Stereotypes | Adios Barbie

Eating Disorders and LGBT: What’s the Connection?

October 25, 2011 By valerie 10 Comments

Actress Portia de Rossi, shown here with wife Ellen DeGeneres, struggled with near-fatal anorexia, which she attributed in large part to keeping her true sexuality a secret. Photo credit YourCelebrityStuff.com

By Valerie Kusler

October is LGBT history month, and as the resident eating disorders geek here at Adios Barbie (perhaps I’ll upgrade myself to “specialist” after I finish my MSW), it got me thinking about how little I know about the connection between eating disorders and LGBT population. The default assumptions I’ve heard are that eating disorders (EDs) are more common in gay males than straight males due to increased pressure to be thin and attractive in the gay community, while lesbians have fewer eating disorders than straight women, since they apparently eschew our society’s narrow beauty standards. How much truth, if any, is behind these stereotypical assumptions? Is there a connection or correlation between sexual orientation/gender identity and eating disorders?

I recently attended the NEDA (National Eating Disorders Association) Conference in Los Angeles and I was delighted to discover a session about exploring the interconnections between sexual orientation and eating disorders, given by Courtney Long (MSW, LC, CHt) of Phoenix, Arizona. Courtney shared that her own personal experience with EDs began in her early teens. She had a lot of the risk factors already such as a controlling mother with rigid rules, black-and-white thinking, perfectionism, and suppression of emotions in the family. Around the same time, she had a brief sexual encounter with a female that left her confused and doubting herself for years, always feeling like there was something wrong with her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She began exercising compulsively, cutting, restricting her food, and her ED behaviors got more and more serious.

Fast forward to adulthood, and one day, Courtney met a woman and fell madly in love. At that point, coming out didn’t feel like a choice. She knew couldn’t hide her love. Thankfully, her family was very accepting. By accepting her own sexuality and having the support of her family and friends, Courtney then felt she was able to examine her ED behaviors and seek treatment. “I had somehow convinced myself that salad tasted good without dressing,” she joked. “I love ranch dressing, and today I eat it whenever I want.” Now, Courtney is a Life Coach, Hypnotherapist, author, speaker, and more, all to spread the gospel of self-care, authenticity, fluidity, and acceptance.

Courtney’s success story is uplifting, but it’s not always the norm. In an environment that’s not always supportive and accepting, people in sexual minority groups often face additional pressures and challenges that lead to increased self-doubt, shame, and depression. LGBT adolescents are especially at-risk, as they often struggle with accepting their identity, coming out, and fitting in with peers who can be downright cruel. In Courtney’s situation, coming out helped her face and get treatment for her ED, but in other cases, coming out could be so stressful (especially when friends and/or family are not supportive) that it could actually intensify ED symptoms. Does authenticity lead to recovery or is it so painful that it can make existing conditions even worse? Courtney says there’s not much research out there on the topic; based on her experience, some LGBT folks see these factors as related, while others don’t.

So, what about those prevalent assumptions that gay men suffer from EDs much more than straight guys and lesbian women are more “immune” to EDs than heterosexual women? Researchers would say that both of those assumptions stem from a sociocultural perspective. For gay men, sociocultural suggestions state that the values and norms in the gay community place a heightened focus on physical appearance, and that by aiming to attract other men, they are subject to similar pressures and demands as heterosexual women (bodies as sexual objects, and thus, increased body dissatisfaction.) Although the sociocultural perspective is only part of the picture, it turns out that homosexual and bisexual men do in fact have significantly increased prevalence of EDs and ED behaviors including increased dieting, greater fear of gaining weight, lower body satisfaction, and dysfunctional beliefs about the importance of body shape (Kaminski, Chapman, Haynes & Own, 2005.) One recent study found that 6% of gay or bisexual males met the criteria for an eating disorder, compared to 1% of heterosexual males (Feldman & Meyer, 2007).

The sociocultural explanation for EDs does not hold up as well when it comes to lesbian and bisexual women. The suggestion is that these women do not share the same standards of feminine beauty espoused by western culture that straight women do, and thus, will be less likely to subscribe to the thin ideal and supporting behaviors. In fact, some studies have found lower levels of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual women; however, other studies have shown conflicting results, either finding no difference between heterosexual and lesbian/bisexual women among ED symptoms, or even higher levels of EDs (specifically, binge eating disorder) in lesbians compared with straight women. So what gives? This idea that lesbians are immune to EDs just because they supposedly eschew the Barbie beauty standard doesn’t seem to fit, especially when you consider that social is only one-third of “biopsychosocial,” the buzz-phrase in the mental health field for explaining the complex causes behind eating disorders. Sure enough, Feldman and Meyer’s study (one of the most recent and methodologically sound studies on this subject) found that the prevalence of EDs among lesbians and bisexual women is comparable to heterosexual women. Although the sociocultural factors associated with being a sexual minority can increase risk factors for EDs (as with gay and bisexual men), the positive aspects may not be enough to actually decrease risk factors substantially (as we see here with bisexual/lesbian women.)

As for transgender individuals, they often feel tremendous body dissatisfaction. As Courtney put it, “There is so much body dissatisfaction in our society today anyway. Just imagine if you also felt like you were born into completely the wrong body.” Not surprisingly, there is a dearth of research on EDs among transgender individuals, a population lacking in research overall. One attendee in Courtney’s session mentioned that brand new research has found that transgender people with EDs who go through transition recover from their ED based solely on the transition. So, when the body dissatisfaction subsides, the ED tends to go away. An intriguing idea, but I have yet to see the published study so I’m on the lookout for it. To the contrary, another session attendee, who frequently worked with homeless transgender teens and young adults at a center in New York City, stated that she often saw male-to-female transgender people develop EDs as they were transitioning because they felt the need to be delicate, feminine, skinny, and small. Also, being young and uneducated, many of them felt like the only work they could get was sex work, so “passing” was a big deal. They perceived that “passing” as female was the only way to be attractive as a sex worker, the only way to get the money to pay for gender reassignment surgery, so if “passing” meant extreme weight loss, it was a risk they felt they had to take.

At the end of the day, research on eating disorders among people who identify as LGBT is still insufficient and conflicting. However, based on the research we do have, it’s clear that some segments of the LGBT population face increased risk factors for eating disorders and body dissatisfaction. Thus, it is important for mental health practitioners, medical professionals, parents, and educators not to buy in to the assumptions that lesbian and bisexual women are less vulnerable to eating disorders than straight women, or that just because EDs are more common in gay men that they never affect straight men. Although some people unfortunately still discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender identity, eating disorders do not.

Read the complete study from Feldman & Meyer

For more information about Courtney Long and to learn about her upcoming memoir, Authentic and Free: A Journey from Shame to Self-Acceptance, visit her website.

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Filed Under: Science, Health and Research Tagged With: adolescents, binge eating disorder, bisexual, body dissatisfaction, body image, coming out, Courtney Long, eating disorders, gay men, heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, LGBQ and Transgender, LGBT, NEDA, research, Stereotypes, teens

Weight Stigma: Breaking it Down with Advocate and Activist Marilyn Wann

September 27, 2011 By Sharon 4 Comments

by Jennifer Jonassen

One of my biggest heroes in the struggle against fat hatred is unquestionably Marilyn Wann. Her first book, FAT?SO!, was positively revolutionary to me. I initially found myself drawn to the title as I painfully remembered that “fatso” was about the worst thing you could be called on the playground at lunch, and I was, many times throughout my childhood. Reading her book was the first time I considered the possibility that I was equal to everyone else, that I was worthy and entitled to respect. For many years I have considered Marilyn Wann the Gloria Steinem of the weight equality movement.

In person, Marilyn Wann is warm and incredibly understanding. In addition to being an indefatigable warrior and champion of human rights she is also one of the funniest people I know. I was recently blessed to have an opportunity to speak with her about some of the issues we face today including bullying, First Lady Michelle Obama’s controversial “Let’s Move” campaign, and U.S. healthcare. Ms. Wann’s story begins one important day where she faced a “double whammy” of discrimination and rejection. The catalyst events of that day led her to write FAT?SO! and to become the knowledgeable and inspiring leader she is today.

MW: I had what I called my Really Bad Day and I don’t think I’m the only person who has ever had a day like this. In 1993, I was having dinner with this guy and in the middle of dinner he said that he just realized that he was embarrassed to introduce me to some of his friends because I was fat. It really hurt my feelings. I was angry at him and outraged at being excluded. Then, I came home from that experience and opened a letter from Blue Cross California telling me that I would not be allowed to buy health insurance, not at any price, because of my weight. According to them I am morbidly obese. That was a double whammy.

JJ: What was your first step?

