h/t to MGK for the link.
Please watch. It's almost 25 minutes long, but if you are a woman, or know a woman, you need to see this.
WOMEN BODIES. This project took off as a matter of urgency. It all started with the observation that women–real women–are an endangered species on television, one that is being replaced by a grotesque, vulgar and humiliating representation.We sensed the enormity of this loss: the erasure of women’s identity is happening right before our eyes, but without a proper reaction, not even from women themselves.
This led us to select television images that share a common manipulative exploitation of the woman’s body, to let people know what is happening–not only people who never watch television, but especially those who watch it but “don’t see.”
Our aim is to ask ourselves questions, and to pose questions about the reason behind this erasure, a real “pogrom” of which all of us are silent spectators.Our project grants special attention to the erasure of adult faces on television, to the use of plastic surgery to erase any sign of the passage of time, and to the social consequences of this erasure.
Every day, I talk to women who hate their perfectly normal bodies, their perfectly normal faces, their perfectly normal lines and wrinkles (seeing my crow's feet in the wrong light can send me into a day-long self hate fest). We hate ourselves because every day we are assaulted by edited, nipped, tucked and photoshopped images of beauty that don't exist anywhere, a standard of beauty no one can meet- but we'll beat ourselves up trying.
Even if you don't have time to watch this video, the next time you see a model or an actress, remind yourself- and every little girl you know- that not even that woman looks like that woman.
It's almost 25 minutes long, but if you are a woman, or know a woman, you need to see this.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't need to see it, then. I don't know a single woman...
But, no, seriously. After the whole Ralph Lauren thing where they turned that model in to some creature from a horror movie I Googled the model. She, uh, she wasn't exactly a mouth-breathing fatass. I would, in fact, say that she's incredibly attractive. The idea that someone felt the need to airbrush a woman like that to make her this ghastly thin creature is really quite sickening.
My best friend's comment on that ad: She wouldn't just die giving birth- she'd die taking a shit!
ReplyDeleteAnd a million little girls are looking at that ad, then looking at their own anatomically possible pelvic bones and feeling like they're fat freaks.
Thank you for posting this, I will watch it when I get home tonight. I see this "hate my body" attitude in myself sometimes and often think about where that attitude comes from. Instead of noting all of my "flaws," I have been making more of an effort to appreciate that I am a healthy, athletic woman with a "normal" BMI.
ReplyDeleteAmen. Good for you! You are so right, and this message needs to spread.
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