CN: Body Image, Fat shaming
I stopped by Dreamer’s Cards and Games in St. Louis Park last weekend. Cute little store: Tiny selection of comics and games, pretty large selection of Magic cards, and half the store dedicated to a playing area. I was browsing their comics selection and my gaze snagged on…wait…is that a FAT FLYING HAPPY-LOOKING FEMALE SUPERHERO!?
CN for negative body image.
Boo for having to come to grips with winter weight gain. Last winter I was pretty awesome and pleased with myself. I started jogging regularly in January and kept it up until early July. I ran my first ever 5K! I can pinpoint exactly when I dropped the routine (thanks apartment flood and sudden move). Then it was too cold to run. Then it was too dark to run. Then it was too November to run. And who runs in December? Yuck. Of course it was waaaaay to January and February to use my gym membership. Continue reading “Yay for spring!”
I have two tattoos. I want more! I love wearing art that is important to me, carrying with me the memories and experiences that went into my choice of tattoo. Even though my first tattoo was flash picked off of a wall, I smile at the eagerness of my just-turned-18 self, that the fact that I was getting a tattoo was more important than what I put on my body. Even that crappy tattoo has its place.
All sorts of people get all sorts of tattoos for all sorts of reasons, and in recent Western culture we have placed judgement on the types of people who get tattoos, what those tattoos are, and even where they’re placed. If you get a tattoo you’re a punk who will never amount to anything, you’re defiling your body because teh bible. If you get a highly visible tattoo you’re an idiot who will never get a respectable job. There might be a few instances where it’s okay for a man to get a tattoo – military tattoos come to mind. But if you’re a woman, well, it doesn’t really matter why or where you get tattooed – you’re a skanky whore.
Critink has a post about this perception of women who get tattoos. The author justifiably took exception to an article which mentions the phrase “Skank Flank: The New Tramp Stamp”. With very little digging Critink shows that judging women who have tattoos is just one more instance of body-shaming and the idea that women should be told what we can and can’t do with our bodies:
Here is how the same douchebags would like us to view tattoos:
- Lower back tattoos: you’re a tramp
- Rib tattoos: you’re a skank
- Wrist tattoos: you’re a dumb skank
- Arm tattoos: you’re a whore
- Leg tattoos: you’re a whore
- Feet tattoos: you’re a whore
- Shoulder tattoos: you’re a whore
- Tattoos anywhere: you’re a whore
- No tattoos: you’re still a whore.
Visit Critink for the full story. It’s a short, but powerful read.
I have two tattoos. I want more! I love wearing art that is important to me, carrying with me the memories and experiences that went into my choice of tattoo. Even though my first tattoo was flash picked off of a wall, I smile at the eagerness of my just-turned-18 self, that the fact that I was getting a tattoo was more important than what I put on my body. Even that crappy tattoo has its place.
All sorts of people get all sorts of tattoos for all sorts of reasons, and in recent Western culture we have placed judgement on the types of people who get tattoos, what those tattoos are, and even where they’re placed. If you get a tattoo you’re a punk who will never amount to anything, you’re defiling your body because teh bible. If you get a highly visible tattoo you’re an idiot who will never get a respectable job. There might be a few instances where it’s okay for a man to get a tattoo – military tattoos come to mind. But if you’re a woman, well, it doesn’t really matter why or where you get tattooed – you’re a skanky whore.
Critink has a post about this perception of women who get tattoos. The author justifiably took exception to an article which mentions the phrase “Skank Flank: The New Tramp Stamp”. With very little digging Critink shows that judging women who have tattoos is just one more instance of body-shaming and the idea that women should be told what we can and can’t do with our bodies:
Here is how the same douchebags would like us to view tattoos:
- Lower back tattoos: you’re a tramp
- Rib tattoos: you’re a skank
- Wrist tattoos: you’re a dumb skank
- Arm tattoos: you’re a whore
- Leg tattoos: you’re a whore
- Feet tattoos: you’re a whore
- Shoulder tattoos: you’re a whore
- Tattoos anywhere: you’re a whore
- No tattoos: you’re still a whore.
Visit Critink for the full story. It’s a short, but powerful read.
We’ve heard that celebrity/modeling photography and Photoshop go hand-in-hand, but how many of us can visualize what that actually means? Much kudos and thanks to Jason Thibeault at Lousy Canuck for his article, Teaching girls that pretty isn’t pretty enough, in which he gave some examples of the unrealistic body images and ideas of beauty that are planted in our brains by the media, and how these software-designed bodies and faces have little to do with what any of us really look like.
The website that he cites, Forever Healthy and Young, shows 60 models and celebrities before and after Photoshop. Here’s a few of the before and afters…but you gotta go read Jason’s article for the full list.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were more gorgeous models with freckles so that people with freckles might see them as just another physical characteristic instead of as a blemish? We could start by letting this gorgeous woman’s speckled splendor shine.
Guess what? George Clooney don’t need no Photoshop help. He’s a kick-ass actor and drop-dread sexy with the wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair.
I found myself looking at the befores, then at the afters, then at the befores…and just felt sad. All of these beautiful people are beautiful in their own right, unadulterated. But somebody somewhere decided that a few of the hard-earned wrinkles, the little brown birthmark, the curvy hip had to be erased, blended or flattened to make a unique human being look more like the same flawless, general, standard, boring, china doll.
Make sure to check out the three links at the bottom of the Forever Healthy and Young site that Jason references in his post. They have links to stories about recent laws, proposed restrictions, and bans against Photoshopped images. Food for thought…the idea of legislating alteration of photos may be a discussion for a future post.
