donewiththisshit:

atchka:

Remember this asshole?

Yeah, he got reamed. Check it out.

This guy is getting way too much attention for actively ignoring medical and psychological understandings of health in favor of his personal standards of beauty and worth. 

I couldn’t even get through that whole thing – he makes me want to vomit. I didn’t agree with everything the author said, either (mainly the “objective mental illness” part, because medicalization isn’t exactly “objective” – mental illnesses are very much socially constructed, though that’s not to undermine what she’s saying about the seriousness of anorexia), but it’s nice to see someone take him down a notch.

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Like I’ve said before (here, here, and here), one of my biggest problems with the body acceptance / body image awareness movement, aside from its tendency towards racism and heterosexism, is its obvious hypocrisy in terms of preference for a particular type of body. Dove’s campaign for “real beauty,” which basically only depicts women of the same general size, is a perfect example of this, as is the #NoSizeZero hashtag on Twitter, which seems to be trending in response to Kenneth Tong’s Twitter. Tong promotes anorexia as a lifestyle and regularly tweets misogynistic, fat-phobic posts about women’s bodies and the importance of being a perfect size zero. 

His posts make me angry enough to vomit, but I’m upset that once again, the idea of body acceptance is translating into anti-anorexic and anti-skinny responses to this man. The #TongIsWrong trend I understand, but why does no one thing to tweet #YesAllSizes rather than #NoSizeZero? Why respond to the negativity with more negativity when the idea is to accept everyone’s body, regardless of its size? Let’s not forget that some people are naturally thin and that people of all sizes suffer from eating disorders — adding one more negative voice to a culture obsessed with criticizing “imperfect” bodies doesn’t really help counter Tong’s message.

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I understand the opposition to exposing rape victims in the media — what’s happened to these two women perfectly illustrates why that is a horrendous idea — but people laughing at her for calling for structural change? For actually taking into consideration the context of this case? She’s right. Getting lost in the details of one individual case doesn’t really help solve the larger problem. Yelling at Michael Moore on Twitter for basically recognizing this case as a political witch-hunt does nothing to change the way with rape cases are carried out in general. That’s why you don’t see a Twitter campaign calling for more large-scale reform, and that’s why you don’t see people calling for an alleged rapist’s exile/death/etc. when it comes to most other cases — because when the media has no such investment in a rape case, it gets swept under the rug. That’s why Naomi Wolf is right when she calls this attention a slap in the face for most victims: the ones who haven’t been discouraged from reporting their rapes are instead demonized for doing so, and after victims have been put on trial and expected to defend themselves for having been attacked, rarely is a conviction even made. So where’s the Twitter campaign for those victims?

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I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

From The Porn Myth

Why is it that any time someone wants to offer a “new” and “progressive” take on clothing customs—particularly the idea of veiling—it all relates back to sex? Instead of arguing that the veil is oppressive to women, we’re supposed to buy the idea that it’s liberating because it allows women to feel sexy? I say both camps of thought are a load of crap. Whether a woman veils or not she is doing so in order to please men or to be sexy. Whether a woman veils or not she is being sexually oppressed. Whether a woman veils or not it has nothing to do with her own beliefs, but instead with how the men in her culture might react to it. Here’s a ~radical~ idea: maybe we should learn to see women as people who are perfectly capable of making decisions regarding their dress without first considering whether the menz will approve.

A related post, from Facebook:

A non-Muslim guy asked a Muslim: Why do your girls cover up their body and hair? The Muslim guy smiled and took two sweets, he opened the first one and kept the other one closed. He threw them both on the dusty floor and asked the non-Muslim: If I asked you to take one of the sweets, which one you would choose? The non-Muslim replied: The covered one. Then the Muslim said that’s how we treat and see our women…

I recently saw this pop up in my news feed when a FB friend (see the kickass blog she writes for here) sparked an interesting discussion about the trend on her wall. As she pointed out, both of these popular takes on veiling are problematic in that one is rooted in the Islamophobic idea that all Muslim women are oppressed, while the other is an example of misogyny within the Muslim community. Those same ideas are at work in the article posted above, though it’s about a Jewish woman rather than a Muslim woman. Somehow the author seems to privilege these beliefs over the Western norm, arguing that porn has ruined men’s appreciation of the “real thing”—but I won’t even get into just how fucked up that point is. I’ll just leave it at this: she’s completely ignoring an entire culture of sexism toward women and hatred of our bodies that extends beyond porn and the way women in our society choose to dress. Also, I don’t know who the hell she interviewed, but some of us watch porn and have sex and make out with women because we enjoy it, not because we want to be “cool girls.”

