(Source: jesustolemythunder, via takefatback)
Posted sort of as a piggy back on the video that I just posted. The style/shape of the Barbie doll was changed in the 2000s, because Mattel thought the new shape was more “realistic.” Um…excuse me? Making her impossible proportions even more dramatic doesn’t really seem to rectify the problem.
But, I mean, it is just a stupid doll, right? Maybe. But it’s also a doll that an estimated 99% of American girls aged 3-10 own, and the average girl owns eight. So…what kind of message is this sending to them? After all, Mattel markets Barbie as being the pinnacle of perfection—she’s traditionally beautiful, smart, can do whatever career she’d like, has an equally traditionally attractive boyfriend—she’s basically marketed as a role model for young girls.
Not to mention the whole G.I. Joe thing mentioned in the video I posted. His proportions, equally impossible to obtain, reiterate the idea that masculinity is measured in muscle size, not by gender identification. And, keep in mind, that G.I. Joe never has the varying career opportunities that Barbie has. He is, as his name alludes to, a soldier. So, now, Hasbro sells the idea that masculinity is measured not only in muscle size, but in a willingness to fight, and aggression.
So, what are Mattel and Hasbro selling to our children? Not only the “ideal,” unattainable bodies for men and women, but also serve as a reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Simply the fact that Barbie is a “doll” and G.I. Joe is an “action figure” reiterates that, but I’m not going to get into that.
What do you think? Are toys such as Barbie and G.I. Joe harmful to a child’s psyche, or are they harmless fun?
H&M puts real model heads on fake bodies. via Jezebel:
The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and “completely virtual,” the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production. For now — in the future, even models’ faces won’t be considered perfect enough for online fast fashion, and we’ll buy all of our clothing from cyborgs. (This news sort of explains this.) But man, isn’t looking at the four identical bodies with different heads so uncanny? Duly noted that H&M made one of the fake bodies black. You can’t say that the fictional, Photoshopped, mismatched-head future of catalog modeling isn’t racially diverse.
This is so important to see.
Remember that when you’re looking at magazines and being jealous of the girls bodies, their bodies don’t even look like that. Fight back against manipulation. Love your body.
(via takefatback)
Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better.
Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing.
Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever.
Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions.
Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them.
Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides.
Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not.
Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to.
Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced.
Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real.
There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body.
I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body.
And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap.
You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real.
Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me.
—Hanne Blank (via thestoutorialist)
(via takefatback)
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
—-Maya Angelou (via thatkindofwoman)
(Source: misswallflower, via takefatback)
New Years Resolutions
2012 is the year for change.
So I joined Tumbrl and Pinterest!
Hopefully I’ll have an Etsy shop up and running by the end of the month and a craft stall by the summer!
But first…ESSAYS!
