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Are You an Ugly or a Pretty? Technology, Nature, and Beauty in Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies”

January 31, 2012 By 5 Comments
Uglies

By Sayantani DasGupta

What if everyone was beautiful? No, I don’t mean inner beauty, prettiness that shines from the inside out. I mean, wide eyes, perfect noses, proportionate bodies, and symmetrical faces. The same approximate height, weight, skin color? Could making everyone look the same even the social and economic playing fields?

But human variety is important—it would be boring for everyone to be conventionally pretty, you say.

Well, what if we upped the stakes? What if making everyone beautiful could help stop bullying or eliminate eating disorders? What if it eradicated racism, prejudice, or even brought an end to all war and conflict?

Would it be worth it then?

Young adult (YA) author Scott Westerfeld spins these possibilities, and more, into his novel Uglies. In so doing, he follows in the tradition of other science fiction/speculative fiction writers who use settings on different planets or in future dystopian Earths to examine sociopolitical problems in our present day lives. African American sci-fi legend Octavia Butler used many of her short stories and novels to examine race, gender, power, and slavery; similarly, The Handmaid’s Tale novelist Margaret Atwood imagined sexism taken to the extremes of reproductive terrorism in her novel—a world where women are literally reduced to being walking wombs.

In Uglies, Westerfeld seems to be undertaking a similar project but with body image politics. His novel is set in a futuristic world where everyone on their 16th birthday undergoes an extreme makeover, the super-duper plastic surgery edition. Until they have this bone-crunching, face-rearranging operation, teens are “uglies” and have to live in (the slightly unimaginatively named) “Uglytown” watching the glamorous post-surgical “pretties” across the river in high tech “New Prettytown” leading wonderful lives of (competition-less, racism-less, prejudice-less, aggression-less) happiness and endless partying.

In a sense, Westerfeld’s dystopian world is teen reality writ large—the feeling of being on the outside looking in, waiting for your life to start, wishing one could be ‘like everyone else.’ And in that sense, the novel is about learning to be ‘happy with oneself,’ and embracing one’s autonomy rather than following the herd.

At the beginning of the novel, Westerfeld’s 16-year-old protagonist, Tally, can’t wait to turn pretty. But when her new friend Shay runs away, she faces a serious choice: to either join her friend in a rag-tag community of people who have chosen to remain “ugly forever,” or turn in these rebels to the authorities in exchange for her coveted operation.

During the course of her time with the rebels, Tally not only learns to distinguish “inner” from “outer” beauty (with the help, ‘natch, of a romantic, rebellious boy), but she grows strong, independent, and comfortable with her body and in the wilderness. It’s at this point that I realized that Westerfeld’s novel was making some commentaries about civilization and nature as well as beauty and ugliness.

Uglies begins with the question, apparently asked by a Chinese beauty contestant named Yang Yuan who had entered a contest after extensive plastic surgery: “Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people?” And Westerfeld’s answer, as you can probably guess, seems to be no. Westerfeld gives his world’s standardized beauty a secret, sinister underside. Along with homogenous looks comes homogenous behavior. “Pretties” are disconnected from their roots and ancestors as well as their own free will; they are technologically controlled sheep, if beautiful ones.

Beauty is inextricable from tyranny in the world of Uglies; if being “pretty” is a product of a homogenizing technological world-view, then being free is directly rooted in an idealized, rural, nature. These dichotomies—homogeneity/tyranny/technology versus individuality/freedom/nature—are frustratingly simple in many respects. As feminist scholar Donna Haraway suggests in her groundbreaking The Cyborg Manifesto, none of us are entirely ‘natural.’ Yet simultaneously, Uglies clearly is examining complex questions regarding civilization and humanity, including philosopher Michel Foucault’s idea of biopower—the notion that the modern state controls, disciplines, and subjugates populations no longer through gangs of marauding thugs or public pillorings, but rather through a medical gaze that defines (and creates) notions of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ bodies, regulating our biological workings and thereby our social behaviors.

Uglies takes the messages of body image movements—such as the ones here on Adios, Barbie—to young people in a fast-paced novel with compelling situations and characters. His novel makes some clear critiques of current day society suggesting that our beauty product and plastic surgery obsessed culture is as oppressive as any imagined future technocracy. We seem to be convinced that we live in “Uglytown” waiting for that one magical pill/dress/makeup/social circle/product to take us over the river to that imagined place where the lights sparkle all night long.

So is, as this novel imagines, beauty itself dangerous? If we believe the words of poet Archibald MacLeish (whose poem “Beauty,” Westerfeld also quotes), perhaps so:

Beauty is that Medusa’s head

Which men go armed to seek and sever.

It is most deadly when most dead.

And dead will stare and sting forever.

Or can we find some relationship with beauty that doesn’t oppress, doesn’t homogenize, doesn’t commodify or commercialize? Or is that just a fantasy as imaginary as the world of Uglies?

No novel can provide these answers—that we have to do for ourselves—but Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies certainly helps raise many of the right questions.

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Regenerating Hymens and Bloody Sheets: What’s Really Going On Down There?

January 17, 2012 By 6 Comments
HymenFilm

By Therese Shechter

A still from a 1947 sex ed film that says hymens have nothing to do with virginity

A few months ago at a dinner party, the topic of hymens came up (don’t all your dinner parties go like this?) and how on rare occasions the membrane is completely sealed and has to be surgically opened. One of the men there wondered how the condition could go unnoticed, seeing as it would block the passage of urine. It took me a while to realize that he thought women urinated from the opening that leads to the vagina. This from a twice-married father of 3 in his 60s.

Being female doesn’t guarantee we know the score either. We grow up with so many myths and get so little useful information about the female anatomy. Is it surprising that what we know about the hymen–its anatomy, its history, and its relationship to a woman’s sexual history–is flawed, incomplete, and yet totally ingrained in our collective consciousness?

For example, friends often tell me they didn’t bleed the first time they had intercourse because gymnastics or horseback riding broke their hymens. In fact, the bonk of a balance beam tends to get absorbed quite well by the vulva. Heather Corinna of Scarleteen points out that it’s more likely that, in the past, the threat of a broken hymen was used to discourage women from doing just these kinds physical activities.

As for me, during a long sexual dry spell, I’ve joked that my hymen must be growing back. Guess what? This can actually happen. In “Virgin: The Untouched History,” author Hanne Blank tells the story of a Taiwanese woman who had no less than three hymenotomies to unseal a relentlessly regenerating hymen. Even a sex ed film from 1947 tells us the hymen has nothing do with virginity, so why have the myths persisted?

Let’s take a journey into the misunderstood world of hymens and see what’s really going on down there.

The hymen is an inconsequential little bit of tissue: Or as Hanne Blank describes it: “A hymen is what’s left over when you make a hole.” The hymen can be thick or thin. It can change shape, grow, shrink, or disappear over time. It can have one hole, several holes or have no hole at all (this is the imperforate hymen, which gets noticed at puberty because it blocks the flow of menstrual blood). When penetrated, some women bleed a lot and some don’t at all–and that blood can come from any irritation on the vulva or vagina. It can happen the first time you have sex as well as the 23rd. Most importantly, hymens tell as accurate a story about a woman’s sexual history as the tip of a man’s penis tells about his. That is, no story at all.

There’s more than one useless way to check a woman’s virginity: Checking a woman’s hymen may be the gold standard these days, but it’s just one of a long line of attempts to prove the unprovable. Many ‘virginity tests’ were based on the idea that intercourse opened a channel between a woman’s vulva and throat. So, using this obvious faulty logic, the woman in question might be asked to smell a head of lettuce to see if it would cause urination. Or, she’d be seated on a cauldron to see if its smoke could be smelled on her breath. Yet another test used string to measure the ratio of a woman’s head to her throat (this one makes a fun party trick, see below for a link to a bonus video).

The hymen wasn’t even discovered until 1544: It started when the anatomist Andreas Vesalius went looking for a reason as to why some women bled during intercourse. He isolated a bit of tissue in two female cadavers he was studying, and because one was a nun and the other a hunchback, he decided neither had had intercourse with a man. The presence of this tissue sealed the deal, so to speak. Many other men followed his path of discovery and the magical hymen went from being a tiny anatomical body to the ne plus ultra of female virginity. You see, men really wanted and needed a medicalized definition of female virginity, one that smacked of scientific accuracy, as opposed to all those bits of string and lettuce leaves.

It all sounds ludicrous, but so were the tests to find witches and look where that got us. Lest you think present-day ‘virginity testing’ only happens in far-away countries where women are veiled, my own Manhattan gynecologist has told me stories of mothers bringing their daughters in to her to be verified as virgins. (She patiently explains to them the only way to know is by asking). And just a couple of months ago, a guy posted Facebook photos of what he claimed were his bloody honeymoon sheets, boasting to the world that his wife was a virgin. People were outraged, but I think mostly because they thought that all that lady blood looked gross.

There is a giant re-virginizing marketplace: Given the pressure on women to ‘perform virginity loss’ to the specifications of the misinformed masses, there is much money to be made selling products that recreate signs of virginity that have nothing whatsoever to do with virginity. Here’s my own consumer rundown:

Creams like China Shrink Cream, Liquid Virgin, and Like a Virgin are applied to the vaginal walls in order to (allegedly) cause swelling and tighten the vagina. For under $10 they promise to make it feel, you know, like the very first time. One also claims to be an excellent disinfectant and deodorant. We asked an intern to try it on her lips but nothing happened.

The ‘artificial hymen’ is actually a small piece of plastic embedded with red dye that’s inserted into the vagina before sex. It sells for about $30 online and those in the know recommend the Japanese brand over the Chinese because it won’t cause as many infections. Despite ordering the Japanese model for myself, I couldn’t convince my husband to try it out. It sounds like a joke but in 2010, Egyptian clerics demanded that anyone caught using one of these rather icky devices should be put to death by the state.

More hymen myths and some of the revirginizing products on the market.

At the most drastic end of the spectrum are the different varieties of hymen reconstruction. Many women, even those who have never had intercourse, go to clinics all over the world, including the US, to get a stitch or two put into their labia (the hymen is usually too fragile). This is to ensure bleeding on wedding-night penetration. Hymen reconstruction is a common practice in Europe, the Middle East, and South America, but carries a real stigma for doctors and very few actually admit to doing it. In contrast, US clinics advertise hymen reconstruction all over the internet, right alongside ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ surgery.

As for me, I never bled my first time, and I know it wasn’t because of gymnastics, which I did my best to avoid. I think the event was just so anti-climatic, my hymen remained as unmoved as the rest of me.

Bonus video link: Watch Hanne Blank demonstrate the string virginity test on Therese Shechter.

* * *

Therese Shechter is a filmmaker in the final stages of the new documentary “How to Lose Your Virginity.” You can join the conversation right now by answering the question “what’s the biggest myth about virginity you ever learned?” and by submitting your own virginity story to the crowd-sourced First Person project.

Donate today to support the final edit of “How to Lose Virginity.” You can watch the new trailer here. Therese’s first documentary “I Was A Teenage Feminist” is probably showing at a Women’s Studies class near you. You can follow her @trixiefilms.

 

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What’s Up with the Super Skinny Demonic Pregnancy in “Breaking Dawn”?

January 10, 2012 By 6 Comments
kristen-stewart-bella-pregnant-breaking-dawn

By Sayantani DasGupta

If you have been, say, living in outer space, in some kind of a no-media cult, or simply in possession of particularly discriminating taste, and have not seen the Twilight films, or read Stephanie Meyer’s books, then, before you read this post, I respectfully send you to these superlative examples of feline scholarship otherwise known as the LOL cat reviews of the Twilight films.

For the rest of the population, read on.

A gender studies professor and a religious studies scholar went into a darkened movie theater earlier this fall and saw a film about pseudo-Mormon vampire families, oral demonic C-sections, and baby-werewolf imprinting. No, that’s not a joke, although by the time the film ended, my religious studies professor friend and I kind of wished it was, too. (Now, if you know about Twilight but haven’t seen Breaking Dawn (part 1), or have seen it, but blocked it out with a self-inflicted lobotomy – excellent choice btw, I respectfully send you to this naughty but oh-so-clevah summary of the movie at g4tv.)

Now, plenty has been written about the Mormon influences in the Twilight books, including the juxtaposition of the ‘white and delightsome’ sparkly vampire Cullen family with the indigenous “savage werewolves in need of vampire colonization.” (At the very least, that Jacob kid needs someone to buy him a shirt, already.) And there’s been an equal amount written about Bella as swooning anti-feminist heroine, whose ‘choices’ are more often than not the ‘choice’ to be passive and, um, whiney. (As the LOL cats would say, “Uh-oh. my only raison for to lives, gones. *Mope so sad. I jes stare out windo for thfree monz.”)

Now that Breaking Dawn (parte uno) has finally brought the clumsy but deliciously ensangrinated human Bella (that’s like, something European for ‘beautiful’, did you know that?) and breathtakingly glowy vampire dude Edward (a 107-year-old un-dead guy as your high school biology lab partner, no that’s not creepy at all) to the altar, nuptial bed, and super-disturbing at-home baby delivery table, there has been some wonderful feminist analyses of the essentially anti-choice ‘choice’ rhetoric peppered through the film.

After Bella gets pregnant (‘natch) like the second she says, “I do,” she embraces the “choice” to give birth to her demon spawn – despite Edward, Alice, and every other thinking person in the audience’s urgings to have an abortion. In fact, she employs grumpy blonde Cullen sister Rosalie to serve as a sort of anti-abortion protester cum bodyguard – protecting Bella’s rapidly swelling body from the (sensible) pro-choice machinations of, um, everybody else. Despite looking like she’s a hunger striker with a strapped on baby bump that she stole from the dressing room of “A Pea in the Pod,” Bella is determined to play the dutiful mother-to-be who “loves” her fetal monstrosity far more than herself (even when that love involves delicately sipping human blood through a non-environmentally friendly Styrofoam cup + straw).

Now, the grotesque pregnancy and birth scenes in Breaking Dawn are consistent with recent cultural obsessions with horrible images of pregnancy and birth on television.  Bella’s bun is also consistent with historical notions of “monstrous pregnancies” caused by overworkings of the maternal imagination, as well as the “pregnancy/birth pornography” indulged in by many recent dramas about historical figures. In the words of Bitch Magazine blogger Katherine Don:

Nothing instills a fear of pregnancy more than watching childbirth scenes that take place during the Medieval period… or the Renaissance… or during the Enlightenment… or any time, really, before the twentieth century. Screaming mistresses/courtesans/queens/princesses lay flushed in their canopied doily beds as frantic women flutter about the room, dipping cloths in hot water…

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not downplaying the potential dangers of childbirth. But exaggerating, fetishizing and sexualizing these dangers for entertainment purposes amounts, in my opinion, to some form of pornographication.

But I knew all this before I went to the movie theater. And yet, although I might have come for the reproductive politics, I ended up staying for the messed up body image shizz. As the “Ryan Gosling Reads YA… and sometimes cries” meme would say, it was super messed up to watch a young girl wake up from her wedding night covered in bruises – and then watch her be okay with it. But that too I knew going in, as I knew that there would be a homebirth scene from hell in which Edward actually BITES OUT the baby from bloody Bella’s belly (that scene was so gross, yo, I totally earned that alliteration.)

Yet, what I found most disturbing of all – among many, many other disturbing things including Jacob falling in love with Bella’s newborn baby Renesmee  (yeah, really, both the wacky name and the falling in love with an infant bit)– was the visual image of Bella as anorexic pregnant waif queen. As Alex Cranz at FemPop notes, skeenay Kristin Stewart could have given Christian Bale a run for his money with her degree of emaciated-ness and poking out bones in this film. I knew, from reading the books, that Bella’s ravenous half-vampire fetus devours her from the inside out, yet, the image of a young actress looking that haggard on screen was downright shocking (and I’m sure triggering for those in the audience suffering from disordered eating). For a minute I actually got confused, and thought that maybe I was watching a film version of Laurie Halsie Anderson’s novel about anorexia, Wintergirls (Kristin Stewart acts in the film version of Anderson’s Speak.)

Feminist scholar/rock star Judith Butler has asserted that gender is performance, not an innate state of being but a set of repeated, stylized acts. With that in mind, we can also assert that pregnancy is a type of ‘performance.’ We only have to think of different ways that pregnancy is publicly enacted in different cultures, or think of the different ways that pregnancy has been presented historically (hidden utterly, infantilized – remember those maternity dresses with the big goofy bows? – and most recently, made Hollywood sexy) to realize that pregnancy is not solely a biological condition of being, but fundamentally socioculturally constructed.

Yet, although the ‘belly bump’ has become a greatly desired accountremont for celebrities in the last few decades, this has not relieved these women from adhering to and promoting unrealistic and unattainable body standards. Indeed, the ‘celebrification’ of pregnancy has in fact brought the gestating body further under the exacting gaze of feminine body image expectations. Actress and model mothers are regularly photographed with bellies that seem practically glued on, raving about the diet and exercise regimen they will embark on to regain their ‘pre-baby bikini bodies’ as soon as possible. Recently, Mariah Carey famously hid her “rancid” pregnant body from her husband – even in the bathtub – and quickly became the newest Jenny Craig spokesperson after delivering. And it’s not just pregnant celebrities in on the head trip. We’ve all read about adult women who have had their teenage bouts with anorexia re-triggered by the inevitable (and healthy) weight gain and body changes of pregnancy. Sensationally called “pregorexia’ – such women are unable to reconcile the disordered body image expectations of our society with the necessities of pregnancy, and starve, exercise, and otherwise abuse their pregnant bodies to the detriment of their own and their fetus’ health.

Kristin Stewart’s performance of pregnancy is inevitably also a performance of “pregorexia” – adding one more image of extreme thinness to our cultural stockpile of such images. Demon-baby or no, ultrathin pregnant bodies are culturally unhealthy, images that devour us all from the inside out.

Other Pregnancy Related Posts on Adios Barbie:

Newest Diet Fad Offers False Positive

The Skinny on Pregnancy Weight Gain

 

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Obama’s Plan B Move Gets an F From Us

January 3, 2012 By 1 Comment
Plan-B

By Ashley-Michelle Papon

Once again, stunned women found themselves to be the sacrificial lambs to the slaughter after the shocking decision by the Obama administration to restrict the sale of the morning-after pill to minors in the U.S., overriding an earlier recommendation by the Food and Drug Administration to increase access. Although Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services officially made the decision, Obama’s reasoning as to why he didn’t interfere called attention to his own role as father to two young daughters.

Around the blogosphere, outraged progressives are citing the inherent paternalism underpinning the President’s decision as largely motivated by reelection politics. “What should have been a routine decision based on sound scientific and medical evidence just got hijacked by politics – again,” Jessica Arons, director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress, writes in a guest blog for ThinkProgress.

And the decision isn’t a particularly astute one, as Scott Lemieux correctly asserts over at The American Prospect, characterizing the decision as “a disgrace” inconsistent with what attracts voters to the Democratic party in the first place. “It’s awful on the merits, and politically involves attacking a core constituency of the Democratic Party for no obvious benefit,” he writes. “Overriding professional FDA scientists in order to advance an agenda hostile to reproductive freedom and the equality of women is not what most Democrats believed they were voting for.”

No, this is certainly not the hope that scores of previously ignored young constituents had voted in, but it’s understandable why Obama erroneously believe such a decision is the perfect vehicle with which to mobilize the undecided-but-leaning-conservative vote in the months building up to the grand finale of Obama’s reelection campaign push.

Like so many other issues in the status quo that are hotly debated over the scape of women’s bodies, this one is grounded in paternalism, the idea that parents have a right to know that not only are their progeny (aw, who are we kidding—their daughters) are having sex, but if they get pregnant as a result.

Irin Carmon expands on this idea, arguing that teen sex has always occupied a sacred place in the Conservative anti-woman agenda because early strategists recognized what a powerful voting bloc parents could be when faced with the unacceptable reality that their daughters can and will have sex. This awareness is amplified whenever national headlines circulate putting young women’s sexuality front and center, even if reports of such behavior are largely exaggerated, if they exist at all (see: rainbow parties) and played out again just days after the Plan B debacle, when ABC News ran with a completely bogus, overblown story that risky group sex is increasing among teens.

It’s worth noting that the way we conceptualize young women having sex is problematic. Although more optimistic critics might insist the goal of the administration is to encourage young women to talk to their parents about sex, it’s worth pointing out that the administrative focus continues to be on “10-year-old girls.” It’s a subtle, but revealing move, as 10-year-old girls cannot emotionally or legally consent to sex in the first place; they can, however, continue to purchase other over-the-counter medications with even more severe side effects than those known to be associated with Plan B. Ultimately, this move is a counterproductive one, leaving young women with fewer reasons to disclose their sexual activity to their parents.

Taken a step further, it’s a decisive move to question Plan B’s necessity. When Obama vocalized his support for Sebelius’ decision, he did so by arguing that Plan B should not be purchasable “alongside bubblegum or batteries,” not only conjuring up an image of a female form that cannot have sex but subtly sending the message that Plan B (much like the sexuality of women as a whole) is nothing more than an unnecessary impulse purchase.

But there’s nothing unnecessary about accessing contraception. Actual figures are hard to pin down, but some experts estimate that up to 47 percent of all unplanned pregnancies involve no contraception. Although Texas is so far the only state to openly declare “a war on birth control,” the country as a whole has taken a gigantic step back, defunding programs and slashing budgets designed to increase access to pregnancy and communicable-disease prevention. Obama also cautioned stunned White House Press Corp reporters that it’s important to “use common sense” with regards to what is dispensed over-the-counter. But given that Plan B is most effective when administered 72 hours of sexual intercourse, it’s a head scratcher to figure out how requiring a prescription is acting with common sense of any kind, even in a meta-political sense.

The administration’s double-cross might be temporarily appeasing to Conservatives hell-bent on controlling the sex lives of their daughters, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. By preventing young women from emergency contraception, the administration is most certainly going to facilitate an increase in abortions, particularly among women who belong to communities of color, who are less likely to have access to medical care to obtain a prescription for Plan B in the first place.

Make no mistake: with their decision to keep Plan B stocked behind the pharmacists’ counter, the administration is absolutely limiting access to Plan B for all women, regardless of their age. Women over 17 will not have to produce a prescription, but they will have to prove their age, subjecting them to a major invasion of privacy that barely passes muster for anything other than backdoor slut-shaming in order to obtain emergency contraception.

Especially with the growing support of “pharmacists’ conscience rights,” legal jargon which allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions based on their individual moral code. Though most states which support “conscience rights” require pharmacists to offer referrals to other places where those in need can access it, not all do, potentially creating a labyrinth of retail bureaucracy and time-delays undermining a woman’s reproductive autonomy.

Obama would do well to remember that the groups being most decisively impacted by this decision make up the key demographics that elected him three years ago (interestingly, just a year after Plan B first became widely available in the United States) and have a long history of being stepped on. When the line between Democrat and Republican begins to blur in this fashion so that we’re oppressed and devalued regardless of which way the wind blows, we lose a lot of the impetus to stay where we are.

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Dare to Resolve to Ditch Dieting

December 27, 2011 By 6 Comments
Official logo for the Ditching Dieting campaign.

Dieting is toxic to your health.

By Sharon Haywood

Aside from bikini season, late December and early January is the other time of year that we’re especially susceptible to feeling bad about our bodies. Special thanks to the media and the diet industry for ensuring we do by reminding us that we overindulged during the end-of-year festivities and we must resolve to lose (at least) that holiday weight come the new year. Weight Watchers in the UK is making certain you hear that message loud and clear. On January 1, 2012 almost all the major UK television networks will simultaneously air a three-minute Weight Watchers commercial aka music video worth over US$23 million. In it, Weight Watchers proudly parades 180 clients, mostly women, who have lost a total of 5908 pounds using its trademarked ProPoints program launched just a year ago.

What I’d like to see is how many of those slimmed-down success stories will have kept the weight off by New Year’s Day 2016. According to the studies, within four to five years most of them will have regained the weight, and at least 60 to 120 of them will weigh more than their pre-diet weight. Yes, I said diet. Regardless of what Weight Watchers (or SlimFast or Jenny Craig or any other system or product designed to lose weight) calls it, a diet is a diet. And diets don’t work. Sure, if you eat only protein and avoid carbs or measure your portions or adhere to a system of points that limits your caloric intake, yes, you will lose weight… initially. But research[1] clearly shows that any weight lost is sure to creep back within five years.

Researchers at California’s UCLA sought out specific evidence on the long-term results of dieting by analyzing every published diet study—31 in total[2]—that monitored participants’ weight from two to five years after their initial weight loss. The study’s lead author, Traci Mann, summarized their results:

“You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.”

You may have already heard this information but you may have very well just resigned yourself to playing the losing and gaining game. It’s understandable considering how barraged we are with the message that fat will kill you. But the truth is fat can actually protect you against certain diseases including osteoporosis, chronic bronchitis, and some cancers.[3] Furthermore, the evidence strongly supports that continued yo-yo dieting or losing and gaining weight repetitively does real damage to your body, not to mention the mental and emotional self-abuse that dieting demands. The research is clear: weight cycling plays a large role in various ailments, ironically often attributed to obesity: high-blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and even premature death.[4] Unfortunately, the studies that attract the most press are those that support weight loss as a means to health; such studies are substantially funded by the pharmaceutical[5] and weight loss industries. And these industries are certainly not lacking in profits; in only two more years, the worldwide weight-loss market is predicted to be worth a staggering US$586.3 billion.

It’s time to say “No” to big business making money off our bodies. Enough of believing the propaganda that fat is the enemy. Enough of trusting that the label ‘overweight’ or even ‘obese’ obtained from an unsound BMI chart translates to ill health. As the year comes to a close and you compile your list of New Year’s resolutions, dare to do something different. Dare to listen to your body. Dare to ditch dieting. And know that you don’t have to do it alone. Across the pond, the Endangered Bodies campaign, launched by the Endangered Species International March 2011 Summit, is in full swing. The Endangered Bodies (EB) team in the UK[6], led by Susie Orbach, launched its Ditching Dieting campaign last month at UK Feminista’s national conference where they invited attendees to “speak out against the misery caused by the diet industry.” And you can, too.

Anyone, anywhere can hold a SpeakOut in the name of Ditching Dieting. You can organize a few friends around your kitchen table or you might fill an auditorium. The point is to create a safe space where the suffering caused by dieting can be expressed and validated. A SpeakOut and the subsequent support group that can emerge from it offer similar peer support that diet clubs such as Weight Watchers provide; however, instead of focusing on working against your body’s natural impulses, a SpeakOut club facilitates strong bonds as you explore collaboratively with other members how to truly take care of yourself. In the words of the UK EB team:

“In general, the aim is to become really aware of where dieting puts you, and to start making important choices about how much you want to play along with a game that is making you miserable… It is about taking on the challenge to accept and understand how natural it is to eat happily, in response to your hunger, and without guilt.”

Learning how to eat intuitively is a process that takes time, especially if you’ve historically relied on external factors, such as a meal plan or a point system to guide you on when and how to eat. Diets teach us to ignore our internal cues, which only contributes to eating disorders and obesity. As Susie Orbach has asked many times,

“If dieting worked, why would we need to do it more than once?”

Let’s kick off the New Year off by Ditching Dieting and move toward eating “happily ever after.”

* * *

Whether you’re in the UK, the US, Canada, or Europe, consider hosting your own SpeakOut. For more information visit www.ditchingdieting.org and write to info@any-body.org to obtain a SpeakOut package.

Currently in the UK, a Body Image Inquiry is underway looking into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety. If you’re based in London, take the day off work on January 16, 2012 and join the UK EB team in speaking out against the diet industry at Parliament. Full event details here.

[1] Gina Kolata, Rethinking Thin, New York: Picador, 2007, 188.

[2] Contrast that with the fact that the obesity “crisis” was primarily borne out of four studies. See Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, pages 13-20 for more details.

[3] Linda Bacon, Health at Every Size, Dallas: BenBella Books, Inc., 2008, 138-139.

[4] Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004, 32-33.

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Ironing Out The Wrinkles of Wanting Plastic Surgery

December 23, 2011 By 9 Comments
wrinkles

by Sharon Haywood

“You look different but I’m not sure what it is,” I prod my Argentine friend Marcela.

“Botox,” she says with a smile.

“Now I know why your eyes look bigger.”

“Oh really? Great!”

“Where did they inject it?”

“I had my eyes and forehead done. Looks good, no?” she says running her fingers along her taut skin. “Yeah, it does,” I respond hating to admit it out loud. I can’t believe I’m actually considering Botox.

I spend the rest of lunch doing my best not to stare at the smooth skin between Marcela’s sculpted eyebrows, around the corners of her eyes, and across her forehead. It makes me think of the lines on my face; I’m almost ten years her junior and have more creases than she does. I want to think it doesn’t matter but as I approach my fortieth birthday and live in the image-conscious city of Buenos Aires, I find myself hyper-aware of my changing face and body, ultimately comparing myself to women like Marcela.

I marvel at how great she looks. Her five-foot frame is flawless. She regularly runs marathons. She never skips a session at the gym. She’s the mother of three grown children. She also has breast implants. Prior to her surgery, I questioned why she wanted them.

“But you have a gorgeous figure and your breasts are perfectly proportionate for your body.”

“I don’t think so. I think I would look so much better with larger breasts.” I stifle myself from disagreeing again and shift the focus.

“Isn’t getting surgeries a little addictive, kind of like getting tattoos?” I tread lightly.

“No, no, no,” she says shaking her head. “This is definitely the only one, no more after this. I just know that with a bigger bust would feel that much better about myself. Actually, I’m doing it more for how I feel inside than how I look on the outside.”

Marcela is the prototype for the ideal woman in Buenos Aires: Petite, slim, large breasts, and equally as important, a firm, plump, and curvy ass. To make sure I don’t forget what this ideal woman looks like billboards and storefronts offer a steady stream of half-naked women, arching and pouting, showing the world who, or rather what, a woman is. Magazine stands, often referred as meat markets by my boyfriend, are identifiable from at least half a block by their uniform color of flesh. Window-shopping allows me to compare the various trends in lingerie via posters of more almost-naked, skinny-legged, flat-stomached, and big-busted women. Still, other window displays prompt me to mull over the effectiveness of a pair of padded panties proudly exhibited on a half-torso, claiming to be push-up underwear. And of course, I don’t even have to leave my apartment to see what standards Argentine women are told to live up to. I just flick on one of the local channels. Be it a talk show, a comedy, a game show, or a soap opera there’s bound to be tits and ass occupying much of the screen.

The combination of being bombarded by apparent female physical perfection and receiving early condolences for The Big Four-Oh has led me to the mirror. My breasts have never been perky but that doesn’t stop me from pulling up the skin above them toward my shoulders contemplating how much life would change with my boobs at attention. I check out my side profile and perform a similar lifting of my backside, wondering if there’s such a thing as a butt lift. I notice that I am developing the exact same wrinkles as my 88-year-old grandmother. Examination in the magnifying mirror tells me I’ve got lines that can only be erased by modern medicine. Flattening out the crease between my eyebrows, I face up to the fact that vitamin E cream just doesn’t cut it anymore.

“What would you think if I got Botox?” I ask my boyfriend Facundo.

“What?!”

“I’m not seriously considering it, I’m just thinking about it.”

“Leave your wrinkles alone, stay natural. They’re part of you. Don’t get Botox. I love you as you are. So should you.”

As much as I want my partner’s declaration of love to be enough, it isn’t. I know it needs to come from me. I can’t help but think how I reject the idea of being a size zero. It’s been years since I’ve owned a scale. Clothes that don’t fit me anymore promptly get donated. I’m proud to say I don’t diet. Why am I even considering this? I search for clarity and investigate where some of my other female friends stand. One, a 41-year-old American flight attendant, comes to Buenos Aires every few months, not only to visit me but also to get her Botox topped up. Another, a 35-year-old Brit living in Dubai, tells me that Botox is a must and adds that if I want any information about getting a lip enhancement to come to her. The attached photo confirms she’s looks fabulous. Yet another, a 36-year-old Canadian, says she’ll start Botox treatments when she turns 40. All three tell me about other friends and friends of friends who rave about the work they’ve had done. It can’t hurt to make an appointment – just to get more information. I decide to ask Marcela where she goes for Botox injections.

The next time we meet she tells me she went under the knife again – definitely her last time.

“What did you get done?” I ask. She lifts her skirt to reveal blood-soaked bandages wrapped around her upper thigh.

“Oh my God! What happened?”

“I went for liposuction to get rid of the flab in my inner thigh but instead I got this.” She pulls the bandage off revealing severe burns. “The doctor did tell me it was one of the risks.” I don’t ask where she gets her Botox injections.

Soon after our meeting, I receive a call from an old friend that I had lost contact with. Two years ago, doctors removed his cancerous thyroid gland. Although he is healthy today, he struggles with another issue.

“I don’t feel like a whole person anymore.”

“But you’re still the same person, that hasn’t changed.”

“I know but I just feel less.”

“Rick, it’s only physical. As long as your body functions properly that’s all you need to worry about. Really, when you think about it our bodies are just containers that carry us around.”  I feel like a hypocrite. Why does my container need Botox?

For days after our conversation, I’m stumped as to why I think I need to paralyze my facial muscles in the name of “beauty.” I take a closer look at the women around me. Gabriela gave herself a perpetual pout for her thirtieth birthday making it a challenge to maintain eye contact with her. Fifty-something Silvia has two distinct, lumpy scars on either side of her mouth from botched collagen injections. Marisa, 42, got the three-for-one special: boobs, liposuction, and tummy tuck. She couldn’t lift her two-year-old daughter for over a month. I resolve to make peace with my sagging breasts and deepening wrinkles.

A few weeks later my boyfriend and I attend a party. Late in the evening, we stand close to each other but talking to different people. The 22-year old I’m chatting with asks me my age.

“You’re 39?” her eyes spread wide.

“Yes, 39,” I smile politely.

“You definitely look younger than your age but your face is … is … muy marcada.”

“My face is very marked?” I laugh back.

Facundo leans in, “I like her wrinkles.”

I’m learning to like them too.

Originally published January, 2009.

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Feel Fat? Try Burlesque to Feel Beautiful

December 20, 2011 By 7 Comments
Photo by Powerful Goddess Photography

Photo by Powerful Goddess Photography

By Kitty Cavalier

Recently a friend told me she wants to love her body but she always feels fat. I dedicate this article to her.

No woman is immune from “feeling fat.” But notice we don’t say, “I have fat on my body all the time.” What we are describing is the FEELING of being fat. For every woman, the feeling of being fat represents something different. Try completing this sentence: “I feel fat, and that means I am _______.” Some examples would be: unattractive, too much, not enough, gross, unlovable, a mess… just to name a few.

Now, continue the sentence with: “if I am _____, that means__________, and that makes me feel__________.”

For example:

“If I am unattractive, that means I will never live my dream of having a partner who truly loves me, and that makes me sad.”

“If I am not enough, that means I will never get anything I want in this life no matter how hard I try, and that makes me mad!”

” If I am too much, that means I am different than everyone else, that no one will ever understand me, and that makes me feel sad and alone.”

What is fat? Fat is a tissue. An assemblage of molecules and acids. But for a woman who is feeling sad, lonely or angry in a world that takes drastic measures to prevent her from feeling the fullness of her truth, it is easy to trick ourselves into believing that if we did not feel fat, we wouldn’t have to encounter these intense feelings so often. That’s what it looks like on TV anyway. So we put all our attention on how we can reshape, reform and reinvent our sweet, precious bodies. But as many of us have discovered, you can still be lonely in a differently shaped body.

So, what is the antidote? Well, it sure as hell doesn’t begin an X or end with a drine. Have you ever met a girl who looks really pretty, but because she so clearly doesn’t love herself, she is really un-beautiful? Her beauty is there, but it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness? And then, have you also met a girl who is incredibly “imperfect,” yet completely enchanting because of how much she enjoys being exactly who she is? Her self-love is infectious, and you cannot help but fall under her spell. With this kind of woman, it’s not in what she has, it’s in what she believes. She refuses to buy into the idea that her scrumptious self could be anything less than lovable.

Burlesque is the living practice of being this kind of woman. There are some who think that burlesque is a step back for feminism, and that stripping is an objectification of women, period. To me, it is the exact opposite. When I went to my first burlesque show five years ago, what changed my life forever was seeing women who looked exactly like me, with real bodies, making the rules about what it means to be beautiful.

They were not trying to fit into someone else’s definition of sexiness, or waiting for something to change in order to feel the fullest expression of their beauty and power. And if you couldn’t groove to their beat, well, you could just move on over. The same bodies I would see being squeezed, cursed and quickly covered up in the gym locker room were being flaunted and adored. I saw teeny-weeny AA cup breasts, G size breasts that came down to the belly button, and each woman walked around in mere pasties and a g-string with an ease and confidence that was impenetrable. These were not mere objects of male desire. These were objects of pure feminine power. The kind that is gorgeously unapologetic, perfectly imperfect, simultaneously embodying the beauty that dwells in the darkness and the light.

Today, act as if you are a woman who has the world in the palm of her hand. A woman whose beauty is eternal, and leaves a legacy in her wake. Act as if you are a woman who turns every head as she walks into a room. A woman that is flown across the world because her beauty is legend, and someone is prepared to pay millions of dollars for the inspiration that comes from watching her take one sip of coffee. When you live your life from this spot, you evaporate the chains that tie us down to the belief that we will only experience our fullest power when we don’t feel fat. That is bullshit. You are this woman. Feel your power now.

Kitty Cavalier is known for bringing mischief to the masses at The School of Charm and Cheek in NYC, of which she is the founder. After a lifetime of hating her body, she took a wild risk by performing a burlesque striptease in front of 100 people, and has never been the same. Since then she has been on a mission to help women adore and appreciate their feminine form through burlesque dancing and other sensual arts. For more information, visit her website, join her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

Cross-posted with permission.

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FAT SEX, The Book

December 16, 2011 By 6 Comments
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By Jennifer Jonassen

If you’re like me, you grew up with a very limited view of what sexiness is, of what sexiness looks like. I always found it perplexing that what was considered sexy was so narrowly defined. As a young girl, the women that surrounded me did not look like the so-called ideal and yet they were all partnered up. Obviously, they were having sex too! Yet everything I learned from television and fashion magazines told me this could not be so. More than 30 years later I am still searching for positive images of sexy fat women in the mainstream, which has happily led me to FAT SEX.

Author Rebecca Jane Weinstein’s book FAT SEX affirms what I have known intuitively all along — women of all sizes and shapes are sexy, passionate, desirable creatures with romantic and sexual lives. A seasoned lawyer and social worker, Weinstein recently took some time to talk with me about her inspirations for her revolutionary book, FAT SEX.

Jennifer Jonassen (JJ): Tell us about FAT SEX. Where did the inspiration come from?

Rebecca Jane Weinstein (RJW): FAT SEX is a book in which large-size women and men tell their true stories of social and self-acceptance in romantic and sexual relationships. Though they sometime face bigotry and experience shame, they are often heroic and live remarkably fulfilling lives. The stories are compelling and told with sensitivity and humor, connecting people on profoundly important aspects of their lives.

If there are two subjects that are universally fascinating and rife with controversy, they are sex and fat. Though our culture is obsessed with both, the notion of the two comingling is sometimes seen as offensive, obscene, or grotesque. There is an undertone in our society that fat people are not sexual beings, or shouldn’t be. This is, of course, far from the truth: fat people have normal and peculiar sex lives, just like everyone else. FAT SEX is a compilation of true stories, cultural references, and narrative commentary.

The inspiration for FAT SEX has come from several places. I have been fat, off and on, since I was four and my parents got a divorce. A pediatrician put me on my first diet in first grade and my teacher told the entire class I was not allowed to eat birthday cake. In Girl Scout Camp my bunk-mates would chant “here comes the tub” when I would walk by. I did many things to not be fat. Many of them dangerous, and none of them stuck. Though there were periods of not-so-fat, like after two summers of fat camp and later a lot of uppers — in the end I got progressively fatter. In law school one supposedly kind and caring professor told me I would never get a job because of my body. Every aspect of my life, since before I can remember, was punctuated with what was apparently the most important aspect of my being: My fat body. Especially love.

If my own life experience wasn’t enough, when I started working on http://www.peopleofsize.com/ I saw the pain and that I was not alone. And it was not actually about body size, it was about shame. Fat people can’t hide their bodies in the closet, but their shame is tucked neatly away. Fat people are mere mortals, and they need a voice. I am just one person trying to give that voice to those whose shame keeps them from speaking. It is me, my computer, and the wonderful people who tell me their stories, which I try to tell with compassion, empathy, honesty, and enough humor so we all don’t jump off a bridge.

JJ: How many stories are featured in the book?

RJW: There are about twenty stories in the book, but they interweave and represent so many more stories and people. They represent all fat people in some way or another. And not just fat people, other people who have body issues and food issues, or just live in this society and are conflicted about all the mixed messages that drive us insane.

Each chapter will delve into a different topic related to romance, relationships, and sexual practices. Subjects will include heterosexuals, gay men and lesbian women, those who have gained and lost a great deal of weight, the sexual “underground” such as cybersex and pornography, also alternative perspectives such as “fat admirers” and “chubby chasers.” Experiences, thoughts, and feeling about being a fat person in a sexual culture, sexual situations, and intimate relationships will be explored, explained, and validated. Through shared understanding people find the best in themselves and others.

JJ: Why is this book so important?

RJW: Research shows that weight discrimination is currently more prevalent than race and gender discrimination (Yale). According to the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination people who are larger than average encounter discriminatory attitudes and are denied equal opportunity in many areas of their lives, including prospective employers refusing to hire large size people; physicians and other health-care professionals advising fat patients to lose weight no matter what their medical condition; large people being systematically denied health insurance and life insurance; and landlords, housing agencies, and real estate agents denying larger people apartments.

But for my purposes, this book is about the human element: The day-to-day crap that large people go through; the insecurities they feel simply because of the size of their bodies; the personal rejection and loneliness; and the misguided notion that no one will love a fat person. The fact is, fat people can be and are loved. They can and do have great romances and sex. We are so brainwashed to believe we are undesirable that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. These stories tell not just fat people, but the world at large, that fat people humans, and extraordinary humans at that. That is very, very important.

Author of FAT SEX and founder of PeopleofSize.com, Rebecca Jane Weinstein

JJ: Tell us a little bit about your site PeopleOfSize.com.

RJW:  PeopleOfSize.com is an online community that provides information, support, and interaction for “people of size” of all ages. We are not a diet site, though health and fitness are part of what we address. We focus on all aspects of life, from medical [issues] to fashion, relationships to daily living, entertainment to emotional well-being.

We provide comprehensive information and access from many perspectives and offer a forum for discussion and social interaction. All subjects include a social networking function. People of size can communicate about their favorite plus/large size fashions, size-friendly vacation spots, health questions and concerns, job, family, and relationships, political and social issues, and everything in between.

The PeopleOfSize.com e-community is a welcoming place for all people of size, recognizing everyone should have the opportunity to live life to the fullest, learn and grow, be healthy and happy. We are a community with no judgment, just opportunity. Of course, PeopleOfSize.com is totally free. We also have a very active community on Facebook.

JJ: What would you tell a young person who is struggling with body image?

RJW: I would tell a young person not to do what I did. Don’t confuse your body size with your self-worth. Don’t let people mislead you into thinking you will be alone and unloved because of your size or shape. That’s easier said than done, but it’s the best advice I’ve got.

Then do seek out size acceptance groups. Look into Health At Every Size. Understand there is a big difference between health and weight, no matter what else you hear. Stand up for yourself. Be a proud person, not because of your weight or despite it, because of your inner-strength. There are a million slogans I could yammer, pep talks I could give, platitudes and clichés I could proclaim. The truth is young people are saturated with negative body image messages constantly. Know you are not alone. You are not alone!  There are young people and old people and people in between that struggle too, and we need to support each other because things do change. We change. Our attitudes about ourselves and the world change all the time. I have changed a lot and I am still changing, and I am pretty old, though these days I feel like I am living some of the youth I missed.

JJ: What has the funding process been like and how have editors responded to the material?

RJW: I attempted to sell this book the traditional way. First I sought out an agent, which I understand can be a grueling process, but I found a great agent in about 24 hours. I thought I had it made. We were both anticipating a bidding war from publishers. My agent has been in the business a long time so that wasn’t just my fantasy. But it didn’t work out that way. I have been turned down by every major publisher in the country. We believe, from what we have been told that the material is too cutting edge, and right now mainstream publishing is all about celebrities and dieting. I am not a celebrity and this book is certainly not about dieting. The publishers and their editors are afraid there is no market — that not enough people will by the book. For them, of course, it’s about the bottom line.

This is a bit ironic, because the public interest in this book (and not just from fat people) seems to be great. My agent and I decided the best strategy would be to self-publish on Amazon and hope to get picked up from there. It’s a reasonable strategy but there is no advance or publishing and distribution support, so I am on my own. I started a Kickstarter.com campaign for FAT SEX. I am trying to raise $5,000 by January 14th. The money is trickling in slowly as this is a difficult economy and time of year. However, the number of “likes” for my projects is relatively astronomical. I have more Facebook “likes” on my Kickstarter.com page than most of the tech projects that have raised hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars. I still have 28 days to raise money, so we will see. I don’t think there is any question there is a market for the book. When more people “like” your page than the one for the iPad mini keyboard, it says something. Still, raising that money would really help.

Learn more about FAT SEX at its official website, its Kickstarter campaign, or read a chapter from Rebecca’s book in the online literary magazine Writing Raw.

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Disfigurement: Isolating ‘Imperfect’ Bodies

December 6, 2011 By 2 Comments
Shirin Juwaley

Shirin Juwaley of Palash Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the rehabilitation of people with disfigurement, explains how disfigurement affects the lives of women.

Originally published at Women’s Web. Cross-posted with permission.

By Shirin Juwaley

Having a facial disfigurement, according to me, is an advantage! It has sieved out the people in my life as only the significant remain. In the 13 years of surviving an acid attack by my ex-husband, I have come across all sorts of attitudes and behaviours towards a deviant face.

Justifying and accepting discrimination

I often wonder why most people cringe, repel, flinch, stare, avert their gaze and feel awkward in their interactions with people with disfigurement. To cite a few examples, Deepa.S*, 25, decided to burn up as she was fed up of living a life not meeting her expectations. This wife and mother of a one year old survived and suffers extreme contractures. Her chin and neck are fused with scarring all over her body. Let’s face it; her physical symmetry has gone askew. This mother prefers to isolate herself in a dingy house with no electricity and water, as fetching food would mean the neighbours cringing and fearfully closing their doors. This means Deepa is willing to go thirsty and hungry rather than step out in a community that is obviously uncomfortable with her physical appearances.

In a country [India] where leprosy is still considered a curse from God, where social discrimination is based on colour, where girls of marriageable age are encouraged to go through great lengths to be visually acceptable, fearing the visually deviant holds no surprise. What is interesting though, is that Deepa herself conforms to these ideas of beauty and finds the reaction of her neighbours justifiable. Many women in the lower socio-economic class resort to burning as an answer to their troubles not realising that this will only add to their woes if they survive. Since fire is considered to be engulfing and easily accessible to women, 80% of burn cases are women and children.

Shanti.K*, 30, was burnt by her in-laws as she was childless three years into her marriage. She survived with her skin on her face and body badly twisted and stretched leaving her looking deviant. She wears a scarf around her facial disfigurement and hides her scars with clothes covering her fully so that ‘others’ are comfortable around her. She runs into a fit of anger if a man passes the comment “Who will be with someone like you? (Teray jaisee kay saath kaun rahega?)” as it affirms that she is not beautiful and hence not acceptable. She has few friends and does not like to socialize, which is much against the carefree person she was before getting burnt. Marriage or even relationships according to her are both impossible and not even a distant dream.

The perfect, unattainable body

Both Deepa and Shanti are accepting of their discrimination as they don’t know otherwise. The social indoctrination around physical appearances, especially for a woman, starts as soon as she is born. The messages floating around are so strong, be it in the stories we are told, the movies we watch, the clothes we wear, religious significance, customs to be adhered, compliments/comments we receive, comparisons made with siblings and cousins – the list is probably endless, shape our thinking. The visual impact of media has pushed 98% of the ‘normal’ population to ape the 2% population of ‘perfect’ bodies displayed in glossy magazines and hoardings.

For Anamika.M*, who was born congenitally disfigured, growing up with no legs was traumatic. Children around her played and ran while she stood in one place, helpless. She was considered as a ‘kaccha limbu’/invalid and rejected for not being ‘normal’. The trauma of growing up was magnified, as fitting in became the only goal. Anamika made concentrated efforts to look pretty to compensate for her feet.

There are thousands of people with disfigurement living in Mumbai alone but the probability of meeting these thousands is reduced to one in a month. I wonder, why is the ratio so abnormally imbalanced? The answers over the years have evolved into more questions.

The paramount importance given to ideals of physical appearances, mostly for women, has secluded a certain section of society that does not fit into the mould of beauty or ‘normalcy’.

Deviant looking bodies (disfigurement) have been enshrouded with myth, religious beliefs and fear causing disruption in attitudes and behaviour. Disfigurement is defined as an altered physical appearance which can be congenital, due to accidents, burn injuries, surgical intervention, skin deformities, illnesses or any other reason. Hence disfigurement, though not a physical liability, creates a disabling impact due to social prejudices and apathy by society, particularly for a woman, as she is overburdened with expectations of being a perfect (socially acceptable) daughter, a wife and mother.

We at Palash Foundation deal with these core issues of accepting differences. Our core programme addresses social reintegration and livelihoods for people with disfigurement. We currently work along with the social work department of LTMG (Sion) and Kasturba Hospital in Mumbai with burn survivors and their caretakers and simultaneously conduct sensitisation and awareness talks to different groups of people on disfigurement. To know more visit www.palashfoundation.org

*Names changed on request to protect privacy. 

About The Author: Shirin Juwaley, 37, is an acid attack survivor. She is the Founder, Director of Palash Foundation, an organisation that strives to create an inclusive world where the rights of people with disfigurement are respected and protected. She has worked extensively on different projects in the social sector for the last 9 years.


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PETA and Porn: Exploit Women, Not Animals

November 29, 2011 By 15 Comments
PETA ad featuring Pamela Anderson that was banned by the city of Montreal in 2010 for being sexist.

PETA ad featuring Pamela Anderson that was banned by the city of Montreal in 2010 for being sexist.

By Ashley-Michelle Papon

Just in time for the chill of the holidays, the marketing wizards at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have come up with a new way to keep converts to animal welfarism warm. Within the next month, PETA will capitalize on their previously raunchy skin campaigns with a companion porn site. The porn site, PETA.XXX, will showcase plenty of celebrities willing to bare all, but according to Lindsay Rajt, PETA’s associate director of campaigns, the site will also feature displays of what PETA considers animal abuse. “We’re hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn’t anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site,” Rajt said.

From billboards preying on insecurities about swimsuit season as a method of somehow saving whales to advertisements suggesting your real concern during airport body scans should be how hot your vegetarian body looks, the idea that PETA could still manage to shock anyone is worthy of a laugh. Or two. Though the artwork from ad to ad differs, the message is overwhelmingly the same: learn to respect the welfare of animals, while disrespecting that of people.

In other words, a porn site featuring juxtapositions of animal abuse images isn’t a new low; it’s exactly the type of half-baked tasteless trafficking that we should be expecting from PETA. As a countless number of galleries–including this one by Time magazine–highlight, PETA’s co-founder Ingrid Newkirk long ago made the conscientious choice that the best way to sell her message would be through exploiting women, and she does it because it works, sticking to her philosophy that PETA is obligated to serve as “press sluts” to bring attention to their cause.

And stick to it, she does. Newkirk is, after all, the same woman who famously wrote to Yasser Arafat, urging him to keep animals out of conflicts with Israel after a donkey died during a suicide bombing. No such request for the then-prime minister to condemn “honor killings” such as bride burning and female infanticide, which accounted for a full two-thirds of all killings within Palestine territories at the time, reflecting PETA’s less charitable view of women’s expendability in general.

Not to mention PETA’s emphasis that a woman’s value is strictly in how her body looks. Fat-phobia has been PETA’s old trusty in the arsenal long before the “Save the Whales” campaign. Ideally, PETA shouldn’t care what a body looks like, provided that the body is simply sustained by a vegetarian diet and vegan living. In actuality, they know that if there is anything our patriarchal society reviles more than women in general, it’s women of size, and preying on those cultural prejudices has been a source of great media attention, which normalizes the violence visited on those same bodies.

Of course, this cavalier dismissal of violence against humans (specifically, women) is the real problem with PETA’s approach to activism. In 2002, PETA filmed a would-be Super Bowl commercial, which depicted a group of hooligans beating a woman to death with a baseball bat to the caption of, “What if you were killed for your coat?” Though the commercial was banned from airing, just last year PETA turned up the heat (and the fake blood) to launch their “Meat is Murder” basics, placing humans in life-sized deli counter meat packages and cellophane. The gag might have been somewhat educational, if the models hadn’t looked as though they’d just come out of Jeffrey Dahmer’s freezer.

That joke might seem to be in bad taste (no pun intended) until you consider that the serial killer’s cannibalism has been the fodder of more than one advertisement and celebrity-targeted criticism. No, seriously. But Dahmer’s crimes aren’t the only ones that PETA finds acceptable to dovetail into their agenda. In 2008, PETA created an ad identical to their 1991 Dahmer special in response to the Manitoba Greyhound bus beheading, asking people to imagine the terror of victim Tim McLean and use it as motivation to “leave violence off of their dinner plates.”

However, the argument here isn’t that the decision to launch a porn website is continuing PETA’s legacy of playing up violence to make a point. Although feminists often disagree as to how empowering or violent pornography inherently is, what makes this particular venture par for the course is PETA’s decision to include images of animal torture. It’s a veritable buffet of -isms for the organization, with the unintended consequence of eroticizing the torture of animals.

Part of what makes PETA’s performance so frustrating is that they should know better. Their website contains a lengthy explanation about the correlation between people who abuse animals and violent behavior towards other human beings, suggesting that on some level, somebody in that organization should understand the intersectionality of subjugation for women and the animal kingdom.

More to the point, promoting misogyny—often, violent—with the end result of animal liberation makes about as much sense as using racism to end class politics. You’ll capture some headlines, but you’ll probably alienate more people than you galvanize, especially since people likely to be more sympathetic to animal causes tend to also be against the idea of exploiting women.

It goes without saying that there are plenty of reasons to care about the treatment of animals in this country and elsewhere. Any enlightened, progressive individual has to acknowledge that our experience is largely shaped by what we consume, and that includes consuming the animal community. But responsibility goes both ways, especially when we’re talking about oppression of marginalized classes like animals. For real change to happen, PETA has got to stop objectifying women to nothing more than literal pieces of meat.

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Read other Adios Barbie content related to the eroticized violence of women:

A Monster Success! (reports on our successful petition against the official release of Kanye West’s misogynistic “Monster” video)

Deconstructing Kanye’s “Monster”


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