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It’s one thing to teach your daughter about overcoming obstacles, but to teach her to loathe her natural appearance and put herself through painful procedures to “fix” it is another thing entirely. What’s worse is that this mother is not just encouraging her daughter to wax her eyebrows at an extremely young age, but also criticizing her and telling her that she looks much better without all that hair on her face, as if it was even noticeable to begin with. Even if she did have particularly bushy eyebrows, that really shouldn’t be a huge concern for such a young girl.

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Between weekly sales, manager specials, discounts for buying in bulk, and coupons that come out with each purchase using a store card, it’s actually a lot easier to save money by shopping at Stop & Shop, which is geared more towards its white, largely Jewish population, and therefore cleaner, healthier, and more vegetarian and Kosher-friendly than C-Town. However, it’s not always possible for New Brunswick families to shop there, either because they don’t have the transportation to get there or can’t afford to buy in bulk, regardless of the money it will save them in the long run.

As the Racialicious article I posted before mentions, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation elaborates on the harmful effects of labor that particularly affects people of color, but makes no mention of race in relation to food justice... or the fact that most proponents of the food reform movement are wealthy white men.

(Be sure to visit Jennifer’s blog for more great posts about food and chai and other lovely things!)

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Sociological Images usually gets it right, and I agree with the analysis in their post. It’s the comments on this post bother me. Some write off the gendered dynamic and claim it’s simple economics, and others ask why women shouldn’t be entitled to a few freebies, given the fact that we’re paid less. One commentator actually accuses others of simply having very low opinions of men, as though the claims about men in bars are simply made up.

I mean, seriously. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A BAR?

Ladies’ Nights are meat markets. Men assume that every woman in the vicinity is single, heterosexual, and furthermore, attracted to them, and probably looking for a one-night stand. I have a hard time believing that women want to be treated this way when they walk into a bar, and I have a hard time believing they want men to mistreat them, grind up on them without asking, or call them names when they refuse their (inappropriate) sexual advances.

There’s something about the relative anonymity of a bar (that is, the dark, drunken atmosphere) that allows men to behave in ways they probably wouldn’t in daylight. They act sort of like 16-year-old boys on YouTube who like to harass young women in their comments (because if a girl is singing a song on YouTube, it’s obviously to show off her mouth to all the men and boys out there so they can imagine their dicks inside of it… first thing on her mind, really). I’m not saying I mistrust all men, and I don’t think the commentators at Sociological Images were implying that, either, but some disturbing realities come out in places where people are not afraid of being judged (either because it’s too dark, they’re too drunk, or they don’t plan to see you ever again). In a bar setting, those realities usually come in the form of misogyny: men think they have a free pass to touch, play with, and harass women because if they’re in a bar, they obviously want it. And when they don’t, you just call them a “whore” and move onto the next woman.

So yeah, I have a hard time believing that in situations where women are constantly degraded by men, it’s the men who are the real victims of sexist practices.

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This photo is from last week’s Pride parade in New York. Everyone is always pretty friendly in allowing me to take their photo at these events — it’s one of the only times people are that gracious about having a stranger stick a camera in their face, and it’s one of the things I love about NYC Pride. I also love that it’s one of the most racially diverse queer events you could ever participate in. Not every state is that lucky. What I hate about Pride, though, is that like any queer-related event, the focus is still on very homonormative goals and values.

