I wasn’t planning to write today, but a post I viewed on Pin Up Passion’s Facebook page has compelled me.
Earlier today Pin Up Passion posted this picture of La Cholita:
Lo and behold, it wasn’t long before someone labelled her obese. Quickly followed by insults hurled at anyone who tried to defend her about the eating of too many cheeseburgers. It also wasn’t long before someone commented ‘bones are for dogs’.
This whole episode has saddened me, for a number of reasons.
I am saddened that such a beautiful woman has been labelled in such a negative way. Even more so that this has been done by other women. There has been some debate on various social media platforms following the Suzanne Moore debacle. Putting aside the transgender issue, Moore had a point in her original article, which has been lost: that there is not enough solidarity between women. I hasten to add inclusion too – the irony of that will not be lost if you have been following Moore’s rather public career suicide*. This is reinforcing the ‘one body to rule them all’ ideal peddled by the media and fashion industry. This is not solidarity and inclusion. August Allure wrote an interesting post about her pursuit to be a model - there is always someone else to blame about the size issues in the fashion industry. In her case, it was the designers with the fashion samples. You can see my views on that in the comments section.
‘Ahh. Here is someone who doesn’t fit the ideal of what the female body should look like.
Let’s publicly humiliate her’
To be clear, this is not an ‘aren’t fat women fabbylous, and aren’t all skinny women terribly unattractive’ post. Perdita’s Pursuits made a valid point on my facebook page - that the pin up industry can purvey the idea that in order to be a real woman, you must have curves. See note on inclusion above. There are large women who are really rather lacking in curves, just as there are slender women who have plenty of them.
Ladies, please – how are we allowing this to happen?
No one should be ostracized for their size, or any physical attribute, for that matter.
To paraphrase a placard from Slutwalk – the length of my skirt is none of your business; neither is the size of my arse!
Jemima x
*Stick her in any search engine for more detail but the gist is Moore wrote an article for the New Statesman in which she urged women to get angry, including the line that women were expected to have the body of a Brazilian transsexual. This is unfortunate as a. she should have used the term transgender/trans-female, and b. she is suggested that trans-females are not really females, as real females are expected to strive for an unattainable body. To add insult to injury, Brazilian trans-females are frequently subjected to violence and murder, more so than in any other country.
You do get the rabid supporters at each end of the spectrum. I am all for people being comfortable in their own skin, I strongly believe you need to love yourself and that is not always easy. However you have to be realistic, either of the extreme ends of the weight spectrum are dangerous and damaging to health. There is a blog I follow that is written by a ‘Fatshion’ blogger (personally I hate that phrase!) and all power to her but you know what makes me uncomfortable? she has a young daughter who is already obese. The mother can choose to eat whatever she wants, be the size she is and positively relish in it as she does, but the daughter? Is that her choice? What about her health? and what about the miserable, miserable time she must be having at school? Children are vicious and cruel and as someone who was an overweight child I know only too well what she is almost undoubtedly going through at school. It doesn’t matter how much you ‘empower’ your child those taunts and nasty comments will get through. Is that fair on the daughter?
Hi Miss M, thank you for commenting. I can understand your viewpoint about the bloggers daughter. As parents, we push our lifestyle choices onto our children because we believe them to be the ‘right’ way of living – right for us. I believe that it is right to teach our children to be healthy in every way. But sometimes we send our children mixed messages – my parents smoked, and yet were very upset when I decided to smoke, too (just a silly phase, long since gone). Teaching children one thing but doing something else for yourself isn’t necessarily the right way forward. I am not sure what the answer is here, or even if there is one. The other thing to bear in mind is that we might be told that being overweight leaves us at greater risk of health issues, but that does not mean that every overweight person is unhealthy.
I agree that children can be vicious. I think that parents and schools should find the time to teach about tolerance of others to reduce the risk of this type of behaviour. I don’t think our children should be taught to fit in, not be to different, not risk drawing negative attention to themselves, in case they are bullied. We cannot allow our children, particularly our young girls, to begin their lives with a lesson in apologising for who they are because it might offend the minority.
Completely agree – its all about the body you should have healthy. If you are eating a balanced diet and active yur body will settle on the body that it should be. Some are larger than others but that is how they are spouced to be. The comments these women put against that photograph made me feel sick; trolls looking for a fight. Luckily there were people jumping to her defence. But in other walks of life there are not – it all starts at a very young age ( for example my six year is not allowed Bratz dolls as I don’t feel they give a good impression, I am careful about my wording around her about anyone’s physical appearance and no food is bad – just quantity).
I agree that ideally everyone would eat healthily, get a bit of exercise, and be satisfied at the natural weight it leaves them with.
I think that the ideal body icon held up by the media is a major hindrance to that. Women in particular are so busy trying to attain the unnatural they make themselves miserable, and in some cases, eat as a result. And some women just enjoy eating, darn it. Who are we to judge someone else’s lifestyle choices?
