Traditional Media isn't obsolete! Entirely.

IllusClaire — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:46:44 +0000

I'm heading up the activism & existing campaigns section of Positive Body Image Season here at BISB. I'm putting together a great long list of links to other people's established positivity campaigns, but in the meanwhile I'd like to head a course to positive old media (as in: TV and film) representations of complex body image issues.

Of course, that's pretty hard, because if mainstream media promoted that sort of thing the world wouldn't be in quite the state that it is. I swear, I'm an optimist! But I'm a future-orientated optimist; I'm not going to pretend that 'our' track record is "not as bad as all that".

So what I'm ACTUALLY going to do right here right now is highlight some existing media that doesn't necessarily come out swinging and singing the praises of normal, beautiful people but which points uncompromisingly at the problems caused by stringent beauty ideals and the enormous value put on the shallowest of judgments. Watch them, show them to people, and maybe, maybe, these hang-ups will start to dissolve.

What am I saying? Of course they will! Most of my dragons have been slain by thoughtful fiction. Trufax.

Pick one:

Since watching Oldboy (trailer), Save the Green Planet (trailer) and The Host (trailer) It's become a habit of mine to periodically search "korean movie trailer" on youtube and see which gems turn up. Last go, I stumbled across Beautiful.. whose trailer took my heart and squeezed it. Take a look.

In summary, the film is about a woman who is near-empirically (guess what) "Beautiful". And whilst that's nice in a vacuum, in the context of her life it causes her to be seen as extreme competition and fair game for uncouth comments and behaviour such as stalking. Eventually, one of them rapes her, and blames her and 'her beauty' for his actions. She decides that she needs to become "un-beautiful", and from there.. her life unravels further and further. With a little help from her 'friends'.

This doesn't sound like a happy film. It does look like a good one, though - it's an angle on beauty standards, misogyny (which, oh yes, is all tied up with mainstream body image issues), and the enormous control they can wield over people's real lives. Not a straight-up everywoman story, but not fantasy; touching enough nerves that I certainly can't ignore the truth of its message: in life, you have to be stronger than the expected average because there is too much at stake to allow these prejudices and assumptions and value judgements - that we apply to people every day - to remain unexamined. Don't be the lowest common denominator. Unchallenged beauty standards ruin lives (to greater or lesser degrees).

Body image is about identity, after all. There's no reason to attack someone for being who they are.

Incidentally, the Beautiful (or 아름답다, or Areumdapta) trailer reminded me of this: reading Jezebel last month, I came across this article, which talks about Mauritanian girl-children being force-fed, partly through torture, to make them fat enough to be desirable to prospective husbands. By their mothers. Oh, the many joys of patriarchy and human fallibility! Let us count them. And then destroy them.

Pick two:

Confession: I've never seen the movie Taxi Driver. But something within it is one of my favourite film happenings. I've never seen the film I'm talking about, but I have seen Heat Guy J. Heat Guy is an animated series of the type that looks basic and archetypal on the cover, seems weird and maybe a little bad in the first episode or two, and by the end is an enormous, glowing ball of visible inspirations re-mixed and originally worked into a brilliant, moving whole. The 'happening' I am talking about, the one from Taxi Driver, is shown on-screen in Heat Guy and seems to be effectively lifted from the film to the series. When I first saw it I had no idea about this and I loved it; it was a perfect moment for the show and the character. Now I know it's pinched, I may like it even more.

The happening is: a character shaves his hair into a mohawk to ready himself for a task looming ahead. Wikipedia suggests that the act of shaving isn't shown in the film (if this is wrong, let me know!), so here's the trailer. The difference is far towards the end.

Unfortunately I can't find Heat Guy's the shaving scene on youtube.. these stills will have to suffice.

[..hahaha I just realised i havent added these yet. Give me til tomorrow evening!]

I like this scene so much because it speaks to me and is straightforwardly plain: sometimes, a body needs to be a certain way to express the emotions that are boiling your soul. It doesn't matter if you're a big tuff gruff man, it doesn't matter if you're anything. If a person looks a certain way it may be necessary for them at that time - who are we to judge? The world requires an awful lot of conformity and compliancy sometimes and it should chill out.

I must point out here that having shaved head-sides does not mean that a person is going to shoot somebody, though. That is the metaphorical part - "doing a murder" = "slaying one's own demons" - in this analogue. For a real life example, when I moved back home after uni and started spending my days doing only housework and cooking, I did this to my hair:

I needed something jagged to balance the sudden domesticity. Taxi Driver and Heat Guy J remind us in a roundabout way that if you think someone looks weird, what you're actually noticing is that they just aren't you, but a real person all of their own.

Pick three:

Dawn French on Big Women. Degrees of fatness are the first, most obvious point when it comes to "Positive Body Image" themes. All that negativity that results from "obesity" being mistaken for and becoming interchangable with "ill health". We all know that prejudice against "fat people" is a hot topic, and I'm sure there's not much I could reasonably say on this subject that hasn't been said far better. The first part is here, but the whole thing is up on youtube. I found it really interesting, food for a lot of thought, and I think you might too.

This one, actually, is directly about beauty requirements (specifically in the UK). "Why should we have to starve to be seen as beautiful?" It's really interesting to see the fashion industry professionals talking about the "problems" with using bigger ladies in shoots. Because their words are so weedy. One guy thinks that "women today" don't have cellulite. HAHAHAHAA

This documentary was made in the 90s, as far as I can tell, but it hasn't stopped being relevant. I don't know that I need to say much here, because Ms French is directly addressing the facts rather than telling a story that includes them, but I will warn you that a couple of times she disses thin ladies and I don't want to be hearing any discussion of how that is "just as bad". It's not nice, but it isn't just as bad as going booooo fatties.

Also, watch right to the end of part five. It's worth it!

Here are a couple of links to read ahead of the Big Activism List, if you find yourself inclined towards a dislike of people with a larger bodily circumference that yourself: two

Pick four:

Chris Rock's Good hair. I had no idea what a weave was until the end of last year, when this documentary and Tyra Banks' weave-less TV appearances were dissected on Jezebel (I go there a lot). I had a vague idea of some of the base issues surrounding hair and race from 4thletter's David Brothers' posts on the matter (read those they are so good), but being white in a white-majority village in a white-majority country (never having had a black classmate, even) I had no push to realise that there is apparently a WORLD of intricacy and psychology involved in hairstyling. Again, I'm not sure I need/get to comment here. This is a documentary so it'll SAY what it wants to tell you, and really, what can I add? Even if you know the ins and outs of all this already, watching this might be cathartic. If you have no idea about various standards of hair, why keep yourself ignorant? Do you want to treasure the possibility of saying something crashingly insensitive some day?

Even if none of the body image angles in this post apply to you - say, you identify as an averagely attractive size ten east-asian who likes mainstream trends - I dare you to watch all of these and experience no new thoughts! Or any new empathy.

And aren't consideration and empathy requirements preceeding change of standards?

Expect your regularly-scheduled Florrie-post on the 13th! Get well soon, Florrie!

British Style Bloggers

Traditional Media isn't obsolete! Entirely.

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