(Social Justice) Skeletons in My Closet

Shopping, specifically for clothes, is another awful guilty pleasure that I have given in to ever since high school, when the “shopping” switch got flipped in my head and I went from hating even thinking about clothes to getting excited about playing dress-up every day!

On one hand, this is a positive thing for me since my love of clothes stems from the hard-won acceptance of my body. On the other hand, my passion for clothing takes up a lot of time that I could spend doing more fulfilling things (like blogging or hanging out with friends or baking cupcakes), sucks up money (that I really could be spending better), and takes up way more space than I have. Beyond that, the way that I shop doesn’t currently fall in line with my passion for Social Justice.

I’d like to explore that last factor for a little while. The environmental harm of the inexpensive fast-fashion that I favor (because I don’t have the money to spend on “high-fashion”) has already been said much better than I can by other bloggers and journalists, ditto on the human-rights issues that come with these retailers. What I want to focus on is something that I haven’t seen as much said about… the racism (in the form of erasure) exhibited by many clothing retailers.

I was browsing the Forever21 website today (with no intent to spend money, I just wanted some mindless distraction) and all of a sudden I was just struck with how white every. single. model. on the site was. This inspired me to do a little quasi-experiment: I spent 5 minutes clicking randomly around the websites for stores I usually shop from, and keeping track of how many people of color I saw depicted on those sites, in larger fashion shots or modeling specific articles of clothing for sale.

Here are my results…

Forever21: 5 Images (all of the same model) in the Forever21 Plus Size Section.

Urban Outfitters: 15 Images dispersed throughout all Women’s sections, except for Intimates, and 0 Images in the Men’s section. (Approximately 3 different models.)

Modcloth: 15 Images (of the same model) all concentrated in the “Style Sealed with a Kiss” Special Feature. Since Modcloth photographs almost everything on a dress-form instead of a person, the numbers are skewed. The amount of diversity on the site varies depending on the model(s) chosen  for the special “feature” (where full outfits are shown on an actual person) in any given week. However, this site consistently tends to include a wide variety of models and often uses employees and bloggers as models, which encourages a much more diverse bunch of people showing up in their photo-shoots! Since they have hundreds less photos of people than sites like Forever21 and Urban Outfitters do a number like 15 makes up a MUCH larger percentage of the pictures on this site, thus, I consider them much better than Urban Outfitters even though the number is the same.

H&M: 11 Images (of two models) dispersed throughout all features. H&M doesn’t offer an online shopping option for the US, but they have a “Style Guide” and a few photo-shoots up on the site that all feature a variety of models. Again, the same points about volume of images as I made about Modcloth applies.

I think we get the point. Obviously this isn’t a very scientific study… for one, I was simply counting models based on a split-second assessment of their appearance, I very well may have missed a few images that should have been counted in my browsing. Furthermore, the entire concept of race is a social construct and there is no way to tell what a person identifies their own ethnicity as by looking at them (asking is the only way to do that).

There are without a doubt hard limits to what we can take from these observations, however thought experiments like this can reveal a company’s tendency to hire models that fit a certain mold (thin light-skinned women with stereotypically Caucasian features… you know, the dominant Western standard of beauty). Its fairly easy to see this when companies like Forever21 hire this type of model almost exclusivley and companies like Urban Outfitters only photograph a tiny fraction of their clothing on people of color.

The “Truth” About Beauty

Warning: Lots of snark ahead. Every so often I just can’t contain myself and stuff like this happens… enjoy! (This was posted a  month ago, but I just found it today so bear with me.)

So a few months back I applied for an internship at Psychology Today and never heard back. I was slightly bummed out about this (but not really, considering the awesome internship I was accepted for) up until today… now I am just relieved not to be associated with an organization that would actually give this misogynistic piece of  hack-journalism masquerading as something of value a platform. (Not only was this posted online, but it was apparently a cover article in the magazine.)

“Welcome to Uglytopia—the world reimagined as a place where it’s the content of a woman’s character, not her pushup bra, that puts her on the cover of Maxim.”

Welcome to Psychology Today – psychology reimagined as a field where where the regurgitation of misogynistic bullshit, not real research, gets you a platform! Now, let me teach you how this great new world works…

Women in this world get into relationships with people (MEN, STRAIGHT MEN!) because they find us hot… being interesting, funny, enjoyable to spend time with, and a good person doesn’t get you onto the cover of Maxim so clearly those qualities don’t matter.