Definitely – the assumption of personality traits attached to certain body types is also infuriating and often insulting. No one gets to the end of their days wishing they had spent time being thinner!
Certainly not…well, possibly Wallis Simpson!
I too feel it is sad that people can be so quick to judge, so harsh with words, and so unkind. I watched an episode of the new 50′s lifestyle show (don’t know the name) and I was so disappointed with some of the women (especially one in particular)- who was so rude, so full of herself with such a competitive attitude. There are very few Rockabilly folks where I live and none of my close friends are Rockabilly style like me- so I get so excited to meet other Rockabilly women and after watching that show I was not so excited! But I would like to think there are still plenty of us with a lot more compassion and kindness than that:) Also- La Cholita is pretty successful as a pinup no matter what her size is! People talk badly about others when they have insecurities about themselves or are jealous. Anyone should be a pinup that has a passion for it:)
Rockabelle, yes I can imagine. There are some ladies on the vintage scene who think they are a cut above everyone else. But it happens in all walks of life. Don’t let it stop you meeting like minded people, because for every one person with a snobbish attitude, there are twenty completely adorable darlings wanting to talk to you about how you do your hair, or where to bag great clothes. x
If that’s Housewives with Beehives, don’t take the people as they’re shown on the show – I read the blog of one, and she was horrified at how the programme was manipulated and how they were portrayed (one of the programme makers who she hadn’t met before even referred to her to her face as ‘Bitchy’, as though that was the label they’d decided to give her)- she’s done a blog post on it here: http://missdolliedeville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/follow-up-to-wives-with-beehives.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheRockabillySocialite+%28The+Rockabilly+Socialite%29
I haven’t seen it – thank you for the link to her blog. I do remember a few years ago a programme about fifties lifestyle, and the females were portrayed as being odd because they chose not to have children as it would interfere with their lifestyles. Lots of women chose not to have children because it interferes with their lifestyles, but because it is an alternative lifestyle – well, that is just plain odd, clearly. I will have to check this programme out though!
If that’s the one I’m thinking of, in that case the ladies who participated in the programme thought it’d focus on their businesses and so on, and when the show came out the focus had been put on domesticity.
Maybe it’s because I was a goth when younger, but I have an instrinsic distrust of any programme-maker wanting to cover alternative lifestyles – you just have to look at the freakshow nature of most reality TV to know they’re likely to want confrontation and controversy rather than nice people doing mainly normal things in unusual clothes.
Okay, saying this as someone who is borderline obese herself – a couple of pounds either way sees me yo-yoing across that arbitrary line between overweight and obese – she probably IS obese.
But if she is, so what? Her body, her life. She’s a gorgeous woman who’s stepping out with confidence, and I wish more people could embody that self-confidence and glamour. And that more people had the good manners not to be horrible about other women’s bodies!
Indeed she is. There is a huge difference between stating a fact – you think she is obese – and hurling it as an insult, stating that she is obese and not curvy. I wish it too!
Indeed – I try to see ‘fat’ as a descriptor, and ‘obese’ as a bit more accurate, but without being anything more than descriptive of size. That said, how the hell could that *not* be curvy? Woman’s shaped like a roller coaster! I’d love such wonderful waist definition.
Often people complicate ‘fat’ with other attitudes. I’ve had lots of people say to me, “Oh, you’re not fat!” and I used to think it was because they had attached all sorts of negative connotations to ‘fat’ and were trying to tell me I was a nice person, but I’ve been coming round to Gemma at Retro Chick’s way of thinking of late – that people simply don’t know what obesity looks like. People are so used to seeing the ‘headless fatties’ accompanying news stories on obesity that they don’t realise a UK size 18 like me can be obese (obv height is also a factor; someone 6 foot tall and size 18 isn’t likely to be obese).
I do wonder why commenters get so het up at the sight of fuller figures being visible. It’s not like fat people will stop existing if photos of beautiful large people aren’t available. If they don’t like it, why can’t they just STFU and go and find photos of someone they DO find physically inoffensive?
That I don’t know the answer to. One can speculate they are uneducated, ignorant or jealous; in truth, only the perpetrators can answer.
I totally agree with you and all comments. I refuse to use the term ‘real woman’ phrase, because we are all real, the phrase seems to have become a get out clause for people to attack. There’s no ideal body size and image in my opinion as long as you’re healthy and feel good in your own skin! I’ve worked with every shape of woman doing vintage hair, make up and pin up photoshoots and I meet so many women who say they wish they could do the pin up thing, some don’t even have the confidence to slick on a little red lipstick but I always encourage these women to be who they want to be without feeling under pressure of weight, or self esteem issues, or feeling they should dress a certain way to fit in! At the end of the day I love it when a woman feels happy and content enough to walk around holding her head high!
Thank you for commenting – it is SO important that we feel comfortable with who we are. Otherwise the quest to get the right look in order to fit in take over and creates misery.