MW: I’m inspired by Audre Lorde, a feminist African American lesbian poet. She said that your silence does not protect you. So, because of that really bad day, I decided to come out as publicly as possible as a proud fat person. I started a zine called Fat!So? and then after five or six issues of the zine I got to put together a book proposal and write a Fat!So? book.

JJ: And Fat!So? is still in print today?

MW: Yes, it has been in print for 11 years and people are really enjoying it. I think it’s proof that people of all different sizes have these moments of being excluded for who we are. We all feel like we’re the only person who is alone and everyone else has some magic secret, when in fact we are all having that experience. So we have this solidarity in this alienation.

JJ: Do you think discrimination has gotten worse or better?

MW: I think it’s possible that levels of weight-based prejudice and discrimination have gotten worse. We are just now starting to get basic data on weight discrimination. I do know that for children it is getting worse. Children face more hatred from their peers and the anti-obesity campaigns against fat children are terrifying. The government-sponsored campaigns are also promoting fat hate. But I do also think that our resistance is better. The grassroots community of people—of all sizes—are saying that this is a stupid kind of prejudice that gets in everybody’s way and wastes our lives. I think we are finding more strength and more fabulousness!

JJ: Do you have any thoughts on why this form of prejudice is getting worse?

MW: I do think that weight prejudice got really heated maybe a hundred or more years ago out of a combination of a lot of different industries jumping into the public [realm]. Advertising, medicine, insurance, the government, and all kinds of major forces in our society, like the media, all jumped into public awareness for different but self-interested reasons. Weight discrimination is really driven by health beliefs. Health beliefs around weight are not neutral or beneficial: they really are very dangerous and they justify discrimination.

JJ: What can we do to fight against this discrimination?

MW: I don’t think it’s necessarily an incremental battle where you have to fight every step of the way against overwhelming odds. I think it’s a battle where we can use leverage, where things can shift on one idea or one zesty comeback or one powerful confrontation. So I have the hope that although we are incredibly outnumbered we actually have a really powerful position.

JJ: Why do you think the anti-obesity campaigns are not including information about HAES (Health At Every Size), NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance), or input from you or other scholars? It seems to me that these campaigns ultimately end up becoming more damaging although that probably isn’t their intention.

MW: Well, I think they may have good intentions but if they were behaving like scientists they would certainly notice the data doesn’t support their approach. The approach of telling everyone to just eat better and exercise more and they’ll be thin has been tried a million billion times by a million billion people, and it doesn’t produce the results that everyone is hoping for. People lose weight and feel better about themselves for a little while and then gain it back and continue feeling bad about themselves. So whatever good intentions there may be, [their intentions] are also shaped by fear of social ostracism.

JJ: Let’s talk about the Let’s Move Campaign, which is First Lady Michelle Obama’s major project.

MW: The Let’s Move campaign has this goal of “solving the childhood obesity epidemic within one generation.” That’s a terrible goal. There are ways that they qualify it but basically what they are saying is we don’t like fat children in our society, we don’t want there to be any fat children. Now there have always been fat children and there will always be fat children, so by having that goal they’re not changing the reality that fat children exist. They are just adding shame and blame onto fat children.

JJ: I know from experience that it is incredibly difficult and painful when your weight is targeted at a young age in school.

MW: I think that there’s this notion that weight loss goals are good and I don’t think that they are good. I think they are very discriminatory. Because they know that when people lose weight the majority gain it right back. And the majority of people are still going to [have] the natural body shapes that they were born to have. And so it’s kind of a utopian uniformity goal: the world won’t be good until we’re all the same body shape. I find that very creepy. Why do we even want that?

JJ: Can you explain the difference in approach that HAES takes?

MW: Well, I think Health At Every Size offers the possibility for reclaiming the joy and benefit from proper nutrition and good eating and the joy of moving and being physically active. We can reclaim behaviors that have been attached to weight loss goals and they can really be good for us. I think that when you have the Health At Every Size approach it celebrates weight diversity and health. We can revolutionize the way we think about health, weight, food, eating, and fitness if we stop torturing ourselves and each other.

JJ: There must be a correlation to bullying and these campaigns I imagine…

MW: It’s hard to gauge yet without studies [but] childhood for fat children can be hellish. We [NAAFA] recently [learned of] a tragic story. This teenage girl who was of average weight moved to a new town and she was picked on for her body and size and her nose. She was so harassed for her weight that she wouldn’t even eat on the school grounds. She had one new friend and she and this friend committed double suicide.

And this has happened before. These tragedies are horrifying and there are other children who will think of killing themselves. Their lives are permanently hindered. Their feeling of worth in the world is permanently damaged from being bullied and teased. We know that’s going on. There is kind of an attitude that bullying or teasing is somehow a necessary or required part of growing up. And I think that it’s just adults being fearful and cowards because this is not necessary. This is something anyone can stand up to. There is even a wonderful book by an eight-year old girl in Chicago about how she didn’t choose to be fat and she shouldn’t be teased for it. I think it’s up to all of us as human beings to stand up against hurtfulness. I go out and I give talks in schools.

JJ: You visit schools a lot. What is that like?

MW: I go in as a really fat person saying, “Hi, I’m a really fat person and here’s my story. Here is what it has been like for me and I don’t agree with being mistreated and I don’t want any of you to be mistreated for who you are. You don’t have to be fat or thin or whatever—you just have to know that all of you are fine as you are and you don’t have to take that.”

JJ: What kind of response do you get?

MW: I think its really powerful for children of all sizes and ages to meet a happy fat person and to meet a fat person who is not willing to blame everything bad in their world on their weight. It’s important to meet someone who is trying to challenge weight-based prejudice and stereotypes. It’s really powerful for kids just to see you. When I meet with children I don’t use Power Point, I don’t show videos. I want them to see a person like me because they’ve probably never seen a person like me. It’s just a little bit of contrast to the fat hate which they see everywhere. So it’s really powerful just to be with them. Kids have a great sense of fairness. They get really angry at unfairness in the world and I think that’s a great quality.

JJ: Is it hard standing up against these discriminatory beliefs?

MW: Sometimes when you stand up to this stuff more of it comes toward you. But it’s not like this hatefulness wasn’t already there. I think of it as information. If I speak out publicly about being a proud fat person and people make hateful comments, I look at it like these are people I did not want to be friends with anyway. And it’s good to know that they can be on the outside of my healthy boundaries and not be let in. And their hatefulness is proof that I need to say what I’m saying.

JJ: A lot of people feel that their hatefulness is justified since the issue is tied up with healthcare.

MW: I think we need to call people on that. For example, if somebody isn’t wearing a seatbelt and they get into an accident, well maybe that person doesn’t get a paramedic and we just leave them on the side of the road to die. That is the logic behind that thinking. There’s a lot of fear mongering from the public health establishment about these so-called alleged costs of healthcare for fat people. But all that is based upon the assumption that your weight can somehow predict how healthy you are and how long you are going to live.

JJ: Do you think if fat people were allowed to purchase healthcare [in the U.S.] that it would decrease tax dollars going to healthcare?

MW: There are a lot of fat people who simply aren’t allowed to buy health insurance, like me. And so we’re not costing anyone anything. For most of my adult life, I have had to pay my healthcare out of pocket. I was not a burden on anyone. And it’s really quite painful to know that people would rather have you die than have access to healthcare. You know, in many cases if a fat person goes to visit a doctor they are going to get a lecture rather than proper medical care treatment. That means that fat people are not getting the same quality of care or the same amount of healthcare than other people … and so we may get sicker because of that and that is very sad.

I find it interesting that we have skepticism about all different kinds of other topics. We’re willing to be skeptical when the government tells us we have to go to war, we’re willing to be skeptical of the advertising industry when they say “this is the best product”; we have some awareness that the information might be motivated by self interest and we question it. And it’s super interesting to me that people are really afraid or unwilling to be skeptical or to question the [relationship between] health and weight. I think that is because there is so much social pressure that if you don’t go along, you are going to be mocked and ostracized. And nobody wants to be mocked and ostracized so we’re refusing to even consider questioning the beliefs.

JJ: You find fun ways to get the message out. Can you tell us a little about the “flesh mob”?

MW: Recently I organized a bunch of people to interrupt an obesity conference on International No Diet Day. A place where people were convinced that if you are fat that means that you have to have all kinds of health problems. This particular conference was held to convince healthcare providers to buy weight loss products to sell. Basically a way to make money off of an oppression. And promote fat oppression. So I organized people to interrupt that conference with a dance party, which I called a “flesh mob.”

We had about 15-20 people show up at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon … and my friend came up with a song that was similar to the kid’s song: “Heads Shoulders Knees & Toes” but instead of the children’s version, we made it syncopated and added a funky dance. The words were: “Chins Bellies Hips & Ass.”

