The F-word discussion

I need to get some other feminists' thoughts on this.

Have you seen the photoshopped pictures of celebrities made to look "fat"? I don't remember where I first read about it, but here's one article.

These pictures purport to promote positive body image. But doesn't artificially changing what people look like do the opposite of that? I mean - isn't positive body image about being happy with who you are? Especially since the artist says, "these celebrities look better this way." Whether that's true or not is irrelevant - to say he's photoshopping them to look better defeats the purpose of positive body image (IMO).

It seems like the Dove commercials, or Leonard Nimoy's (NSFW) photography, celebrities without makeup (posed, not paparazzi), or even Mary Lambert's Secrets video are better about celebrating who you are.

Artificially photoshopping someone - whether to remove flaws or to make them overweight - seems to take away from that.

Just curious if other people thought I was off-base, or if that made sense.

I don't like the pictures.

I agree completely that altering the image of a woman's body (without her permission too, I assume) is not appropriate, whether it be to make her smaller OR larger. To me the photos look like they were almost meant to be comical... so isn't that a huge dig at women who are similar sizes? Is the artist seriously trying to make women with larger body types feel "better" by showing them what skinny stars (also all women, of course) look like "fat"... ? I don't see how this project is meant to be helpful AT ALL. How about pictures of women without ANY alterations. No makeup, no expensive wardrobe, no photoshop treatment, all body types included. I feel like that would be a far more effective way to promote positive body image.

Also, peeps seriously need to stop fucking with pictures of Jennifer Lawrence. She is incredible and everyone seems to have an opinion on how her body should look... seen this before and after yet? Horrendous.


Real image on the left. And absolutely nothing wrong with it.

The comment "These women look much better when they’re overweight" in particular makes me want to punch something.

Thanks, Jim, I was not aware of these photographs. Like Stephanie, I am not a fan of them either after looking at that link you provided. I agree they seem comical (adding the food products around their bodies seems, yes, like a dig rather than a promotion of positive body image). I would rather see focus and attention put on having a healthy body, whatever that means for an individual. The photo-shopped depictions by that photographer or artist does not show healthy bodies. One can be as positive about their body as they want, but ultimately it's about health - you can be positive all day long, but if you have health issues related to being overweight or underweight, that's where the real issue comes in.

Stephanie wrote: "The comment "These women look much better when they’re overweight" in particular makes me want to punch something."

Right. That's similar to hearing "You're so much prettier when you smile." It's just another person trying to tell women how they can be "improved" in someone else's eyes which is not supportive or conducive to a positive body image either.

I think the thing that drives me insane in all of these sorts of posts is that there only seems to be fat and skinny. It skips over the fact that there is a whole range in between the two and that what a lot of people classified as fat (obviously not the morbidly obese) is actually a healthy body weight. (JL, for example looks lush in the lefthand pict above. I think far better than the photoshopped image where she looks like her arms might snap.)

Theoretically, the idea shouldn't be 'big is beautiful' which people easily argue against as promoting an unhealthy lifestyle (as does anorexicly skinny is beautiful, if we're honest), but 'you are beautiful,' regardless of what size, shape, height, weight, form, etc you inhabit. That's part of what annoys me about the altered celebrities in the original post here. It took skinny women and made them fat, skipping everything in between as if there are only the two options (IE a right and wrong way to be).

Has anyone seen this: (NSFW) http://www.themilitantbaker.com/2014/... ? It's ismilar to Nimoy's work.

We have such an unhealthy obsession with bodies in general, too. We oversexualize them, and that's part of the fault of religion and all the "modesty" stuff.

To promote positive body image, we have to be happy with who we are. That doesn't mean we can't desire to change and improve.

Like that Militant Baker site, Sadie - it's all about seeing yourself reflected in what the media portrays - those original photos don't do that at all.

One thing I disliked about the pictures is that, while they claim to support positive body image, they really only focused on weight. Body shaming exists in a variety of forms, and this sort of excludes trans people, disabled people, and older people. It also is almost exclusively made up of white women, ignoring the race-based body shaming that women of color experience. Give me some good ol' intersectional feminism.

Hear hear, Seth. Let's not forget the whole gender/sex aspect too. People like to pretend men aren't body-shamed as well. It's often not as overt or frequent, but it's real.

That's true, Sadie. I feel that body issues among men are often not taken as seriously as they should be. Patriarchy affects us all in varying ways—first by defining body image issues as a problem solely for women, and then by shaming the men who suffer from these issues. This topic was touched on in "The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolfe, which was a fantastic read for anybody interested.

A related media body-image topic that's driving me crazy is the "plus-sized" model craze. The article headlines sound great, until you see the models...and they're not actually plus-sized. Or even average-sized. Just slightly less thin than the conventional models.

I agree with that, C.D. It would be great to see less emphasis put on models, period.