“It just doesn’t seem fair to us that some people come into life with certain advantages—whether it’s a movie star chin or a multimillion-dollar shipbuilding inheritance. Maybe we need affirmative action for ugly people; make George Clooney rotate in some homely women between all his gorgeous girlfriends. While we wish things were different, we’d best accept the ugly reality: No man will turn his head to ogle a woman because she looks like the type to buy a turkey sandwich for a homeless man or read to the blind.”

Science doesn’t matter so much here, but for the benefit of the feminists I’m going to to to say some science-y things to add validity to my argument. Doesn’t matter if I contradict myself halfway through (there really are universal standards of beauty… but what is considered beautiful changes across cultures, depending on access to resources.)

“The features men evolved to go for in women—youth, clear skin, a symmetrical face and body, feminine facial features, an hourglass figure—are those indicating that a woman would be a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on a man’s genes.

These preferences span borders, cultures, and generations, meaning yes, there really are universal standards of beauty. And while Western women do struggle to be slim, the truth is, women in all cultures eat (or don’t) to appeal to “the male gaze.” The body size that’s idealized in a particular culture appears to correspond to the availability of food. In cultures like ours, where you can’t go five miles without passing a 7-Eleven and food is sold by the pallet-load at warehouse grocery stores, thin women are in. In cultures where food is scarce (like in Sahara-adjacent hoods), blubber is beautiful, and women appeal to men by stuffing themselves until they’re slim like Jabba the Hut.”

My point is that standards of beauty are just a universal thing, and also that what’s hardest to maintain in a culture is what is considered beautiful. This isn’t sexist at all, even though women are the only ones expected to do whatever is more difficult in that culture to be hot. Also, I didn’t contradict myself at all even though changing beauty standards, based on resources, means that what is beautiful isn’t universal at all…. oh fuck it, science is hard lets get back to the misogyny!

Time to ask ourselves the most important question of all: what about the menz!?

“And, just like women who aren’t very attractive, men who make very little money or are chronically out of work tend to have a really hard time finding partners. There is some male grumbling about this. Yet, while feminist journalists deforest North America publishing articles urging women to bow out of the beauty arms race and “Learn to love that woman in the mirror!”, nobody gets into the ridiculous position of advising men to “Learn to love that unemployed guy sprawled on the couch!””

See? Men are forced every day to work and make money and cultivate skills so that they can be considered datable. Its only fair that women should have to spend hours of time and massive amounts of money on looking hot because buying makeup, and expensive haircuts, and going to the gym constantly, and counting calories, and shopping for the perfect outfits, and styling our hair, and doing our make-up, and on and on… all of these things provide so much personal satisfaction and stimulation. Whereas having a career that you enjoy, and making money, and interacting with other people, and just generally being a productive human being is just so dull and such a chore.

These two things are totally comparable, especially since the only thing we expect out of women in relationships is beauty… its not like we expect them to also have jobs or maintain the household/children/pets (or both) as well!

“Now, before you brand me a traitor to my gender, let me say that I’m all for women having the vote, and I think a woman with a mustache should make the same money as a man with a mustache. But you don’t help that woman by advising her, “No need to wax that lip fringe or work off that beer belly!” (Because the road to female empowerment is…looking just like a hairy old man?)”

Look at that moustache & beer belly!

Hairy old men are the road to female empowerment ladies and gentlemen… or you know, its not. Is it possible that women who have “let themselves go” don’t all look like this? I haven’t shaved in quite a few weeks (it was No-Shave November… oh, and I just didn’t feel like it) and I haven’t worn makeup in two years, plus I’ve been way too busy to head to the gym for awhile… so, when do I grow my penis and my beard?

Moreover, even if some women do end up looking just like a hairy old man who the hell cares? If they are happy with the way they look, shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t they be free to focus on whatever they want to? Isn’t that what empowerment is really about… being comfortable with who you are and doing the things you love? (Or is it about getting a man? I always forget…)

Where I Went Wrong

When I started dieting, I stopped looking in the mirror and seeing myself: the vibrant, accomplished, happy young woman that I am proud to be. I stopped seeing myself and I started to see my belly that sticks out… and then I wondered, how long will it take to work that belly away? I started to see my rounded calves and imagine how much cuter they would look if they were slim and shapely. I looked at my arms and saw flab to tone away, looked at my thighs and saw a jiggle that had to be stilled, looked at my face and saw puffy cheeks that needed to be drained… the more I looked, the more I broke myself down into parts, problem areas with targeted exercises to go with them.

