Bomb The System.
by Sherri,
at 5:34 pm
By now, unless you live on another planet [like my Mom, who SWEARS she saw Bob Marley perform in Jamaica in 1992] you’ve probably heard about the Ralph Lauren model, Filippa Hamilton-Palmstierna, who was fired for being overweight- and then whose image was photoshopped by Ralph Lauren to resemble what could only be likened to a stick figure. Yeah, this whole thing was fucked up, but almost EVERY PICTURE in a magazine is photoshopped. I don’t understand what should constitute crossing a line. I don’t believe in industries where there has been a precedent set, we should sweat this kind of shit.
People bitch and moan about impressionable little girls, but dude, it’s the PARENTS’ responsibility to teach these kids how to love themselves. Honestly, if Mom’s weren’t out there buying their daughters fucking Thighmasters for Christmas, a wee lass seeing a super-skinny model wouldn’t be an issue. We like to blame people for our failings.
With my opinion being [sort of] said, I am going to tell you that sometimes, IT IS IMPERATIVE to photoshop. For example, I was perusing my weekly People Magazine and this happened:
Do you fucking SEE Mo’Nique’s legs? HAIRY. I don’t give a fuck if she is all feminist and shit. PEOPLE MAGAZINE is not called FEMINIST MAGAZINE. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh Sherri, the magazine just looks fuzzy!” OH REALLY? How about a close-up?
Is Mo’Nique a dude? Was the photoshopper on vacation? Her armpits appear to be shaven so seriously, what the fuck IS that?
Nevermind models being made too look as though you see through them; think of the impressionable young ladies that might see this and think it’s okay to look like Sasquatch.
Filed Under: celebs | Tags: celebs, hairy legs, Mo'Nique, People Magazine, photoshopping
November 6th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Mo’Nique says she’s 45 lbs lighter. Maybe she would be another 10 lbs lighter if she shaved those manly limbs.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Dear lord. I don’t even think my male roommate has legs that hairy.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:54 am
J: I forgot to also write how annoying it is that her name is Mo’Nique and not just Monique. Maybe she’d lose 10 more pounds if she dropped the apostrophe.
Candice: Weird, right? Her arms are smooth and airbrushed and so is her face – yet someone forgot about her legs!
November 9th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Dude, respectfully but fully disagree. Who is it hurting if she decides she wants to have hairy legs? What gives you the authority to judge her and decide that she is somehow less of a woman because she doesn’t want to slide a razor along her skin every day?
This kind of “everybody must conform to societal standards at all times” thinking is one of the reasons we have such poor body confidence these days. It’s not that seeing pictures of skinny models magically imbues young girls with eating disorders — it’s that the amount of extremely skinny girls in the media is extremely disproportionate to the normal distribution of body types in daily life, and it’s easy for people (young girls especially, imo, in those impressionable early years before the ol’ self-esteem really kicks in) to labor under the delusion that everyone is thinner and blonder and smoother and sexier than them, and that because they look normal, there is something wrong with them.
Which is kind of a shitty message to be tacitly sending?
I do, of course, 100% agree with you that healthy body images and discussion of messages sent in the media needs to begin at home and be part of an ongoing dialogue. But while it’s relatively easy to hold onto these ideas intellectually, there’s such constant and immediate feedback to what we see — it seeps in no matter what.
To my mind, telling girls that they must shave their legs or else they’ll be hideous beasts who no one can ever love isn’t much different from telling them that if they don’t lose those last fifteen or ten or five pounds, that they can never be happy or loved or attractive. As women, we can’t keep turning on other women and trying to force them into our own little conceptions of what is Right or Proper for women to be. Women should be running this whole miserable world, but as long as we keep criticizing each other and cutting each other down for the slightest infraction, we’ll never have a chance.
Our bodies aren’t supposed to be masterpieces and they’re sure as heck not supposed to be prisons. They’re supposed to be useful and healthy and, hopefully, fun. And when we women attack other women for not being exactly like us — whether it be for their weight, or their body hair, or their hair color or whatever — we only perpetuate a social climate in which it is not healthy or safe or productive to be a woman.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
TKOG: Says the girl with the picture of a chick striking a sexy pose, half-dressed as her header.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Well… I can’t say a lot because my legs really don’t look a lot better at this point in time… but…. yeah thats nasty…
November 10th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Carissajaded: Yeah, I look like a Yeti right now. However, I’m not subjecting millions of unsuspecting magazine subscribers to have to see my Yeti-ness.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
lol, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sex and sexiness. I just try to maintain a really broad definition of what’s attractive, and encourage others to as well! (Say the girl who blogs erotica about dudes with crazy-bad acne and untamed pubic hair.) Point taken, though.