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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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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One campaign I am particularly interested in is the Dove campaign for “real beauty,” which annoys me for a number of reasons. Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of such a message when coming from a company that sells beauty products, I question what exactly they mean by “real beauty” or “real women,” which is what the claim to feature in their ads. The idea of a “real woman” seems to suggest that some women are not real, either because they are famous or because they conform to current societal standards of beauty by embracing the ever so coveted protruding hipbone look. Despite the negative attitude they promote towards the skinny standard, they don’t seem to promote women of very many sizes. All of these women look to be within close range of one another in terms of weight. Furthermore, the thinnest woman in the picture is the only woman pictured from straight ahead without another woman covering part of her body or some sort of pose cleverly manipulated to accentuate her curves while simultaneously masking the size of her thighs. None of the women are significantly overweight to begin with, nor are any of them underweight.

This image also mirrors a lot of the problematic phrases constantly used to promote healthier body images among women, as most of them simply present a different idea of what the standard should be. “Real women have curves” doesn’t say to me that women come in all shapes in sizes and should be proud of their natural shape; on the contrary, it suggests that all women are beautiful so long as they aren’t too thin. I’m not sure how much better that is than the expectation that all women share Barbie’s measurements — the reality is that some women are naturally thin. Some of us are never going to have hips and large breasts. Society might tell me I’m not a Real Woman because my ribs don’t show quite enough, but now Dove is telling me that I’m not a real Woman because I need to gain 30 pounds.

In terms of race, this ad is also very interesting. They at first appear to present a range of colours; it is strange, though, that despite the fact that women of colour have a wider variety in skin tone, there are four different shades of white in this picture. Of the two women of colour, neither one is particularly dark-skinned, and the woman all the way to the left is hardly a shade darker than the woman to her right. The woman closest to the center of the image, besides being the thinnest, is also the lightest and only blonde. In addition to that, all Real Women appear to have perfectly white, straight teeth and glowing skin. They may also belong to the anti-cellulite campaign that Margaret mentioned, but that’s an assumption on my part…

The Dove campaign reminds me of Nike’s “If You Let Me Play” commercials from the mid-90s, which I first read critiques of in my psychology class with Dean Schuster last year (Psych 421: Intersections of Sport & Sexuality). Those commercials seem to have been received very well by the general public, getting a lot of praise for promoting women in sports, but its underlying subtext promotes a very different message rooted in notions of white male dominance. Besides the audacity that these girls are asking for permission to play rather than implying they should be “allowed” to play by default, the vulnerable-looking girls Nike chooses to feature present an interesting image of girls in America, with the white girls receiving significantly more airtime and filling the most prominent sections of the commercial. An article I read in that class by Shelley Lucas goes into much further detail, but I don’t want to stray too far from the topic of advertising and photography. What it comes down to is the fact that in these ads, Nike is trying to inconspicuously promote their company and products by presenting a message that will be well-received in a more modern America, but its hypocritical use of certain prejudices and biases to appeal to the American public reveal the truth behind their motives.

In the end, advertising always has one goal: to reach to their demographic. As our morals change as a society, advertising will change to appeal to those morals, but it does not necessarily mean that the advertisers have suddenly embraced our cause or denounced the sexist and racist attitudes that still govern our country and society — those attitudes simply become more covert as these values slip out of our consciousness and take on less obvious and more institutionalized forms.

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When I was first introduced to her work in high school, I remember a huge debate surrounding this particular image. Not with respect to ethics or pornography or anything of the sort, but over how old Jessie is in this photo. She has the face of a late teenager and the body of a pubescent girl, the expression of a young adult and the chest of a developing adolescent. I remember being shocked at the realization that she is merely 12 here. In many of Sally Mann’s photos, her children appear strikingly mature, either in the roles they are playing or the ways in which they carry themselves. Her photos seem to reverse the idea of the ‘gaze,’ with her children taking on the role of the empowered onlooker. Typically children are uncomfortable looking and awkward in front of adults, but her children stare back into the camera with looks of confidence, like in the following photo of all three children:

I think this photo is one of the most powerful examples of why Sally Mann’s photography should not be considered exploitative or pornographic. Her children have said, years after the fact, that they never felt exploited. Jessie Mann described the experience of being photographed as giving her a “sense of beauty,” and interestingly enough, she is now an artist herself. I think people sometimes become overwhelmed with the social significance of an image of a nude child in an age where we are so cautious of pedophiles, online predators and child pornography that it clouds their view of the artwork itself. I also wonder if they would be received differently from another source. If Sally Mann were a foreign photographer, perhaps photographing children from an African tribe in which nudity is the norm, would people see the photos as exploitative? Maybe because the media is so dominated by images of young celebrities navigating the city and shopping in high-end stores, we forget that people throughout the country lead very different lifestyles. The culture of the city is very different from that of rural America, and nudity is more acceptable to children growing up on a farm than to children who live in more urban areas and amuse themselves differently than children who play outside in fields and lakes.

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In my case, the person who ended up commenting my photos doesn’t seem fond of self-portraiture. Normally I’d be fine with that — there’s plenty more on my Flickr to look at, I think. However, he commented mainly on my self-portraits and insisted on mentioning in each comment how narcissistic I am. This is something every artist who has ever taken a self-portrait has probably heard — people are quick to simple-mindedly dismiss the entire genre and reduce it to narcissism without recognizing its artistic capacity because all they see is you wanting to show yourself to the world rather than your photography. However, what really bugged me about the comment was that he attacked my personal beliefs while giving his perspective on the photo. Apparently isn’t not fit for a feminist to “expose her naked body online.” (‘Naked’ meaning topless. WITH MY ARM COVERING MY BREASTS. Scandalous, right?)

Joking aside, this could’ve been a fully nude portrait for all I care, and the fact that it’s exhibited online is merely a reflection of our generation’s culture — where else does one collect and show their work nowadays? Even our journals are now published blogs (or even vlogs) and an outline of every aspect of our personalities is available on facebook.com. But anyway, had I been male, I obviously would not have received this comment. Men can take off their shirts and walk around topless all they’d like — and believe me, there are plenty of men out there who would require much larger bra sizes than my ‘Nearly B’ cup if it were common for men to wear bras in our society. In fact, that’s just the type of double standard much of my photography seeks to explore — the idea that as women, we’re taught to cover up our bodies and fear our own sexuality rather than openly and freely expressing it. But it’s perfectly acceptable to show it in a more exploitative way, of course. Male recording artists can have all the tits and ass they want in their videos, but when a woman wants to explore her own sexuality or even talk about it in a mature fashion, it’s complete taboo. It’s a shame that so much of our society is still stuck in that mindset.

For reference, you can view the photo and comments here.

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