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Jul. 4th, 2007 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/world/africa/04mauritania.html
In Mauritania the beauty standard runs counter to ours and fat is the ideal. The article makes it pretty clear that this is just as toxic as the crap people put themselves through here to be thin.
I could get into that whole thing about "Real women have curves" here. I could say, for example, "Real women aren't treated like animals -- starved or force fed or otherwise controlled to be a more pleasing and valuable commodity." But the fact is, real women are treated like this all the time. Often, real women sign themselves up for it, wanting, assuming -- or even knowing -- there aren't other choices.
That's why every sentence that starts with that "real woman" thing just gives me the hives.
The idea of the "real woman" as opposed to some other sort of living, breathing, woman is a dangerous fiction.
In Mauritania the beauty standard runs counter to ours and fat is the ideal. The article makes it pretty clear that this is just as toxic as the crap people put themselves through here to be thin.
I could get into that whole thing about "Real women have curves" here. I could say, for example, "Real women aren't treated like animals -- starved or force fed or otherwise controlled to be a more pleasing and valuable commodity." But the fact is, real women are treated like this all the time. Often, real women sign themselves up for it, wanting, assuming -- or even knowing -- there aren't other choices.
That's why every sentence that starts with that "real woman" thing just gives me the hives.
The idea of the "real woman" as opposed to some other sort of living, breathing, woman is a dangerous fiction.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 08:57 pm (UTC)I have to note that
Date: 2007-07-04 10:18 pm (UTC)I feel it's really ageist in its' roots, and anti-woman by there being an objection to her maturing to adulthood and gaining experience and a persona at all.
Most of us are still not ready to look old either way.
The weight issue in itself is inherently annoying, I agree, and the idea that anyone should have to be X in order to be attractive is annoying and dumb as well, but the root of it is a positive and responsible one even if it has grown into a monster since its' creation.
Re: I have to note that
Date: 2007-07-04 10:36 pm (UTC)I think it's important for oppressed groups to identify and name oppression, and I support the idea that many, if not most women naturally tend towards 'female' curves and that's something adolescent girls should be able to look forward to and celebrate. Skinny, slender, slight adult women, by nature, or by illness, or by eating disorder, are still 'real' though, and it's hard to see this used against any woman's body.
Re: I have to note that
Date: 2007-07-05 01:22 am (UTC)It's old, and it isn't meaning to exclude as much as defend the majority. It just grew that way over time. Yes, skinny women are very real, but it's merely the swing of the social pendulum that's caused the problem, not the original idea itself.
Re: I have to note that
Date: 2007-07-04 10:49 pm (UTC)The very idea of "real" and "fake" women pushes so many buttons for me.
About my body. About my gender. About my disease. About the usefulness of my form to certain ambitions (and here I mean more fencing than acting). And about image and performance. If there is no such thing as the truth, what is the impossible(?) goal of "real" we are striving for or defending?
For many years I was with a man, who, of the women he had been involved with at the time of our liason (no small number), I was the only one who had never been sexually assaulted. Was I not real because no one had ever wanted to rape me? I actually asked him that, and there were a whole slew of other rhetorical tricks in that conversation. God help anyone who knew me in my twenties.
I love being the age I am. Note, I tell people I'm going to be 35 this year, that seems so much more exciting than being 34. But maybe this means little in someone who looks so little like her age. I am not sure. I have a lot of privlege, I do know and recognize that. But I have dated people on a pretty broad spectrum of several cateogires including age and size. And I have been expected to justify my taste, and justify them. And it fucking appals me.
I want to say "Real women don't hide," but sometimes we must to survive.
But if I say "Real women survive," then I make us seem even more under seige than we are.
Women are. Whether the world likes it or not. Women are.
Re: I have to note that
Date: 2007-07-05 01:35 am (UTC)When it was used by men, they, pprobably selfishly, pointed more toward T&A than increased overall weight by way of lowered metabolism of maturity. The intentionally, I believe, avoided the boat.
The real woman was meant to be any range of substantiality, either inside or out, but the male translation of this concept was out only, polarizing it in the process.
I am 35, and an actor as well, it's intense sometimes to see that I'm at the cutoff age officially for many jobs, to even try out, even though the part is not of an engenue(SP). It's both intriguing and scary to me.
I know that I have more to give now than I ever did at 17, and nothing anyone can tell me can make me think that somehow at 36, I'll become irrelevant, or eligible only for the 10 "mommy" roles up for a particular year.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 08:44 pm (UTC)