feministhemes.com

As promised, here are the quotes I collected for the body image project I have been working on.  Feel free to add more in the comments if you know of any good ones that I missed.  Also, some of these are repeats of previous quick quotes, so don’t be surprised if you experience a little deja vu here and there.

“More than ever now, I believe it’s so important to look as real and true to life as possible, because nobody’s perfect. I seem to be on a mission, but I don’t want the next generation, your daughters and mine, growing up thinking that you have to be thin to look beautiful in certain clothes. It’s terrifying right now. It’s out of control. It’s beyond out of control.”

- Kate Winslet (shoutouts to Emily at Jukebox Heroines)

.

“For me, it might sound cliché, but beauty for me really does start on the inside. It’s like a state of mind, a state of love if you will. Then, whatever you can do on the outside is all like a bonus.”

- Queen Latifah

.

“’Real Women Have Curves’ was a breakthrough for me, because it was tailored for who I was at a specific period in time. It said that there are different body types that are beautiful. I think that opened so many doors for me and gave all women a boost of confidence.”

- America Ferrera

.

“I was never mocked, and I was always able to defend myself by joking around. But sometimes it has been painful and it has hurt my feelings. I cannot ignore the whole world, but I want to accept the way that I am and I don’t want to change. Life is too short for that!”

- Beth Ditto

More after the jump

As you probably know by now, I love collecting quotes.  I’ve found another productive outlet for this hobby in developing an informal poster for a university “Body Image Fair.”  My idea is to include some research findings on the impact of media on body image, some tips for improving body image, and celebrity quotes on body image from women (and men) of all ages, sizes, ethnicities, body types, and so on.

And I need your help!  I have a few choice quotes to begin with from Gabby Sidibe, Queen Latifah, Mariska Hargitay, and Reese Witherspoon but could certainly use a lot more.  If you’ve come across a great quote on body image or body acceptance from a celebrity (musician, actor/actress, author, etc.), please leave it in the comment or email me (misswizzle(at)feministhemes.com) with your tips!  This project will be presented early in March, and I’ll repost (with credit) all of the featured quotes.

Please spread the word!

Straight from io9, who said it better than I could:

Big, beautiful, lusty women. Gorgeous, gigantic, muscled men. Fantastic animals and larger-than-life settings. This is the wonderful world of Molly Crabapple: the woman who married art and burlesque and watched them make beautiful music together with Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.

Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School is an amazing event. Roughly twice a month (in the NY location) artists come to sketch live models, but not just any live models, actual cabaret performers. Skits, performances, music, all kinds of festivities. So much more than just a bunch of artists sketching models.

The World of Molly Crabapple contains artists and performers from all walks of life. Her vibrant images capture happy, smiling people that we’d like to get to know. Not just the most beautiful women around but also circus performers, muscle-men and lots of other interesting characters. You will notice that many of these pieces show their subjects on stage, with adoring fans surrounding them.

As you can see… Molly likes to put lots and lots of characters into her work. An image is packed with detail. You can look at these pictures all day long and still not see all the cool touches in them.

Pretty flippin’ sweet.  Be sure to check out more of Molly’s work at her personal site,  and learn more about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.  Mad shoutouts to io9 for this one!

Lady Gaga fascinates me.  She makes me think.  I often find myself wanting to defend her, to whom I’m not sure.  I think she puts me on edge, makes me wonder why she does what she does, and I always come up with a self-satisfying answer.  Take her fashion statements for example.  They’re often… weird, to say the least.  They are revealing, bizarre, and often unattractive or even kind of hideous.  She does not dress like we typically expect our pop star/sex icons to dress.  And in an avant-garde, art club/theater kid misfit kind of way, that’s cool.  But I think it’s more than an angsty rebellion.  Lady Gaga’s fashion choices often make statements about how our society dictates female beauty.

Lady Gaga is thin, white, blonde, hairless…  She’s got the body of the pop star/sex icons of the last decade (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, P!NK, Fergie, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, Gwen Stefani… you know the mold), so she’s not scoring major points by presenting us with a new body type.  But what she does with that body is unusual.

Exhibit A: Body Shape

Despite having that “perfect” bod, Lady Gaga frequently distorts the way we see her body, using sharp angles, increasingly large shoulderpads, and poufs or wings to accentuate her hips.  Each of these things in moderation have been considered attractive/fashionable at one point or another, but the extremes to which she takes them have a distracting effect, creating a mismatched, unnatural body shape.

Read the rest of this entry »

“In the beginning, it was odd to have so much attention brought to my body type [by Mad Men].  I thought, Uh-oh, brace yourself.  But everyone has been so positive.  During the first season a woman came up to me at dinner and said, ‘I just want to thank you. Watching you has made me proud of my body.’ I thought, What an amazing thing for someone to say! To make anyone feel good about themselves makes me feel good.”

- Christina Hendrix
“Joan” of Mad Men

From Marie Claire via the Feb/Mar issue of BUST magazine.

Feministing had a great visual representation yesterday of the changes over time in beloved childhood characters.  I couldn’t think of any other characters to expand on, but I thought that the sexualization of these characters when it comes to costumes was worth noting.

