was something so much more startling and provocative to my young eye about seeing real flesh. At first it struck me as a visual admission of the weakness of that person who had given in to eating when she was already heavy – a cardinal sin in my world at the time. Moreover, it was a blatant violation of the "normal" depiction of femininity I was used to. For my younger self, it was an image akin to the one imagined in Susan Bordo's article on Hunger as Ideology, of “a young, attractive woman indulging … freely (and) salaciously as the man in … (a) … Post cereal ad” (110). “Such an image,” he goes on to say, “would violate deeply set expectations, would be experienced by many as disgusting and transgressive.” I certainly found this image transgressive.
However, through my muddled, half-starved teenaged logic, I still found some sense of empowerment in the image. I even pored over the article aimed at middle aged women and related completely to the older women’s struggle with figuring out how to say “no” and not feel guilty about it. But the forgiveness of this image was reserved for those whose femininity had already been affirmed by initiation into the society of motherhood. Her imperfections were excused by having been pregnant and by being over a certain age. I was young and therefore this image did not give me any permission to have flesh on my bones. Still it did stick with me for the past decade in some way ...
This idea of a bigger body being somehow more naked when exposed is one that has recurred in my adult life. My friend and I have discussed how our mothers think we look sluttier in clothes that they would admire on smaller frames. She told me a story of how her Mom told her to take off short shorts because they "made her look like a ho" and later complimented her stick thin friend on an outfit incorporating the same article of clothing. It’s not that these shorts were too small or fit my friend’s size 8 body in an inappropriate way. It’s just that her larger thighs were seen to violate some standard of acceptance. I wonder how much of this has to do with society’s idealization of the underdeveloped models that look down from every billboard. Are we more comfortable with bodies that represent children because we feel they are less overtly sexual? Or maybe just the type of sexuality sanctioned by society? One where enjoyment is reserved for the male and the woman is reduced to a smooth, contained object?Where "the body must be tamed and adorned ... the heroine the preferred size, shape and style for the hero ..." (Gunter and Wykes, 210).
When I was reading the description for this assignment, I started searching for alternative types of advertisements. I have to say there aren’t very many. And most of the “alternative” body representations that have really gotten through to me are outside the realm of advertising. One of the rare moments from my teenage years where I felt beautiful at a heavier weight was when I was fifteen and my older brother compared me to the character Francine from the indie comic Strangers in Paradise. Although this character is filled with neurotic tendencies -- binging when her best friend Katchoo disappears, and obsessing about looking good when her ex is getting married – she is undoubtedly revered as gorgeous. Still grappling with my body issues, that comic was one of the first places where all of those unspeakable topics weren’t pushed away to some dark corner, banished from the realities allowable in conversation. Her problems were discussed, and her insecurities were questioned. And at the end of the day the conclusion was that despite her faults, she was beautiful, even with cellulite.
But the fact is, Francine is a drawing. It removes the beauty found in the flesh from the photograph – separates it from the supposed likening of reality young women see in the advertisement. Just like Ruben’s women are considered beautiful in paintings, but girls that size on the billboards and covers would be gaped at.
The sprinkling of advertisements that feature more realistic women are few and far between. I fear they have little chance of causing lasting impact against the total saturation of media with images of the elusive perfect body. I feel like I’m being unrealistically optimistic to hope that the counter-images they contain will linger with many impressionable girls. Like Liz Lemon protests in one episode of 30 Rock, “It’s like those Dove commercials never even happened.” Out of curiosity I visited the Dove website just now and their depictions of alternative bodies are relegated to their "Social Mission". The models they are using to sell their products and their "tips, topics and tools" are still the same skinny white girls.
Advertising would have to completely shift its strategy in order to change the way they depict women and right now, why would they? Playing on our insecurities is a brilliant way to make to money. To keep us unhappy is to keep us buying their packaged solutions. I think to really create change in advertising, there would have to be some sort of consumer rebellion and strike against companies selling products in this way. This sort of reaction is highly unlikely in the cultural climate created by these standards of beauty. As I said before, many I've come in contact with react to images of curvy women with powerful rather than passive sexuality, with appetites rather than emptiness, as somehow inappropriate. People might not know why this is their reaction but the norms of what one should show and what one should hide away is so ingrained in most of us that we take for granted our reactions as some sort of natural sensibility. I doubt advertising will change very quickly, although I hold out hope that we'll find a way to change it slowly in cadence with an expanding role for the active woman.
For now, I think to find other images of beauty, girls have to be encouraged to look elsewhere for models of the feminine. Maybe through educating them to deconstruct advertisements, we can dull the effect of these images. But I fear knowledge may not be enough, it may be "unable to cast a shadow of doubt over the dazzling, compelling, authoritative images themselves."(Bordo, 104). And the unfortunate truth is there is no way they can hide their eyes from the images of advertisements that bombard them all day, every day.
- Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: William Morrow and Co, 1991.
- Susan Douglas. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Random House, 1994.
- Eccles, Andrew. "True Thighs". More Magazine. September, 2002. More: For Women of Style andSubstance. Web.
- Bordo, Susan. "Hunger as Ideology."Unbearable weight: feminism, Western culture and the body. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.
- Gunter, Barrie and Wykes, Maggie. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2005.
- Moore, Terry. "Vol. 4 Issue 1 Cover." Strangers in Paradise: Love Me Tender. Houston, Texas: Abstract Studio, 1997. The Strangers in Paradise Website. Web.
- Moore, Terry. "May." 2000. The Strangers in Paradise Website. Web.
- "SeinfeldVision." 30 Rock. NBC. 4 Oct. 2007. Television.
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