JJ: Love that!

MW: We went into this conference room and we started playing the music and dancing and we stopped everything that was happening. The guy who was talking is a big promoter of fat hate. He was the guy responsible for lowering the BMI definitions of “overweight” and “obese” back in 1998. He takes a lot of money from diet drug companies. He takes a lot of money from Weight Watchers and other diet companies. He basically goes around the world promoting huge, ineffective, dangerous money-making fat-hate systems. And because he’s considered a medical expert he gets treated with respect. And I don’t think that anyone has interrupted him and shaken their fat ass at him and said, “You can’t have this one. This body is not susceptible to your judgment.” And to have about 20 of us doing that was really fun! When the security person came in we danced out of the room the same way we danced in. I would really like to see our community come up with more of these fun, irreverent activities that directly interrupt fat hate. Fat hate deserves to be interrupted. It deserves to be questioned.

For more about Marilyn Wann and her activism, visit her website Fatso.com (“for people who don’t apologize for their size”).

Editor’s Note: Ms. Wann will be publishing a 2012 FAT!SO? dayplanner, which will raise funds to create a community center called the Weight Diversity Action Lounge or WDAL. For more information checkout www.voluptuart.com.

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Filed Under: Activism, Size & Weight Tagged With: body image, bullying, fat, Fatso, Marilyn Wann, Self-Esteem, Size & Weight, size discrimination, size prejudice, sizeism, Stereotypes, weight

How Stereotypes and Bad Jokes Dampen Your Love Life

September 8, 2011 By pia 4 Comments

By Pia Guerrero, Co-Founder/Editor

The other morning after a grueling 45 minutes at boot camp, my fellow campers (all white women ranging in age from 23 to 60) and I grimaced as we stretched our stiff muscles on the grass. We talked about the following week and how we were allowed to bring as many guests to class free of charge for “guest week”.

Peggy, a sweet and lovable actress excitedly rambled, “Ooooh, perfect. I’m going to bring my friend Jeff. He’ll love it. We’re gonna have so much fun. He’s staying with me for a week. He’s just a friend, not anything else, he’s really nice, but just a friend…He’s Asian.”

Just as quickly as the words escaped her mouth, Peggy turned bright red. “Uh, er, um…not that he can’t be more than my friend just because he’s Asian, it’s just…I don’t know. I feel so stupid. I don’t know why I said that. That was just dumb…” And she continued on as the whole crowd chuckled as if to say, Don’t worry, honey. We get it.

What I found interesting about her unintended confession was that what she said rings true for so many progressive women. In general, there is agreement in our culture that Asian men are not romantic or even sexual options for white, Black, Latina and even some Asian women.

I’ve known Wendy since high-school. She’s Korean and very much bi-cultural. When I first met her in 10th grade I remember her speaking Korean to her parents and being in awe of her two refrigerators—one for what I called at the time “normal” food and the other for Korean food which was stocked with jars of home made Kim-Chee.

A few months ago Wendy and I were talking about men. The subject of interracial dating came up. Both of us have consistently dated outside our race. But while I have dated some white men, she has never dated a Korean man.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’d feel like I was dating my brother,” she matter-of-factly replied.

A few year’s ago, I was led to look deeply into my white privilege and challenge my own bias as I realized I didn’t find Asian men attractive. Admitting this was mortifying, but necessary, for it demolished a big blind spot I hadn’t seen. My idea of Asian men had been completely constructed around what I saw in the media—not by my personal experience.

Ever since, I notice how my views were completely informed by:

Three prominent stereotypes of Asian men

1) The Evil Master Criminal
Based on the Fu-Man Chu character, this evil conniver is always scheming to rip someone off, sell innocent women/girls into slavery, and profit from the sale of drugs and guns. He’ll do anything for money and power, even kill.

2) The Asexual Friend/Sidekick
Like his predecessor, Charlie Chan, Long Duc Dong is the modern version of the perfectly harmless asexual immigrant. He has a thick accent, often mispronounces l’s and r’s, and is short with round cheeks. His is laughably silly and stupid. Despite being a man, he acts like an immature boy whose super horny and sexist remarks serve to strip him of masculine sexuality.

3) The Wise Old Man
Spouting fortune cookie wisdom, he is an oracle with a deep, and often mysterious message. He too is asexual, with a thick accent probably because he’s been sitting, meditating and waiting for the past century to give the white hero sage advice.

It is the Asexual Friend stereotype that negatively impacts our view of Asian men the most. (When I say ‘our’ I’m referring to Western culture’s view in general, and my friend Wendy’s, the bootcampers’, and my former view specifically.)

I recently viewed DirectTVs new commercial starring the latest incarnation of asexual and immature Long Duc Dong and was horrified. The caricature of the Asian man is too over-the-top and absurd to be taken seriously, yet at the same time it is sooo wrong. Not being able to name what I felt, I’ve turned to Adios Barbie friend and colleague Anita Sarkeesian from Feminist Frequency who explains this phenomena as Retro Racism.

“Retro Racism (and Retro Sexism) uses irony and humor as a way to distance [media portrayals] from the false representations and stereotypes they perpetuate. We see it a lot in ads, when advertisers and marketers create a scene where they want the audience to know that they are aware of their racist (and/or sexist) content, but since it is masked in irony it’s supposed to just be a funny joke that we are all in on together.

In the case of the DirectTV commercial, [the producers] are invoking an age-old stereotype that emasculates and desexualizes Asian men. The commercial drives this point home by demonstrating that this man is so impotent that he can’t even perform for the willing women that are by his side and instead would rather watch TV. Invoking a phony and exaggerated Asian accent and “Asian” symbolism such as bamboo, a huge koi fish and a giant panda is supposed to be ironic humor. Just because we may recognize the joke, doesn’t change the fact that [the commercial] is still making fun of Asian culture and Asian men.”

Wink-wink, nudge-nudge my ass. The key to understanding the true meaning behind the message is to look at who created it. It’s kind of like telling a joke about being bitchy during PMS. As women we can tell the joke, but if a man does it, it’s not so funny. So given that this commercial is made by people who are mostly anything but Asian, we have a problem. To make the example even more clear, it’s like complaining about your mother. You can do it, but the minute a “your mamma” joke is thrown out at you, heads will roll. Some Asians find this commercial funny. To explain this my friend Daniel thoughtfully noted that you have to be in the tribe to tell jokes about the tribe. I agree.

Accurate and diverse portrayals of Asian men (including sexy Asian men) are completely absent from mainstream media leaving only fictional caricatures to paint our view. We know the damage hyper-sexual portrayals of women have on women and girls, so I can’t help to think how these asexual portrayals negatively impact the self-esteem and identity of Asian-American men.

Mainstream media has recently crowned Godfrey Gao as the first Asian American male super model. I wonder, if he were around when I was coming up would I have dated more Asian men? Should we celebrate the expansion of representations of Asian men in the media? Or will portraying Asian men in the same Eurocentric mold of masculinity and sexuality really make a difference in how they are seen? All I know is that since fessing up to my own bias, I see Asian men for the complex and varied individuals that they are. How about you?

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Filed Under: Representation and Identity Tagged With: Asian, Ethnicity and Culture, Fu Man Chu, Long Duc Dong, media literacy, men, portrayals, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Self-Esteem, Stereotypes

This Is Why I Worry About “The Help”

August 16, 2011 By Sharon 5 Comments

By Tami Winfrey Harris

A lot of folks have been giving the whole idea of a book, written by a Southern white woman, about black domestics in 1960s Mississippi, the side eye. I understand. When my book club decided to read Kathryn Stockett’s The Help last year, I was ambivalent. The book was a popular best-seller with rave reviews. Yet, I have learned to brace myself against the biased and stereotypical way black women are rendered in media. I have become weary of Mammy-fied caricatures that bear little resemblance to the many Southern black women in my family. I am sick of narratives that read like a sort of pre-Civil Rights porn for people who get off on “the good ole days.” And I have become tired of narratives where black folks are “saved” by the awesomeness of good white folks. So, yeah, I came to The Help begrudgingly. But I liked it.

The Help was a good book. I had a hard time putting it down. The black characters did not feel “off” as they often do when written by a non-black person. And Stockett wove her story with far more nuance than I expected. The author illuminated the pains, dangers and hypocrisies of 60s-era racism and segregation. She even departed from discussion of race to explore class, an issue often overlooked in tales like this. Not every white person was wealthy or considered “the right sort.” Not every white woman felt comfortable in the role of mistress of the house.

Oh, there are racial fails in The Help. Nearly all of the black characters speak in dialect, while none of the white characters do. And I don’t want to spoil one of the book’s big reveals, but surely Stockett realizes that there have been mixed-race people in black families since we arrived in the country, perhaps most especially in the South due to slavery, Reconstruction and the exploitation of black women. It is not shocking for a black family to have a member or members who could easily “pass” as white. There are other problems, but I will say this, The Help had no more racial fails that most other fiction I’ve encountered. Or at least, in my eyes, the book rose above it.

My concern is not with The Help. My concern is how American society processes race and how people will receive the movie, based on the book, which debuts this weekend.* Here’s an excerpt from Rolling Stone’s three-and-a-half-star review of the film:

The film’s catalyst is Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) a recent graduate of Ole Miss looking to spark a career in journalism by getting Aibileen and Minny to confide their feelings about working for white families in a changing South. Skeeter is a tricky part–white girl liberates enslaved black womanhood–but Stone, an exceptional talent, is so subtly effective at showing Skeeter’s naivete. It’s Skeeter’s job to first liberate herself from the bigoted codes passed on through generations, including her mother (Allison Janney) and Skeeter’s own card-dealing, role-playing girlfriends. [Emphasis mine.]

See this. This is the problem. Skeeter begins capturing the stories of her town’s domestics for her own benefit. She wants a writing job in New York City. She has outgrown Jackson, MS, and its cages for both women and people of color. It is true that she begins to recognize and rebel against the rigid societal rules of the time, including the ones related to race. Skeeter is also, naive, young and privileged. In fact, some of her behavior puts the black women she is working with and herself in danger. Skeeter is not Moses. She liberates no one, but herself.

The black women who tell their stories to Skeeter do so for their own reasons. Because they are tired of being silent. Because they have put up with years more oppression, as black people and as women than Skeeter has. And their race, gender and class give them very few of her freedoms. These black women liberate themselves. The book and film take place in the 1960s–a time when black people were fighting hard for equality. In 1955, years before The Help takes place, Rosa Parks, who once worked as a domestic, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus and sparked a boycott that changed history. Many domestic workers would take part in that boycott, walking miles to their jobs in white people’s homes in a bid for their civil rights. How offensive to imply that what a group of grown black women needs is for a young white woman to come alert them they are “enslaved” and them lead them to freedom.

To me, The Help was less about race than it was about gender–about women of different races, ages and classes chafing against the ways society marginalizes them and restricts them and tries to own them. But that narrative, perhaps, does not lend itself to big box office receipts and product tie ins. (Yeah. Product tie ins.) So instead, we’ll get Nice White Lady Saves Po’ Black Folks – Jim Crow Edition. (If you haven’t seen Mad TV’s parody of this kind of film. You have to click through that link.)

Here’s what Booklist has to say about The Help:

Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s is a city of tradition. Silver is used at bridge-club luncheons, pieces polished to perfection by black maids who “yes, ma’am,” and “no, ma’am,” to the young white ladies who order the days. This is the world Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan enters when she graduates from Ole Miss and returns to the family plantation, but it is a world that, to her, seems ripe for change. As she observes her friend Elizabeth rudely interact with Aibileen, the gentle black woman who is practically raising Elizabeth’s two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, Skeeter latches ontothe idea of writing the story of such fraught domestic relations from the help’s point of view. With the reluctant assistance of Aibileen’s feisty friend, Minny, Skeeter manages to interview a dozen of the city’s maids, and the book, when it is finally published, rocks Jackson’s world in unimaginable ways. With pitch-perfect tone and an unerring facility for character and setting, Stockett’s richly accomplished debut novel inventively explores the unspoken ways in which the nascent civil rights and feminist movements threatened the southern status quo. Look for the forthcoming movie to generate keen interest in Stockett’s luminous portrait of friendship, loyalty, courage, and redemption. –Carol Haggas

This is my worry: That even if The Help film gets it right, viewers will see just another movie about a spunky, young, white girl, setting the world on fire, while the lives, stories and agency of black women remain invisible.

*Originally published at What Tami Said on August 9, 2011. Cross-posted with permission.

Filed Under: Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Representation and Identity Tagged With: Black, Book, Ethnicity and Culture, gender, media representation, movie, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Stereotypes, The Help, Women

Walt Disney and Me (Black and Disabled)

July 14, 2011 By Sharon 5 Comments

By Cynthia Barram

I have an incredible love-hate relationship with Mr. Disney. The first time my dad wheeled me and my chair into a theater we watched The Little Mermaid. The lyrics from Ariel’s “Part of Your World,” pierced me. She equated so much of being human and happy with walking. But before Ariel, no one had articulated my secret childhood longing to dance, to move. And Iin could move so much easier in the water. I could swim, walk, jump, and hold my breath until adults made fools of themselves trying to save me from a pool. Ariel convinced me that a secret society of mermaids waited beneath every puddle for my orphan soul to rejoin them. Years later, I realized that Disney’s portrayal of Ariel as wearing only a bra for the first half of her movie, and as silent, lovingly clueless, and unrelentingly sexy for the second half was a serious problem from a feminist perspective. But honestly, if I woke up one morning with white skin, a petite build, an able body, and red hair I would train my voice to hilt, move to Los Angeles, force Disneyland to hire me, and sing that song with more conviction than anyone who had never been in a wheelchair ever could.

Cinderella presented me with other problems. I fell in love with her because of her ability to “buck up” under difficult circumstances. Mimicking her came in handy on days when Dad was irate, Mom was clueless, and my two sisters were evil. I would have swapped her housework for my surgeries in a heartbeat. Secretly I hoped that, like her, I could have mice and a fairy-godmother that would not rest until they had given me the means to accomplish all I dreamt of. I believed that at some point, the trauma I had suffered as a child, my scars, would vanish and give way to new life. Not exactly.

Cerebral palsy, though not unlovable, can be a clumsy thing. I would never acquire Cinderella’s ability to move and behave with absolute grace in every situation. And the other side of the mirror would never show me Cindy’s pretty blue eyes, blonde hair, hourglass figure, or perfect toeless Barbie doll feet. Never mind that my biological mother actually had blue eyes and blonde hair. My coffee with cream skin, midnight eyes, and black-cat no-I-will-not-get-into-braids-until-I-am-properly-stroked hair that I inherited from my biological father were having none of it. Cinderella indeed!

Mom would smile at me through her wily green-eyes as she attempted to ameliorate some of this tragedy every summer:

“You’re getting tan faster than me. Stop it!” she would scold me in her play voice.

“You’re not going to beat me,” I would retort, “Give up.”

“Never!” she would howl before we both busted a gut. But Cinderella’s white-is-good-and-pure mentality still etched itself into my adopted brain.

One Christmas I asked my mother, “Black people don’t go to heaven, do they mamma?”

In utter shock, Mom asked me where I heard such a thing. I told her, “Well, I have never seen a Black angel. They all have blond hair and blue eyes.” She sent my father to Atlanta promptly and he returned with a framed picture of a Black angel and the same of a Black Jesus. Every couple of Christmases thereafter relatives would bring Black Marys, Black fairies, a music box where a Black girl held a bright red present, and even my first Black baby doll—a chubby, smiling little girl who I promptly named Natasha. Yet, these toys were often the first to end up horribly mutilated. I wasn’t killing them on purpose, but I would subject them to my inherent clumsiness a lot faster than my more fragile, white toys.

I spent a lot of time at the library in third grade investigating Cinderella. I found out that she had red hair, brown hair, and black hair. I found out that she was a lovely Black woman (also named Natasha) who grew up in Africa, and had “counterparts” all over the globe. I found out that other princess stories like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast were similarly archetypal and had heroines from France, Italy, China, Egypt, Appalachia, everywhere. But all this cultural education did not stop me from making remarks like, “Oh my God! I have never seen so many Black people in all my life! They are everywhere!” When my father took me to see an Andrae Crouch concert, he told me, “You’re Black, now hush!” It was the only discussion Dad and I had about my race. That blue-eyed Cinderella was still the woman to conquer.

And things got worse. I used to watch Dumbo on Disney channel looking for the black crows. They are still my favorite part of the movie. In their defense (and mine) I never thought they were vicious—just jovial, excellent at wordplay, and a little sarcastic. I mean, let’s face it. They taught Dumbo how to fly, and stuck by him to keep him out of trouble at the end of the movie. Without them, Dumbo and his smart talking little mouse would be nothing. I took a Jazz, Pop, and Rock music class during my freshman year of college, and learned the origins of the blues and scat that made me love those animated crows. I also learned that associating any Black person with a crow, with Jim Crow in fact, was a horrible and hideous thing to do. Jim Crow was the name of a so-called code of conduct, which basically gave Whites pseudo-legal license to persecute and murder Blacks. No wonder Dumbo isn’t shown on public television anymore! And yet, may God help me, I still miss those crows. It’s not every day that a person meets friends who can laugh playfully at themselves and at you, and who have no qualms when it comes to teaching the down-and-out of how to fly.

My most shameful, and yet somehow most beloved Disney movie was Peter Pan. My favorite parts of this movie were the scenes with the “Indians”. As much as the chief terrified me when he promised to “burn ‘em at stake” if they could not rescue his daughter Tiger Lily, I loved watching the dignified way the young princess completely ignored Captain Hook as he screamed empty threats of death in her face to try and make her give up Peter Pan. I couldn’t believe her bravery and faith. She never cried out not even when she was about to drown. She knew that Pan would come for her and he did. And, when she was returned to the tribe, the same chief who had been ready to barbecue the Lost Boys earlier, invited everyone to a dance party to celebrate. It was very gracious of him I thought, and in the end he also turned out to have a sense of humor, which made him not nearly as scary. So, I made a note in my then very elastic seven-year-old brain: These red men are friendly and fun-loving people who throw better parties and can boogie down better than anyone you have ever seen. In sixth grade, a Native American dance troop performed at my school. They did tricks with hoops and used feathers to make eagle shadows that swooped and soared across the gym floor. I was impressed, but not the least bit surprised.

Disney chose to draw the Indians in Peter Pan as bad caricatures—men as overly skinny, women as fat and toothless. What’s more, the word squaw is used three times in that movie. As a child, I asked my father what it meant and he told me it was the Indian way of saying girl. Similarly, my sisters and I used to play Indians after or during the movie. We had fake war cries and all, and those games are one of the only times I remember us running around with absolute abandon, and reveling in our ability to make noise. When my cousin’s kids met my family and I in South Dakota last year for a family reunion I remember remarking more than once, “Geez, they are like wild Indians,” as her home-schooled children whooped and hollered and stretched their bare limbs racing toward the swimming pool like their lives depended on it. They were free, yes. They were elated, yes. But did that make them “wild Indians” necessarily? Where had I learned to talk like that? My earliest and most overt teacher had been that old Peter Pan movie.

And so the queer play goes on in my head: Images of red men, black crows, and blonde Cinderellas swirl, their racist-sexist-classist messages intermingling with the pain and perfume of my childhood. What if Tiger Lilly had been able to speak? Would Dumbo be so different if the crows had been animated as cats? If Cinderella was just a little bit clumsy and perhaps had acne, would her film be ruined? And would it kill the Little Mermaid if Ariel at some point, kind of enjoyed her thinly-veiled wheelchairedness? Yet, I can never truly bring myself to hate Mr. Disney. Granted, should I have children I will not let my kids watch his dusty, old films—they lead to confusion. But part of me will always laugh at the crows in Dumbo. I’ll laugh at my fond memories of playing with my sisters. I’ll laugh because Mr. Disney introduced me to the concept of play and humor. I will laugh until somebody comes up with stories that are more engaging and entertaining, without being so off color.

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Today’s contributor, Cynthia Barram is 26, an avid concert goer, an activist, and an English major. She lives with a cat who thinks she is both rich and human. Cynthia treats her wheelchair like a race car or a Queen’s throne depending on the day, and her second home is the bus station.

Disney-Related Content on Adios Barbie:

Tangled: Going Beyond the Disney Mold

Disney’s First Black Princess Makes Us Wonder

Are Your Roots Bad for Business?

Finally! The Truth About “Happily Ever After” Revealed

Filed Under: Representation and Identity Tagged With: Ariel, Black, celerbral palsy, disability, Disney, Ethnicity and Culture, Girls, hollywood, Jim Crow, Little Mermaid, media literacy, media representation, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Stereotypes, wheelchair, white skin

What Can The X-Men Teach Us About All Kinds of Stereotypes?

June 20, 2011 By pia 4 Comments

By Melanie T of Psysociety

This [month] marked the opening of X-Men: First Class, prequel to (and assumed reboot of) the wildly successful X-Men movie franchise.

For those who are unfamiliar with the X-Men series, the stories revolve around groups of ‘mutants,’ super-powered beings who supposedly represent the next stage in human evolution and whose powers run the gamut from telepathy to cellular regeneration. Apart from stunning visual effects and fun action sequences, one of the most compelling aspects of the X-Men movies is how easy it is to understand and relate to the prejudice faced by the X-Men and other mutants at the hands of the frightened, non-mutated humans. In fact, there’s quite a lot that the X-Men movies can help us understand about the nature of stereotypes, how we form them, and what makes us activate them in our everyday lives.

How Do We Form Stereotypes?

What makes us form a stereotype? And why are some stereotypes different from others?

According to the Stereotype Content Model, we form stereotypes of social groups based on where our perceptions fall on two dimensions – warmth and competence.

We perceive groups to be high on warmth when we see them as likable, friendly, and/or unthreatening; if others are perceived as competitors, we knock that social group down on the ‘warmth’ dimension.

We perceive groups to be high on competence when we see them as ambitious, successful, and/or high status. If groups are low on the social status ladder, we view them as incompetent.

The idea behind this model is that we experience different emotions in response to each group’s perceived level of warmth and competence. Here is what the model might look like with the typical emotional responses filled in:

We usually consider our ingroups (or cultural majorities, like Whites and Christians in America) to have high levels of both warmth and competence; as a result, this combination elicits feelings of pride and admiration, along with a tendency to actively or passively help members of this group (by directly helping them or merely by wanting to associate with them). On the other side of the spectrum, groups like drug addicts or the homeless are often perceived as being low on both warmth and competence. This produces feelings like disgust and anger; people’s typical behavior in response to these emotions involves wanting to harm these group members via neglect or direct attack. High levels of warmth combined with low levels of competence is characteristic for groups like the elderly and disabled; when we encounter groups that we deem likable yet incompetent, our stereotypes are based on pity, and this elicits a mixed behavioral response: while people will sometimes try and actively help them, they are often passively harmed through neglect.

But where do our X-Men lie? With their superpowers, they are quite competent; in fact, the very basis of the humans’ fear revolves around the mutants’ potential for utter control and destruction. Yet their extreme ‘otherness’ (in both pheno- and genotype) and perceived competition for resources places them squarely on the ‘low warmth’ side. High competence/low warmth people seem to encapsulate the worst parts of all worlds – they have the high status of the “admired” group without the likability, and they have the cold, exploitative nature of the “disgusting” group without the incompetence to prevent them from succeeding.¹ Groups like the X-Men mutants are perceived as over-privileged outsiders, and this elicits a distinct emotional response: Envy.

If the ultimate goal of total mutant eradication running through the X-Men series evoked an unsettling mental parallel to the Holocaust, there’s a good reason why – and it’s not just the fact that sometimes-villain Magneto is a Holocaust survivor. Envy is the most dangerous emotional base for stereotypes; it fuses begrudging respect with intense dislike, which is a volatile, complex mix of emotions that can lead to passive admiration under nonthreatening social situations and violent attacks as soon as your surroundings become slightly unstable. In fact, envied groups are the most frequent targets of genocide and mass murder. People don’t necessarily want to eradicate the groups that they pity, or even the groups that make them angry – they want to eradicate the groups that make them jealous.
When Do We Activate Stereotypes?

To a certain extent, people automatically (and spontaneously) classify other people into groups based on stereotypes all the time – but it’s not as if we all walk around using stereotypes as our only basis of judgment and decision-making. Typically, we have the presence of mind (and cognitive control) to know that even if we are aware of certain stereotypes, we should not go around applying them without exception to everyone that we meet. However, there are several conditions that make it more likely that we will rely on stereotypes.

1. You’re Tired. When people’s cognitive capacities have been drained – because they’ve been thinking a lot, putting a lot of effort into other tasks, or are simply tired – they are more likely to rely on stereotypes. If you’ve been sitting in a boring committee hearing for hours debating the relative merits and flaws of the Mutant Registration Act and straining your attention until you’re cognitively drained, you’re more likely to rely on stereotypes when forming a decision about your vote.

2. Your Self-Esteem Just Took A Hit. When your self-esteem has been threatened by a certain social group, you are more motivated to apply stereotypes to this group in an effort to compensate. So, imagine you’re in a museum and you see a group of young students. In this group of students, there’s a boy tossing around a lighter and a cute girl named Rogue. If you are rebuffed both when you ask for a light and when you attempt to hit on the girl, the ego-blow has probably knocked your self-esteem down a few pegs. If you then realize that you were just rejected by a group of mutants, you are even more likely to apply stereotypes when you begin fighting them, maybe hurling epithets like “Freak!” in their direction along with your punches.

3. You’re Competing For Resources. When you perceive that there is a limited pool of resources and you’re competing for them against another group, you are more likely to stereotype the other group as competitive and (as a result) less warm, leading to the types of emotions (like disgust, anger, or envy) that would invoke violent reactions. So, if Senator Kelly pushes the Mutant Registration Act by painting a picture of an “us vs. them” world where mutants are competing with humans for resources, jobs, mates, and overall survival, the constituents are more likely to adopt negative stereotypes of the mutants and carry out the violent, harmful behavioral responses that arise from envy.

So What Can We Learn From The X-Men?

X-Men can teach us three things about the way that we form and apply stereotypes in our everyday lives.

1. Be wary of how you view social groups that you might consider competition. The two “low warmth” social groups (regardless of competence) are the most likely to provoke harmful behavioral responses, but stereotyping a group as “low warmth/high competence” can lead to particularly dangerous outcomes, especially when the sociopolitical climate is unstable. If you are faced with X-Men, try not to be jealous of their awesome powers – it will only lead to trouble.

2. Try not to be tired, threatened, or low on self-esteem when a situation arises where you have the opportunity to rely on stereotypes to form judgments or make important decisions. If a mutant tires you out, steals your job, or insults your haircut, it will be especially hard to avoid judging him/her using group-based stereotypes.

3. Stereotypes are not an accurate way to judge every single member of a social category – they are group-based social categorizations based on societal perceptions, not necessarily based on reality. The perception of “mutants” as a low-warmth group, for example, does not mean it is accurate to extend this judgment to an individual mutant like Nightcrawler, who is very friendly and quite harmless (when not being controlled by William Stryker).

But even so, you probably shouldn’t make Wolverine angry.

¹ I want to be very clear that I am not trying to imply that any of these perceptions of exploitativeness, coldness, incompetence, etc. are accurate for the indicated social groups that I’ve provided as commonly used examples. I am merely explaining an existing model of stereotype formation (which represents cultural biases and group-based generalizations, not to be confused with any one person’s individual opinion, including my own opinions and, I’m assuming, the opinions of the model’s authors). This is not a model of individual attitude formation, nor should it be interpreted as in any way indicative of any single person’s attitudes towards elderly people, disabled people, homeless people, drug addicts, or mutants.

² There have been several wonderful blog posts recently on the science of X-Men and the X-Men movies. For two of my favorite recent examples, please see Erika Salomon’s post at A Theory of Mind on evolution as it is portrayed in both X-Men and Planet of the Apes (Mutants, Apes, and Evolution – Oh My!) and John Rennie’s post at Scientific American on what the X-Men movies don’t quite get right about how evolution really works (The Evolutionary Errors of X-Men). If you have also written a blog post about X-Men, please link to it in the comments!

References

Harris, L. T., Cikara, M., & Fiske, S. T. (2008). Envy as predicted by the stereotype content model. In R. Smith (Ed.), Envy: Theory and research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fiske ST, Cuddy AJ, Glick P, & Xu J (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of personality and social psychology, 82 (6), 878-902 PMID: 12051578

Cuddy, AJC, Fiske, ST, & Glick, P (2007). The BIAS Map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 631-648 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.4.631

Govorun, O, & Payne, BK (2006). Ego depletion and prejudice: Separating automatic and controlled components. Social Cognition (24 ), 111-136 DOI: 10.1521/soco.2006.24.2.111

Sinclair, L., & Kunda, Z. (2000). Motivated stereotyping of women: She’s fine if she praised me but incompetent if she criticized me. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1329-1342 DOI: 10.1177/0146167200263002

Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination. In D.T. Gilbert, S.T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.) The Handbook of Social Psychology (pp. 357-411). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

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Originally posted at Psysociety. Cross-posted with permission.

Filed Under: Media Literacy Tagged With: diversity, envy, genocide, holocaust, magneto, media literacy, mutants, prejudice, psychology, social, Stereotypes, theory, x-men

Can Kharma Crush Stereotypes in Women’s Wrestling?

June 8, 2011 By Sharon 5 Comments

Kharma in the ring. Photo via www.ultimatesportstalk.com

By Ashley-Michelle Papon

For as long as I’ve been playing the dating game, I’ve witnessed how wrestling (the fake kind) has a hold on the people of my generation. In fact, of all the people I’ve dated (or, in a select few cases, married) wrestling seems to be the only unifying thread. I had never understood the attraction to watching half-naked grown men pummel it out with story lines that obviously had been ripped from the mock-ups of “All My Children.”

My attitude changed somewhat after former star Mick Foley became an outspoken advocate for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. The actions of a man who made his career in an industry not exactly renowned for empowering women certainly caught my attention, both as a member of the RAINN Speaker’s Bureau and as an individual who would have preferred watching cat food commercials to the awkward Sparta-meets-Susan Lucci experiment that wrestling delivered. So, for the last year and a half, I’ve been tuning in, and taking notes.

What’s come across my clipboard this week is a wrestler by the name of Kia Stevens, who goes by Kharma, formerly known as Awesome Kong. Currently appearing on the Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment’s Raw brand, Kharma has been an active wrestler since 2002, even earning the number-one spot in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s inaugural list of top 50 female wrestlers. She’s the largest woman to wrestle for the WWE, and she’s a woman of color. And, according to at least one WWE fanboy, Kharma was handpicked to begin her career with the WWE this month by the heir apparent to the empire, Triple H.

With all that in mind, I have just one question: how could the WWE be so close to getting it right (for once) and ultimately fail?

Obviously, the WWE doesn’t generally tend to be on board with advancing the agenda of women’s empowerment. One quick glance at the championship belt for the Diva’s brand, with its curlicue letters, shimmering rhinestones and butterfly-shaped emblem is all it takes to set some viewers back a century in their perception of women as athletes. And if that doesn’t seal the deal of sexism on screen, watching as women battle it out in the ring with pillows while screeching about the “disrespect” they’ve experienced probably will. Here’s a hint, Chairman McMahon: if you can’t tell the difference between your show and ‘Jerry Springer,’ neither can your audience.

This is also why Kharma’s inclusion into the WWE could turn the world of Diva wrestling on its ear. To begin with, Kharma’s attire reflects something very different. Kharma’s revolving line of costumes is seemingly channeling the wardrobe of some ancient culture’s warrior. Not exactly original, but a refreshing departure from the typical ware of bikinis and bondage straps favored by many of her peers, and it helps build on her gimmick (in wrestling lingo, ‘gimmick’ refers to the identity of a character and their basic back story) as this phenomenon from another culture. It forces the audience to pay attention to her behavior in the ring, versus getting lost in the flashes of bare skin across the screen.

Additionally, Kharma is a woman of color, something that was a rarity in the WWE until the last few years. But the real kicker is that Kharma is also a person of size. According to the WWE’s website, Kharma is almost six feet tall and nearly 300 pounds, the largest Diva ever on record.

It would be easy to conclude the article here with a paragraph praising Kharma’s feats and congratulating the WWE for joining the rest of us in the 21^st century. But it isn’t that cut and dry, because the introduction of Kharma also highlights some of the most troubling aspects of race and sex that have long plagued the WWE.

In her three-week tenure as a WWE Diva so far, Kharma has chewed through half a dozen of her Diva peers. With the notable exception of Alicia Fox and Ever Torres, each Diva Kharma has destroyed in the ring is not identifiably of color.

The racial aesthetic can’t be ignored, particularly with how the matches have been executed. The visual is striking, and intentionally so: Kelly Kelly, with her gold lame wide-belted boy shorts and perfectly straight blonde hair, a shrinking violet to the large, menacing advance of the multi-braided Kharma. It doesn’t help that Kharma enters to a theme music composed of the sudden strike of a piano, and her own maniacal laughter against an electric guitar riff fit for a haunted house. The idea of the savage (Kong?) is complete.

Perhaps it’s a failure of the writers behind the WWE, who have given us stereotype after stereotype to disservice people of color. Whether it’s the duo of Cryme Tyme talking about boosting cars or Yoshi Tatsu appearing to speak in only broken English, the WWE continually exposes our worst perceptions and promotes them. As Daniel Douglass writes at Inside Pulse, the WWE remains unapologetically racist, questioning, “Why waste time with character shading and depth, when we can simply seize a ready trait, inflate it and hope to Christ they don’t notice they are cheering a cardboard cut-out?”

For women, the lack of character depth is part and parcel of being involved in wrestling. A year and a half ago, WWE fans witnessed as Mickie James, a spunky, bright-eyed Diva with real talent, got demoted to the Smackdown brand. Not long after, James was thrown into a Mean Girls-esque rivalry that left her re-christened ‘Piggie James’ and defending her (healthy) body size to her competing Divas, and the millions of WWE fans who tune in every week. As Kit MacFarlene concludes over at PopMatters, “The fact that it’s just about impossible to find a word to describe the not-extremely-thin Mickie that doesn’t essentially imply ‘fat’ says a lot about how far we haven’t come with cultural body image problems.”

The treatment of James also exemplifies why Kharma’s presence should be a welcome one to confront and shake up the notions of what makes a WWE Diva, and also hammers home why the limited performance of her character so far is a profound disappointment. It’s not as though the WWE is the first or even the worst offender in terms of the intersectional prejudices Kharma represents, but given that the WWE is showcasing women doing something that is traditionally a man’s activity, is it wholly unreasonable to expect more than what they’ve delivered so far?

No, it isn’t.

In order to create change within a faulty system, it is important to work within it. Kharma’s had a disappointing show so far, but it isn’t too late to turn around and portray Kharma as a woman who is intimidating because she’s one hell of an athlete, not because she happens to be a person of size and a person of color.

It goes without saying that wrestling is never going to be the hotbed of intellectual discourse, and that’s fine. We’re talking about a genre that banks on mixing comedic punch lines with impressive acts of athleticism—but for the minority voices in wrestling, we want to see them do more of the latter and stop being the former.

UPDATE June 10, 2011:

On May 30, the character of Kharma was dealt another blow when Stevens announced her real-life pregnancy. For the first time since the introduction of her character, fans were introduced to the voice that had previously been reduced to maniacal cackling while the mouth bit off the heads of Barbie dolls. With restrained passion and emotion, Stevens discussed her dreams of becoming a WWE superstar, only to be told by one of the largest names in the business that she was too fat to succeed.

Her poignant speech might have served as something of a wake-up call for the audience, but in characteristic WWE fashion, the surface-level enlightenment is immediately dismissed by the real men behind the curtain. Out pop Kharma’s earlier pummeled rivals, the Bella Twins, to deliver a hat trick distracting from social awareness.

In a 90-second promo, they make 10 individual references to Kharma being too fat to wrestle or to sleep with, concluding her partner must have had to use a seat belt. Although the send-off will serve to hold fans over for the duration of Stevens’ pregnancy, it’s nevertheless the same misogyny and warped body messages being rehashed to a character that might have risen above them otherwise.

Caster Semenya’s True Identity Is Up to Her

Filed Under: Representation and Identity Tagged With: Black, Ethnicity and Culture, Kharma, media representation, Objectification of Women, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, size, Size & Weight, Stereotypes, Women, WWE

Culture: Latina Beauties

May 18, 2011 By Sharon 5 Comments

Zoe Saldana has Dominican & Puerto Rican roots; Alexis Bledel is Mexican-Argentine-American.

By Helen Rodriguez of Latinitas

For years, Latinas have worked hard to break beauty barriers in the U.S. Now that we have managed to forge our own identity in American society, a part of me is thrilled with what Latinas have achieved and the role models that are now available for many young girls. On the other hand, I can’t help to think that this progress is not enough.

Through women like Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek, Latinas have won Hollywood over with their sexy curves and most importantly their undeniable talents. They have redefined Latina image all over the world. At the same time, their images have formed a stereotype of Latinas as all having dark hair, golden skin and sensual curves. However, this image does not necessarily represent every Latina.

Alyssa, age 22, does not fit this stereotype. Her blond hair and light eyes make her stand out in her Hispanic community of El Paso, TX. Even though her entire family is Mexican, people often mistake her for Caucasian. “I am an image of being different. You don’t have to look a certain way. You don’t have to fit a certain stereotype,” she said.

Despite the fact that Alyssa does not fit the “typical” Latina image, people still try to place her within the Latina stereotype. At times, people have attributed her curves to the fact that she’s Latina. When she was younger, some of her friends would call her names because she looked “white.” “It was frustrating because they defined me based on my skin color,” she remembers.

Because of this, she embraced her Hispanic culture and was inspired to educate people about it. She wanted people to get to know her, so that they might be able to make “more precise judgments.”

“Every individual defines who they are. It doesn’t matter what type of skin, body. It matters what’s inside,” Alyssa said. “I could choose to be Hispanic and not tell anyone else, but I choose to embrace it.”

There are many Latinas in the media who are not associated with Latin American culture because their complexions do not fit the classic Latina stereotype. Like Rosario Dawson, a black Latina who is part Puerto Rican and Cuban, does not fit this stereotype. Actress Zoe Saldana, who recently appeared in the blockbuster hit Star Trek, is also a black Latina of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent. Despite the fact that she is proud of her Hispanic heritage and that she is a Spanish speaker, she is mostly cast in African-American roles.

Another example is Alexis Bledel who is Mexican-Argentinean-American. Bledel starred in the show Gilmore Girls as a Caucasian teen. Hardly anyone is aware that she is a Spanish speaking Latina, and she has not been cast in any Latina roles.

These young actresses are successful Latinas in Hollywood, but their ethnicity goes unnoticed in the media. Consequently, these examples of diverse Hispanic women go unnoticed by the public as well, limiting the role models available to them.

In her book Hijas Americanas, Rosie Molinary dedicates an entire chapter to Latina beauty, titled “Maria de la Barbie.” Molinary recognizes the need for diversity in the way the Hispanic culture is shown in the media. “Latinas need to see that we do not all need to look like Hollywood’s Latina trendsetters to be compelling and influential,” she writes emphasizing that the best way to show Latinas that “there is no perfect prototype is to show women the range of possibilities among us.”

We should keep in mind Latinas come in all shapes, colors and sizes. We cannot be defined by a generalizations or ideas of what we should or should not look like. If we learn to love ourselves, flaws and all, we can teach other women to do the same through our example.

Molinary writes something everyone should keep in mind about Latino culture:

“An important point to make is that there is no typical anything. Just like there is not one typical white, Asian, or black girl, there is no typical Latino — and no typical Puerto Rican, Colombian, or Mexican either. Having just one image of Latinos — when there are twenty-plus countries and immeasurable amounts of culture mixing — is impossible.”

What is special about Latinos is our different cultures from different countries with different histories. Despite the efforts to limit our image, but we come in all shapes, colors and sizes. We are diverse and cannot be defined. As Molinary recommends, we cannot assign generalizations to any ethnicity. The beauty of being human is that we are all unique and that there is only one of you.

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This post originally appeared at Latinitas, the First Magazine By and For Latina Teens. Cross-posted with permission.

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Filed Under: Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Representation and Identity Tagged With: ALexis Bledel, Beauty, Celebrities, Ethnicity and Culture, identity politics, Jennifer Lopez, latinas, Latinitas, media representation, Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Rosario Dawson, Salma Hayek, Stereotypes, Zoe Saldana

The Truth About Celebrity Weight Loss

March 22, 2011 By Sharon 8 Comments

By Claire Mysko

In Hollywood, female stars who shed pounds get glamorous photo shoots and breathless “How She Did It!” cover stories. But not all slimmed-down celebrities are falling over themselves to shout their new stats from the rooftops and share their diet and exercise tips with the world. Their reluctance to do so points to the reality that weight loss is not the unequivocal triumph the diet industry would have us believe it is.

Sure, smaller numbers on the scale get validated and celebrated in our thin-obsessed culture. But all the fanfare can be overwhelming. Suddenly, it’s The Weight Loss that takes center stage. The red carpet pictures are everywhere. The new form-fitting outfits become big news. Never mind that the person wearing them has a lot more to offer the world than a thinner body.

Three stars recently opened up about the complexities of losing weight under the spotlight.

Jennifer Hudson

As a spokesperson for Weight Watchers, Hudson is being paid to talk a big game about her smaller size. Yet she didn’t seem entirely comfortable in this role judging by her Oprah appearance last week. She (and her WW leader) tried to avoid the question of exactly how many pounds she had lost, but relented* after Oprah rejected the idea that a fixation on pounds might not be healthiest approach, insisting that she claim her number as a “victory.” Because we’re all waging war with our bodies, naturally.

“You have never looked better in your life, I think…Do you feel like this is the best you’ve ever been in your life?” Oprah asked giddily [emphasis mine]. Whoa, see how that happened? The weight loss quickly got conflated with who Hudson is on some existential level? Let’s keep in mind that this is a woman who experienced a family tragedy just two years ago, when her mother, brother and nephew were murdered. She’s also a new mother. To say that she’s faced some life-altering emotional upheaval in recent years would be quite the understatement. But back to The Weight Loss! Hudson sheepishly answered that yes, she believes this is the best she’s ever been, although it’s not easy getting used to the body changes. She admitted that sometimes she doesn’t recognize herself and feels conflicted about the attention she’s getting.

“I’m like, ‘Don’t look at me—listen to me. I want you to hear me sing because that’s all that ever really mattered to me,’” she said.

*My episode cut to the breaking news of Mubarak’s speech at the precise moment that Hudson was about to cave and reveal how much weight she’s lost, so I missed the big moment. Nothing like a history-making revolution to put the diet talk in perspective.

Raven Symone

The expectation that any star who loses weight must be just bursting with more confidence than ever before also ignores the fact that said star might have been feeling just fine about herself all along, thank you very much. Raven Symone has been on top of her game since she was a wee little one stealing laughs on The Cosby Show. She went on to star in her own mega-hit show, That’s So Raven!

Symone has built a hugely successful career on her talent, so she’s not thrilled that everyone’s focus has now shifted to her size. The gushing praise of her new look stings like a backhanded compliment. She has never lacked confidence in her appearance. However, it’s clear to her now that others obviously had issues with her weight.

“I thought I looked fabulous before and nobody else did,” she told People magazine. “So, whatever… Actually, now I wear bigger clothes because I don’t like the way people stare at me,” she says. “I liked it before. Now, you’re just looking at me for the wrong reasons. Before, you were actually looking at me for a real reason.”

Crystal Renn

Model Crystal Renn has a different kind of problem. Her recent weight loss has actually sparked some pretty harsh criticism. Renn made a name for herself as the leading plus-size models in America (she used the term “plus-size” to describe herself in the bio included in her book, Hungry: A Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves), but it’s pretty hard to find her curves these days.

She first signed with a modeling agency at the age of sixteen and developed anorexia and exercise bulimia with the words of a modeling scout echoing in her head: You could be a supermodel. But you’ll have to lose a little weight. Her disordered eating went on for years, she writes in Hungry:

“Until one day I realized that if I wanted to live, I could no longer starve. I had to get off the crazy-making treadmill. I had to nourish my body and feed my soul. So I ate and ate. And I returned to my natural size 12—the size of the average American and the size I was when I really made it big.”

Now that she’s considerably slimmer than a size 12, Renn is rejecting categorization altogether. In an interview posted on the Ford Models website, she details her frustration with people’s need to have her conform to the image they want her to be.

“I feel pressure from, more than anyplace…the public, and the media. I think by placing a title on my head, which is “plus size,” and then the picture that these people have created in their mind about what plus size actually is, I basically fail you. I couldn’t possibly live up to that.”

Of course Renn is not likely to admit to feeling any industry pressure in a video produced and distributed by the modeling agency that cuts her checks, but the fact remains that speculating about the motivations for her weight loss won’t get us very far. At the end of the day, Renn is the only one who can shed light on that question. And as she correctly points out, it’s impossible to get the full picture of her physical and emotional health just by sizing her up.

Body changes of any kind can bring up complicated feelings. When what we see in the mirror looks different than it did before (even if those changes move us closer to some “ideal”), accepting a new reflection requires some work–the kind of work that can take a minute. And that just does not compute with the glossy media formula: thinness = instant happiness, no strings attached.

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Claire Mysko is the author of You’re Amazing! A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self and the co-author of Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? The Essential Guide to Loving Your Body Before and After Baby.

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Filed Under: Body Image, Self-Esteem, Size & Weight Tagged With: Celebrities, celebrity, Crystal Renn, diet, fat, Jennifer Hudson, Raven Symone, size, Stereotypes, weight, weight loss, Women

Discrimination and EDNOS: One Woman’s Story

February 9, 2011 By Sharon 29 Comments

By Kath at Fat Heffalump

My name is Kath and I suffer from an eating disorder.

Officially, I have what is known as an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Diagnosed (EDNOS). This means that I do not have Anorexia or Bulimia, but another set of behaviors that do not have a name. An unspecified eating disorder if you please.

I am mostly in recovery at this point in my life, but I still have issues with food, and behaviors and thoughts regarding my body.

I have an eating disorder and I am fat. Very fat. I am what in medical terms is known as “morbidly obese.” I personally prefer the term Super Fat. It means I get to wear underpants on the outside.

I wasn’t fat until I was about 11 or 12, and then it happened very quickly with puberty. However, my parents had told me that I was fat for as long as I could remember.

On learning that I am fat, most people assume that my eating disorder is binge eating or overeating because I must have been gorging myself to get this way.

Until a few years ago, every single doctor or medical professional I went to diagnosed me with overeating, often without ever asking me what I eat, or if they did and I told them, they didn’t believe me. They said I must be cheating, or lying, or not counting some things that I ate. I simply had to be an overeater to have “let myself get that fat.”

However, my disordered behavior was all about starvation. Restriction. Purging. Punishing. I started when I was about 13 or 14. Some bullies (girls) forced me to stick my fingers down my throat and make myself vomit because, “That’s what fat ugly bitches like you should do.” A year or so before this incident I had actually been shown what to do by another slightly older girl. I worked with her at an after-school job, and she thought she was being kind to the fat kid. She did it and it kept her slim, so she showed me how to stick my fingers down my throat and how to disguise that I was doing it. But it really wasn’t until the bullies forced me and humiliated me that I attempted to actually do it regularly myself.

I got very good at it. Nobody knew. I could vomit almost soundlessly. I could find reasons to disappear to the far corners of our yard to vomit behind trees. I started stealing laxatives from the medicine cabinet. I would take lots of Sudafed (a sinus decongestant that used to contain pseudoephedrine) because it made me manic and I could go through bursts of exercise. I learnt to “chew and spit” when I was eating in company. Sometimes I would stop for a while, particularly if I had spent time away from home and school where the pressure was always on.

However, I stayed fat. In fact, I got fatter.

The behavior continued after I left school. I became an obsessive vegetarian for several years as another way to exert control over my eating. I moved out of home at an early age and the independence afforded me a whole new range of opportunities for restriction, purging, and exercise binges. I lost some considerable weight at 18, only to have it come back with a vengeance some later, despite continuing my eating disorder. In hindsight, the weight loss was an indicator of severe illness.

I struggled with depression and anxiety all this time. I went to doctor after doctor, with both physical and emotional issues, but was repeatedly put on diets, usually without the doctor doing nothing more than looking at me and deciding I was too fat. If they did ask me to keep food/exercise diaries I would usually lie on them and say I was eating more and exercising less than I usually did. Even then, they didn’t believe me. If I told the truth they didn’t believe me either.

Remember, I was fat. I *must* have been overeating.

For 20 years, I kept presenting doctors with the same physical issues: An irregular menstrual cycle that manifested itself as constant bleeding, amenorrhea (absence of menstrual cycle), or dysmenorrhea (pain during menstrual cycle). In my early 30s, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS); I discovered I had been showing symptoms and characteristics of it since I was 12. I was told yet again that the way to “cure” PCOS is to lose weight.

By the time I was 33, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I had been put on Duramine, an amphetamine-based appetite suppressant, which made me cycle between mania and depression, and stopped me from sleeping or consuming anything, including water for days at a time. I was exercising between six and eight hours per day. I had lost over 50lbs (about 25kg) and dropped five dress sizes. I was desperately unhappy and my physical health was failing. I was not coping at work and it was suggested that I should see the counseling service through the employee assistance program. I saw a few different psychologists—they all focused on my weight. Eventually, out of desperation I begged one of them to help me, told him of my suicidal thoughts and explained my obsession with diet and exercising. His response was to suggest that I add another half hour to the six to eight hours I told him I was already doing, “To get you over the plateau.”

That night, I attempted suicide, only to be halted by a dear friend contacting me because he was worried.

On the recommendation of another friend, I went back to a doctor I had liked (even though she had previously suggested weight loss), and told her how I was feeling. Thankfully, she listened and recognized I needed further help. She helped me get the medical support I needed, both physically and mentally. She referred me to a psychologist whom I clicked with almost immediately. Through cognitive behavioral therapy, I began to work on my self-esteem and self-worth. In 2008, I decided I was not going to diet anymore. Soon after I found the Fat Acceptance movement, and discovered that I could be healthy, and that I know my own body if I only take the time to listen to it.

My GP, psychologist, and I work together on my physical and mental health. They both accept that I know my own body better than anyone else, and trust that I will tell them if I feel something is not right. I trust them to guide me through any medical issues that arise with the best professional advice. I have an agreement with them that they will not focus on my weight, but instead on my health, and I have introduced them to a Health at Every Size method.

It is important to me to talk about having an eating disorder as a fat person. Where thin or normal weight patients often get sympathy and understanding, and even simple recognition of their disorders, fat patients are ignored, considered lying or “cheating” somehow. So often disordered behavior is sanctioned in fat people simply because there is a belief that fat people must have got that way through inactivity and gluttony.

How many people have to suffer, or even die, because of the belief that no matter what the cost, thinner is always healthier?

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