Strawberry Shortcake

And so it begins.  It’s not like Strawberry Shortcake was lacking in the cuteness department, however her raggedy look apparently just didn’t cut it in these modern times.  Everything about her was neatened up, and her vibrant reds were subdued into girly pinks.  She became taller and thinner with flowing hair, big eyelashes, and modern clothes.  However, her traditional look is maintained in the adult costume (nothing like a sexy apron to compliment that too-short-for-your-stockings skirt, eh ladies?), which hypersexualizes the cartoon cutie.  Because costumes aren’t for playing with your identity, they’re for playing sexy.

Rainbow Brite

Unlike her traditional counterpart, Rainbow Brite is a girl from the future (check out her sweet moon-boots!).  However, just like Strawberry, Rainbow has gone through “the transformation.”  Her legs got longer, face got older, hair was made to flow more gracefully, and her waist was narrowed.  And, of course, in costume form her skirt was shortened even further, her wand became a phallic symbol to hold near the face with and moon-boots were traded for tall socks and stilettos.  This is not the future I hope to visit.  For more on Rainbow Brite’s makeover, check out this post at Feministe.

Dora the Explorer and that all time favorite, Barbie, after the jump.

Law & Order: SVU has quickly become my newest obsession (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Thank you Netflix Instant queue! – I should get paid for this), and I have been thrilled to learn that actress Mariska Hargitay is every bit as awesome as her character, Detective Olivia Benson, who could probably fill a 10 Reasons of her own.

1. She’s got her head on straight when it comes to body image:

“I’m a size 8, and I feel proud of that because it’s healthy.  I’ve never felt compelled to be a skinny actress.  I think I’m a very attractive person, but that’s not where I get my esteem.  A guy at ABC told me to change my name and get a nose job.  I said, ‘You get a nose job.’”

2. Although SVU is often challenging, it has inspired her.

“It’s opened my eyes to the plight of victims. And helped me find new ways to make a difference in the world. Without SVU, I would’ve never started the Joyful Heart Foundation.”

3. Yeah, about that Joyful Heart thing…

“I used to call myself the “accidental activist.”  No more.  I have fully engaged in this mission.  It is part of my path, one of the reasons I am here.”

4. She is proud of her character.

“I thought the character was extremely complex and would be a challenge for me as an actor. The second I read the script, I was drawn to Olivia’s strength, passion, humanity, and her desire for change. But what most intrigued me was her past and how she could use it to help others face theirs.”

Click here for 6 more reasons to love Mariska

As a woman who shaves her legs about four times per year, I can appreciate this:

Rock that leg hair with pride and joy!  This is what Golden Globe Award winning actresses look like.  Hells to the yeah.

Screw the snark, TMZ, real women wear their own fur.

Edit: Feministing posted this before I did, but after I had already written it, dang!  Check out their criticism of media’s focus (and criticism) of women’s bodies.  Clearly this is a problem, and has always been, and sadly probably always will be.  However, seeing such a beautiful, talented woman assuredly showing off a follicle taboo is a little empowering because it says “hey social expectations, you don’t dictate what goes on in my shower,” which is a message that all of us could use a little more of.  Rock it, Mo’Nique.

Panty predicament?  Fear not.  Cosmo’s got your back (lower back, if you know what I mean).

Classy.  Because not only do I need a magazine to tell me which undergarments to wear, I need them to be named after the underwear of children of the opposite sex, and I need them to make my butt look like someone else’s butt. The article begins:

A little more than 10 years ago… wearing a thin strip of fabric between your butt cheeks was considered daringly sexy.

Are we supposed to pretend that Cosmo didn’t tell us that thongs were “daringly sexy?”  The article goes on about the history of the thong and other “man-melting undies” – which might actually be interesting if it was about women’s fashion for women’s sakes, and not just as lures for mates.

But, that’s why I subscribe to Bitch and Bust and not Cosmo.  Thanks Jezebel!

5:00 Edit: The timeline of underwear at the bottom reminded me of this:

I have fallen in love with Lady Gaga over the past month, and this post from Jukebox Heroines on the feminist themes in her music was too awesome not to share.  If you are interested in cross-posting or guest-posting at feministhemes.com, please contact me with your ideas at misswizzle@feministhemes.com.

Lady Gaga – The Fame (2008) on (Streamline/Konlive/Cherrytree/Interscope)

Part 1:

Oh snap. Yes, I just said it. Lady Gaga’s music is feminist. Why do I say such things? Because I can back it up. And because I love her music, videos, and persona. She is the reason I have actually started to listen to pop music again. So, let me tell you about feminist music….

Why do I say that her music is feminist? Whether or not she herself claims to be a feminist, her work criticizes gender, sexuality, the body, pop culture’s representations of women, and the nature of power. This in itself is a feminist act. Now, feminism, I guess we must define in some form, considering most representations of it are: man hater, bra burner, lesbian, ugly, want power over men, bitchy, hate children…..not true. Feminism is the political and social movement for women’s social, political, and economic equality. In that social part lies music, and Lady Gaga knows exactly what she is up against in the music industry. Feminist Music therefore, can be made by anyone, male/female/trans, as long as it fulfills the goals of fighting for equality and justice based on gender.

How does she present feminist ideas? I will give you a few examples. Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries