"Rather than fighting for every woman’s right to feel beautiful, I would like to see the return of a kind of feminism that tells women and girls everywhere that maybe it’s all right not to be pretty and perfectly well behaved. That maybe women who are plain, or large, or old, or differently abled, or who simply don’t give a damn what they look like because they’re too busy saving the world or rearranging their sock drawer, have as much right to take up space as anyone else.
I think if we want to take care of the next generation of girls we should reassure them that power, strength and character are more important than beauty and always will be, and that even if they aren’t thin and pretty, they are still worthy of respect. That feeling is the birthright of men everywhere. It’s about time we claimed it for ourselves."
I don’t want to be told I’m pretty as I am - I want to live in a world where that’s irrelevant (via brute-reason)
Fucking this so fucking hard.
(via afractalparticle)
we live in a society that bases a large part of your worth as a woman on your looks, and besides, the “you are all beautiful” thing has been taken over by thirsty misogynistic men so even thinking that way makes my skin crawl
(via princessofworms)
(via misandrystuck)
Dove hired a forensic artist to draw how women see themselves versus how others see them - the results are moving.
Wah!
(via charliebradberry)
"Intuitive eating — or whatever you want to call the radical notion of eating what you want, when you’re hungry, and stopping when you’re full — demands that we trust our bodies. Most women learn early and often that their bodies are never to be trusted, that their bodies need strict regulation, especially when it comes to desire, be it the desire for food or for sex. As a result, learning to trust one’s body is difficult enough; when you add in a past that includes trauma and abuse, it becomes harder still. But your body IS trustworthy. I promise you that. Your body is not your enemy."
(via professorspork)
"I was then - and am now - a very normal size ten. But that’s not acceptable. Everyone’s aware of it. It’s partly because fashion, film and television have become so interdependent. Increasingly, it’s actresses doing the big fashion advertising campaigns and now there’s no distinction between actresses and models. There’s no way I could ring up a company that was lending me a red-carpet dress and say ‘do you have it in a 10?’ Because all the press samples are an 8 - I would say a ‘small 8’. If you want the profile, you have to lose the weight.
It’s difficult because if I refuse to do any magazines at all, my work, I think, would suffer in a very immediate way. But when I appear in these magazines, I know I’m being ‘trimmed’, I’m being airbrushed a lot. And I know that people are accepting those images and are under the impression hat that is really how my body looks, that I’m hairless and sexless and weigh 90lbs. That really worries me. And I really don’t know what to do, except talk about it."
(Source: supertgirl, via lacigreen)
Glamour Magazine Body Size Stereotypes Survey:
What the Glamour Magazine poll shows about the assumptions women hold
Heavy women are pegged as…
“lazy” 11 times as often as thin women; “sloppy” nine times; “undisciplined” seven times; “slow” six times as often.
While thin women are seen as…
“conceited” or “superficial” about eight times as often as heavy women; “vain” or “self-centered” four times as often; and “bitchy,” “mean,” or “controlling” more than twice as often.
Even the “good” labels are unfair.
An overweight woman may be five times as likely to be perceived as “giving” as a skinny one. “But it just fits into the stereotype that thin women are not that way,” explains Ann Kearney-Cooke, Ph.D. “It’s still putting women in a box based on their body size.”
————————————————————————————-
This is so interesting… and really sad. The fact that heavy women ALSO judge heavy women and thin women judge other thin women is so disheartening.
Hopefully places like Stop Hating Your Body can help change this even a little bit at a time…
(click on the image for the entire article, it is worth the read!)
It’s very interesting that the article is about stereotypes, and yet both the women shown here, while their body sizes are different, are both white, blonde, and what the media would like to push as being ideally ‘beautiful’.
That being said, however, the article does make a good point. People are far too eager to place people in a box strictly on what the shape of their body, and it’s not okay. The only way to change is to question what you’re made to think, and why.
^^^^
SPARK has been up to some business, and our friends at the Women’s Media Center posted a great roundup so we didn’t have to! Check it out:
On Friday, 14-year-old SPARKteam girl activist Julia Bluhm presented Seventeen Magazine with her Change.org petition: Give Girls Images of Real Girls! The petition asks:
For the sake of all the struggling girls all over America, who read Seventeen and think these fake images are what they should be, I’m stepping up. I know how hurtful these photoshopped images can be. I’m a teenage girl, and I don’t like what I see. None of us do. Will you join us by signing this petition and asking Seventeen to take a stand as well and commit to one unaltered photo spread a month?
