"Real Women"

"Real Women Have Curves" came out in 2002. It's a compelling coming of age story, but also the story of growing up Latina in a racist white culture, and growing up fat and being told to hate your body. Anna, her sister, and her mother work in a factory (with other women) sewing couture dresses for less than minimum wage, beautiful dresses that are never larger than a size seven. Because that's what a woman is, right? Wealthy, white, and slender. That's what we're all told being a real woman is: airbrushed, slender, white perfection. It's on the tv, in movies, in just about every ad ever. And this movie entered the world and the phrase "real women have curves" entered the conversation.

And that's insulting. It's an insulting thing to say.

Real women come in different sizes and shapes They are tall and they are short; they are slender and they are  fat; they are  large breasted and small breasted and lacking breasts entirely; they are wide hipped and narrow hipped. They have plump arms and skinny arms, bow legs or straight, long hair or short hair. They wear make up and they don't; they shave their legs and underarms and they don't; they wear high heels and boots and sneakers and flip flops and go barefoot; they wear skirts and pants and cover their hair and are nudists.

Women are human beings with all the range and glory that human beings come in.

Saying "real women have curves" is policing. It polices womens' bodies and tells women what is and isn't acceptable female-ness. And that sucks.

 There is, rightly, a backlash against the phrase now. Saying simply "real women have curves" without qualifying statements like "and real women don't have curves, too" is problematic. Deeply problematic.

But apparently people need reminding that the phrase came into existence for a reason. There is still huge pressure on women to be small, to be slender, to have eternally perky breasts that aren't too big (like a slutty slut) and pert firm but not too big butts and no hips and upper arms you can bounce a quarter off of. There is huge pressure on women to take up as little space as possible, to be child sized, to be pocket sized.

The phrase "realm women have curves" is problematic. Saying "this large woman is attractive and this skinny woman is gross" is wrong. Comparing women's bodies, pitting body type against body type, is divisive and harmful. But, and apparently this needs saying, simply posting a photo of a fat woman is not an attack on slender women. Saying that fat women are sexy or beautiful or desirable is not an attack on slender women, Acknowledging that fat women exist is not an attack on slender women.

Let me say that again.

Acknowledging that fat women exist, have a right to exist, have a right to be recognized as human beings, is not an attack on women who aren't fat.

So can women who identify as feminist please stop complaining about size-positive posts, images, quotes, etc? If it's something that honestly and legitimately tears a group down, by all means, criticize it. But if it's something that does nothing more than elevate someone different from you? Knock it the hell off. That's just petty bullshit, and it's harmful. It's saying that bodies other than your own do not deserve respect or to be treated as human.

Playing Pinterest Bingo!

Hello, harpies! It's time for another round of everyone's faaaaavorite game, Pinterest Bingo!!!

Today's image is this stunner:


Are you ready? LET'S GO!

1. "Every guy thinks" BZZZZT. Guys are not a monolith. They do not all think the same thing. The idea that guys all think the same thing in this case is based on the assumption that all guys are straight, cisgendered, and thinking about girls. Hello patriarchy, how are you?



2. "that every girls' dream is to find the perfect guy." BZZZZT. As above, girls are not a monolith.
   



3. Also, calling women "girls" is infantilizing. There are many things to recommend girls! Small children can be really fun! However, adult women are not small children! They have significant differences in their mental and physical capacities. Using the same term for six-year-olds and thirty-six-year-olds erases those differences and builds a base of support for treating women as if they just don't know their own minds, they aren't logical, they can't make decisions on their own, they just need someone to take care of them... see also the recent push of anti-choice legislation surrounding mandatory ultrasound before abortion. It's predicated on the opinion that IF ONLY WOMEN KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING! LET'S GIVE THEM MORE INFORMATION! Which ignores the fact that um, yeah, people getting abortions? Know what they're doing. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE DOING IT.



4. Women do not exist for men, or to find men, or to date/fuck/sleep with/marry men. Many women do these things! They are not the end-all, be-all of women's existence.
   
   
5. "every girls dream is to eat without getting fat!" Hello fat hate my old friend!
   
   Leaving aside the repeated use of "girl", leaving aside the non-standard grammar, leaving aside the assumed monolith, we're left with "women dream of eating without getting fat." The thing of it is, I have known people who have actually yearned for this. The question becomes, why? Oh, perhaps it's because we live in a society that clearly privileges thin-ness, conflates it with health, and are awash in messages that fat kills. I'm not even talking about the subtle messages here, I'm talking about the blunt messages that fat kills.
   
   Thanks for your FIRST PAGE OF RESULTS, Google.
   
   So again, leaving aside the subtle messages about "increasing your health" and such, when you are told that fat kills, and you see fat people made fun of and stigmatized (see: every fat joke, ever), it's adaptive behavior to not want to be fat. It is! It lessens the stigma you face, and if you buy the message that fat will kill you, then clearly it'll keep you alive longer.
   
   Flaw number one, though is, you're going to die anyway. You are! Fact of life!
   
   Flaw number two is that a lot of the science on weight and fat are pretty fucking wrong! If you haven't already, I recommend reading Junkfood Science. There aren't super-recent updates, but there are a lot of takedowns of the common things we're told about fat and weight there. I also strongly recommend Fat Nutritionist. No, really, go read her blog NOW. It's amazing.
   
   So yeah, this is actually a common dream. However, it's not universal, and it's straight up fat hate.
   
   It also plays in to sexism - if you're obsessed with how you look, and making sure you don't eat too much and don't get fat, you literally do not have the brain power to deal with other things, like ohhhhhhh fighting the good fight against restrictive anti-choice legislation. (No, really - when you're hungry (and if you're on a diet so you don't get fat or become not-fat, you're hungry, since you're literally starving yourself) your capacity for thought is diminished.)
   
   And like we've detailed here before, images like this just propagate these memes. How many people see this and laugh because well DUH, of course it's true!
   
   It's really, really not, though.
   
   So yup, BINGO.
   
   

1 Million Women are sacrificed on the altar of Kyriarchy every year.

Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.

More than half (51.1%) of female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance; for male victims, more than half (52.4%) reported being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger.

Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported that they were made to penetrate someone else during their lifetime; most men who were made to penetrate someone else reported that the perpetrator was either an intimate partner (44.8%) or an acquaintance (44.7%).

An estimated 13% of women and 6% of men have experienced sexual coercion in their lifetime (i.e., unwanted sexual penetration after being pressured in a nonphysical way); and 27.2% of women and 11.7% of men have experienced unwanted sexual contact.

Most female victims of completed rape (79.6%) experienced their first rape before the age of 25; 42.2% experienced their first completed rape before the age of 18 years.

More than one-quarter of male victims of completed rape (27.8%) experienced their first rape when they were 10 years of age or younger.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville discusses recent CDC statistics regarding rape and idly wonders

Imagine if the amount of effort put into "ending obesity" because of its alleged drain on the healthcare system were put into dismantling the rape culture.

Here's the CDC fact sheet.