(no subject)

[rm]

http://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.

Comments

Re: I have to note that

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I understand where this is coming from, that developing into womanhood 'should' mean we gain power and control of our lives. Some adult women are slight though, some of us were slight as teenagers, and girls have power, weight, and a voice too.

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

[haya.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are correct, but as slight girls and women were becoming the favored group due to modeling industry needs, and as some suspect, because the first women ever studied in bulk in the US, at least physically, were 16-20 year old unmarried college students in the late 1800s, and they made up such a small portion of the whole, there was a need to define the larger portion as real.
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.