I started out trying to feel better in my body (and yes, also trying to make a skirt fit the way it used to) and managed, somehow, to unravel so much of the progress I’ve made over the past six years; as if that skirt, that decision, was a loose thread that I pulled just a little too hard, tearing everything apart.

Love & Beauty

I started this post ages ago and then left it for awhile because I didn’t know where I was going with it. After yesterday’s blog, I think I’ve figured it out. So first, what I wrote then:

On Black Friday I braved the malls for an hour or so with a friend of mine, mostly because we wanted to see what the fuss was all about (in the parking lot on the way out we decided that we never needed to do this again… people go CRAZY on Black Friday!) On this shopping trip I bought some nail polish in the chaos and then promptly forgot about it, until it turned up under my bed today and I decided to use it to paint my nails.As I was staring at the bottle while my nails dried (not much you can do with wet fingernails!) I started to think about the name of the polish… Love & Beauty. In fact, Forever 21’s whole makeup line is called Love & Beauty which got me to thinking about the connection that we CONSTANTLY make as a society between, you guessed it, love and beauty.

Last time I posted, I wrote about forgetting beauty norms and embracing the idea of being ugly because, why should we care anyway? Wouldn’t we all be much happier if we were free to present ourselves in whatever way we liked best, rather than following beauty conventions? Today I’d like to acknowledge the hurdles & limitations that stand in the way of doing just that; the ways in which society enforces our obsession with beauty. Then I’d like to analyze these “incentives” for being beautiful and explain why it is all just silly, anyways.

Relationships are often the biggest pressure-point when it comes to being beautiful. After all how will we ever attract someone to love us if we’re not “pretty.” I don’t know… lets take a look.

Just a bit of digging on google quickly uncovers something impressive. Based on psychological studies the idea that most people have (I have to be attractive in order to attract someone to love me) is not necessarily accurate. Rather, love seems to follow the age-old adage: love is blind. Sure some psychologists claim to have discovered the “golden ratios” for facial beauty but there are just as many studies out there that show people who are in love tend to see their partner as attractive regardless of what the societal standard may be! Inner awesomeness seems to radiate outwards and create positive associations, regardless of appearance.

For instance:

” In one study, 70% of college students deemed an instructor physically attractive when he acted in a friendly manner, while only 30% found him attractive when he was cold and distant. Indeed, when surveyed for attributes in selecting a mate, both males and females felt kindness and an exciting personality were more important in a mate than good looks. Thus, to a certain degree, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.”

At the end of the day its important to keep in mind that looks will fade one day. You shouldn’t choose a partner or seek to attract a partner based solely on the way you look – because that is not the way to fulfilling relationships. Peoples bodies change and grow all of the time; in order for you to accept those changes, your partner (if you choose to have one) should not only be accepting, but be supporting of the natural changes your body goes through. I’d rather have relationships (romantic or otherwise) with people who like me for who I am rather than what I look like any day – wouldn’t you?

This is where the nail-polish and consumerism in general comes in; I find it striking how the company choose to link love & beauty together like this. I mean, the beauty part makes sense since nail polish is a “beauty” product… but love? This is a very blatant example of how companies like to capitalize on our human longing to be loved in order to sell a product; in this case the product is makeup, but more generally the “product” being sold is always a particular look that someone has deemed beautiful. Our magazines, television, movies, clothing stores, makeup stores, even grocery stores (diet foods!) all use the “beauty incentive” to sell us products to some degree.

In this way beauty is incredibly dis-empowering. Companies create a beauty ideal and instill a wide-spread societal desire to meet that ideal; those same companies sell products that promise to get us closer to the ideal; companies make sure that the ideal remains constantly unreachable (for instance, look at how much models keep slimming down… always skinnier than is achievable by the average person) so that we “have to” buy more products in an attempt to reach it. Lather. rinse. repeat.