Seth, thanks for the reminder that I have been meaning to read The Beauty Myth for entirely too long. I need to get to that sooner rather than later.

Oh the beauty myth. I loved that.

For my part I want to see a movement away from a. beauty being purely or mainly visual
b. beauty being something with pseudo-objective "standards" or that is in any way subjected to public judgement

Sure I do think we should leave the models alone (they are humans) but I also think we need to de-emphasise them...take a step back...make them leave us alone and stop invading our headspace with how we "should" look.

And the fat vs. skinny girl thing is old!! It's misogynist. It distracts us from questioning why should we even be judged in the first place? Or subjected to objectifying gazes (I used to say "the male gaze" but some lesbians and even straight women do it too.)

Stef, I have to point out that judgments about women's weight (at least among the people I know) are made mostly by women. The men do judge women's appearances, but usually don't focus on weight. Thinness seems to be an intra-gender rather than inter-gender issue. Although this may be a selection bias.

I thoroughly agree that beauty should be judged, if it is judged at all, on criteria other than physical conformity to social expectations. Intelligence, talent, grace, voice, and more all contribute to one's beauty. And when is the last time you've heard anyone comment on the beauty of a woman's character? (They try to make token concessions to such things in those horrible meat-parades they call pageants, but it's nauseatingly transparent--hopefully neither of my daughters will ever participate in one of those mockeries of womanhood.)

I used to have a lot of thoughts and feeling about my body. Parts of my body being to big to too small not the right shape or finally (after years of diet and exercise) just how I wanted them. Then I got pregnant and I started to think of my body very differently.

Now I am grateful for my arms because they carry things for me and I appreciate my legs because they take me where I need to go. I use my breasts to nurse my two year old though chemotherapy. Once I started to love my body and appreciate it and respect it for all the things that it does to enrich my life I stopped thinking about it's shape and size so much and I stopped comparing it to the bodies of other women.

Now when someone says anything about my figure I feel uncomfortable because I prefer not to have other people think my body as something to be complemented or critiqued. (The bedroom with my hubby is an exception but that's a whole other thread.)

I wonder if there is a way to enjoy our natural, unphotoshoped, bodies for their aesthetic value, without diminishing the respect for our bodies on the whole.

Ah, breastfeeding (especially in public), now there's an entirely new area where the world thinks it has the right to comment on our bodies!

You just said a mouth full Alexa!

Dreadful photoshopped photos :( Why was no man targeted like that?...

Seth wrote: "That's true, Sadie. I feel that body issues among men are often not taken as seriously as they should be. Patriarchy affects us all in varying ways—first by defining body image issues as a problem ..."

Thanks for the book tip.

I recently listened to this podcast from Feminist Current (a Canada-based radical feminist website), Empowerment and body positivity in the selfie age. Meghan Murphy interviews Lindsay Kite, PhD, co-founder of Beauty Redefined. Kite makes the point that advocates of "body positivity" tend to reinforce the very system they purport to be critiquing.

For instance, here in Boston there's an ad campaign on public transit. It's for a women's clothing company called Aerie. The ads feature non-retouched photos of conventionally attractive, non-super-model, young women in swimsuits, with the taglines "No re-touching on this girl" and "The real you is sexy." This feeds into the idea that a woman's worth comes from being "sexy." (And the ads refer to these women in their 20s and 30s as "girls.")

From Beauty Redefined's "About Us" page:

"While many well-intentioned speakers and activists promote positive body image from the basis of helping women realize and embrace their beauty, we take a different approach that has proved successful in our research. At Beauty Redefined, we assert that having positive body image isn’t believing you are beautiful. Instead, it is having a positive perception of your body overall. So many times we confuse “my body” with “how my body looks” and think of ourselves from an outside perspective, also known as self-objectification."

Trevor wrote: "..."So many times we confuse “my body” with “how my body looks” and think of ourselves from an outside perspective, also known as self-objectification.""

Wow, great food for thought there! Thanks.

Very interesting indeed! For some reason I'm thinking of the expression "Strong is the new skinny" and while it in some ways is about looks still, I also appreciate greatly the slow transfer from ideas on what a body looks like to what it is capable of doing, the tool it is when transporting us through various experiences in the fabric of life.

Many weight lifters I know choose free weights partly because of what it makes them look like, but definitely also due to the increasing kg number of weights lifted. And they also enjoy the feeling itself of a stronger, healthier body. It is a bit like running when you're winded after a few seconds or after a minute as a beginner; the difference is profound and you feel it clearly from the inside.

Definitely makes sense. Instead of making celebrities look fat to make ordinary people feel better about themselves, how about we have famous people who don't all have the same body type? I'm not saying we have to have a token "fat person" or "flat chested person" everywhere, just leaders (esp in the entertainment industry) shouldn't be biased and say that only skinny but curvy people are beautiful. There need to be at least a few role models who can show people who don't have the superskinny-and-curvy body type can succeed.