The petition has garnered over 49,000 signatures (and counting!) and the media has been eager to cover the story. Read the SPARK blog post on the event here.
Here are some of the media pieces on the SPARKteam meeting with Seventeen Magazine:
New York Times: A Real Girl, 14, Takes a Stand Against the Flawless Faces in Magazines
5/3/12: “As of Thursday evening, the petition had been signed by 46,000 people. Julia and her mother, Mary Beiter, came to New York this week from their home in Waterville, Me., for a demonstration organized by Change.org and Spark outside the offices of Seventeen in Midtown.”
The Guardian: Thousands join girl in urging Seventeen magazine to publish unedited images
5/3/12: “Seventeen magazine said it had invited Bluhm to its offices after seeing her petition. It said in a statement: ‘We’re proud of Julia for being so passionate about an issue – it’s exactly the kind of attitude we encourage in our readers – so we invited her to our office to meet with editor in chief Ann Shoket this morning.’”
New York Daily News: Teens ask Seventeen Magazine: “Where are the girls like me?”
5/2/12: “Outside the headquarters of the teen magazine known for its skinny models, a group of girls dressed in plain old jeans and jackets posed in front of a white backdrop Wednesday holding up signs that read ‘Where are the Girls Like Me?’”
ABC Nightline: Are Airbrushed Ads Dangerous?
CBS New York: 14-Year-Old Takes On Altered Photographs In Seventeen Magazine
5/2/12: “While kids are being bombarded by what they see in ad campaigns and magazines, what they hear at home hits just as hard. Child psychologist Dr. Jennifer Harstein said parents obsessing about their own diet and how they look is often passed down.”
(via bigfatfeminist)
"The reality is that fat people are often supported in hating their bodies, in starving themselves, in engaging in unsafe exercise, and in seeking out weight loss by any means necessary. A thin person who does these things is considered mentally ill. A fat person who does these things is redeemed by them. This is why our culture has no concept of a fat person who also has an eating disorder. If you’re fat, it’s not an eating disorder — it’s a lifestyle change."
Lesley Kinzel (via curvesahead)
I will always reblog this because it is so so important.
(via infinitetransit)
I just want to nail this to every stable surface I can find. I cannot count the amount of times that I’ve seen fat folks being encouraged, cajoled, and even forced into behaviors that would be recognized as disordered eating/exercising patterns in thin folks.
Pretty much everything that’s done on shows like The Biggest Loser would be called out as pro-ana/pro-orthorexia in a thin person. Exercising past the point that it hurts, to the point where you’re throwing up, even injuring yourself? Berating yourself because you didn’t lose ENOUGH weight this week? Constantly talking about how fat is weakness and thinness will make everything better, about how you can’t stand to be your current weight anymore? Emphasis on weight as a sign of how much control, strength, and worth you have? Viewing food as bad, as a temptation to sin? Constant sharing and talking about tips on how to minimize food intake, how to lose weight?
That sounds exactly like every pro-ana/pro-mia blog I’ve ever seen. It’s also what fat people are told we need to be doing to ourselves until we’re thin.
(via madamethursday)
(Source: xojane.com, via lipsredasroses)
"Fuck these patriarchal beauty standards”. I hear you loud and clear, but women wearing pink and glitter and heels are not the enemy. And believe it or not, a whole bunch of women LIKE wearing that shit. We are not dumb, less feminist or watered down because of it. A long time ago when I was in undergrad I walked up to my feminist friends sitting in the grass and they started talking about my pink backless shirt and how their own clothes weren’t so “cutesy,” then it got awkward so I left and one of them said “see you later Blossom”. Do you remember that show? I loved it. But that’s not the point. The point is that my “friend” snuck a little snide comment in front of our all of our other friends simply because I like dressing up. And that was at least 8 years ago and I still remember everything about that day. Feminism is not about laughing at other girls and making them feel insecure. Especially over something as trivial as clothes. Remember you are pro-choice. Respect my choice to wear booty shorts."
(Source: dumbjerkontheinternet, via stilstilinski)