This year, there was a lot of focus on DADT and on marriage, as there was last year. Don’t get me wrong, when I decided to sneak into the march last year, I ended up walking with Marriage Equality NY – and they were lovely people! But the emphasis on “gay marriage” is problematic for a number of reasons: it ignores the fact that not everyone who wants a same-sex marriage is gay, and it also prioritizes marriage (something that mainly affects gays and lesbians) over issues that affect the other letters in our acronym, such as trans-inclusive hate crime legislation. Last year, I was at an LGBTQ conference with other colleges in the Northeast, and we were asked to state our opinions on a number of issues affecting our community by standing in various boxes ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When marriage came up, 95% of students strongly disagreed with Prop 8. When HRC’s actions concerning ENDA came up, 95% of students stared blankly at the man asking us questions, as they had no clue what he was talking about.

Let’s think about this for a minute: a bunch of students living on the east coast were up to date and very much concerned with a law in California concerning marriage, yet none of them knew about HRC lying to the trans community and pushing for a non-inclusive ENDA, an action that probably set our community back a good decade. They’ve since apologized, but it’s still troubling that this doesn’t quite register as a big concern within the LGBTQ community (at least not within my age bracket, though I don’t think this is really specific to us).

I also saw a lot of “born gay” signs this year, a phrase that annoys me more and more every time I hear it. I think it’s one of the worst approaches to homophobia our community has ever created. Besides the fact that it (absurdly) singles sexual orientation down to this one so-called “gay gene,” it assumes gender by suggesting that biology predetermines our attraction to gender. If we understand gender to be biologically innate (rather than a social construct), the “born gay” standpoint further complicates the LGB relationship with the trans community, and we have enough tension there to begin with. “Born gay” is an easy comeback to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as well as the religious argument, but it’s more problematic than anything else, and completely ignores the fluidity of sexuality.

In addition to the born gay posters were signs that appropriated the language of the Civil Rights Movement. I believe I’ve posted about this before (one one of my blogs, at least), but I’m bothered by it so much more after Prop 8. As it is, offending the black community by equating our struggle with the Civil Rights Movement does nothing to help our relationship with people of color, but it’s especially offensive after we blamed black and Latino voters for the outcome of Prop 8. And that was only after opponents of Prop 8 did not go into communities of color to appeal for their vote in the first place…

I still love Pride events, and I always enjoy myself in the craziness of it all. But we’re not immune to homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or racism just because we are a fairly progressive community. As a community so focused on our own oppression, we should be more conscious of the prejudice within our own community and the voices we silence in favor of the ones more marketable to heteronormative society.

(cross-posted on my tumblelog)

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Are You a Black/African-American/Afro-Latina woman? If so, then I would love to talk with you!

I’m currently putting together a research project aimed at shedding light on the way that Black women feel about, treat and live in their bodies. Specifically, my project will focus on Black women’s eating, dieting and weight-loss attitudes and behaviors. I’m especially interested in speaking with Black women who’ve ever struggled with negative body image or who have struggled with disordered eating symptoms of any sort. You must be female, consider yourself Black (regardless of ethnicity or nationality), age 18 or over, and able to complete the interview in English.

If you qualify to participate in my project, I’ll ask you some questions for about an hour. We can schedule a time that’s convenient for you. If you’re interested in participating or would like more information, please send an email to blackwomensbodies@gmail.com. Be sure to include the best way to contact you along with your message.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Alena J. Singleton,
Rutgers University
Department of Sociology

blackwomensbodies@gmail.com

Even if you don’t want to participate (or don’t qualify), I’d love it if people could repost this or send it along to someone who might be interested. Thanks!

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In their advertising text, Burger King does away with any attempt to throw in the usual cunning, subtle remarks and instead goes with this:

“Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce.”

I’m not sure whether it’s even worth picking apart at the details of this text because the sexist imagery is so shamelessly vulgar I’m tempted to think the BK masterminds created it to be that way, if only to stir up controversy that will really have everyone talking. Otherwise, Burger King needs to hire a new employee for their Sexual Nuance Conceptualizer position, because the language sounds like something a 13-year-old boy might say while harassing a female classmate about his own long and juicy member blowing her mind. BK doesn’t even attempt to mask the sexual positioning of their female model, instead caking on her makeup in a way that makes me imagine her dressed as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I’m not even sure if the word “blow” is meant to further emphasize the obvious sexual act going on here, or if BK is gloating about the blow-up sex doll they’ve created out of their model for this advertisement. Thoughts?

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