doise2:

(via Diversity Is More Than a Bra Size: What It’s Like to Be a Woman of Color in the Lingerie Industry)

This stunning lady wrote this amazing article.

uswhoresdontneedyou:

mywritingmysociety:

This makes me so happy, guys. Now if only this were the rule instead of the exception.

Photo from a post by Lisa Wade, ascribed to Kristen S. and Jessica J. who submitted them; click through photo for the SocImages post.

GETTING SOMEWHERE

I was frustrated at the lack of these as a CHILD. 

bodygossiping:

Well done Special K, you’ve inflicted another misleading diet ad on the world.

Those of you who have seen the latest Special K ‘What will you gain when you lose?’ advert will know the image I’m refering to, five sets of scales each reading a word such as confidence, sass, pride, hope, peace, sparkle or positivity.

Once again I have been filled with the sort of rage that comes only from this sort of advertising. Yes, according to them lot at Kellogs, losing weight is a sure-fire way to feeling imeasurably better about yourself.

Of course for many of us, feelings of low self worth or a lack of confidence are much deeper rooted than simply our apprearance. This may be where the worry manifests itself, but in reality the issue is far more comlex. I’ve spoken to several people (too many to count) who went on diets to make them feel better about themselves. And did it work? Did it f*ck.

Also- what Special K fail to say on their adverts is that the ‘Special K diet’ is actually incredibly unhealthy.

* There is no way that diet will allow you to absorb all the nutrients your body needs.

* The large reduction in food intake from a healthy diet to that will put the body into starvation mode.

BUT HEY THERE SPECIAL K, you’re not stupid are you. For in reality you know all too well that eating two small bowls of your cereal and a meal in one day will make people lose weight. You’ve guessed it might make them TEMPORARILY feel better about themselves. You have also, if I’m not mistaken, realised that after a while people will begin to eat more again, because after all- Special K tastes like cardboard. I’m sure it is within your field of knowledge that once people do begin to eat more again their bodies will be holding on to more of what they consume for fear they restrict (embark on another of your stupid diets) again.

OH WAIT. Once they regain that weight they might need to lose it again (probably due to the pressure that yourself and many other advertising monsters continue to inflict upon us all) and BINGO- more Special K purchases.

I would have less of an issue with this adveritsing ploy if it were more responsible. if it said you example that you could gain fitness by maintaining a suitable weight for your body. By suitable I mean a stable weight which comes from not over or under eating, but by responding to hunger rather than emotions.

Congrats Special K, you are both incredibly manipulative and irresponsible. You are swines, and I shan’t give you another second of my time except to say this….

Readers of this blog. There is a reason that the diet industry is one of the successful in the world (and worth millions). Meanwhile more and more of us are left feeling inadequate and battleing with years of yo yo dieting.

So basically Special K (and all you other diet industry types), you can sod off.

Sarah X

dcwomenkickingass:

Over on the Escher Girls blog, which does an amazingly consistent and good job of slicing and dicing comic book art featuring women, a submission was posted which blew my already cynical mind.

It was about a Batwoman piece that artist submitted for a portfolio review. The artist freely admits to not being the best artist in the world but wanted to get some feedback from portfolio reviews during SDCC.

I’ve stood and watched some portfolio reviews at conventions, and I’ve seen all levels of artists’ stuff -  from penciled images that makes your jaw drop with “you’ve got to be kidding me” to work that you can see real potential in.

You can check out more of her work on her DA page, but let’s focus on the comments she received in regard to this sketch of Batwoman.

I’d say that is fine portrait of Batwoman and, bonus, that no backs were broken in the production of it. Gail Simone said, “I like that Batwoman piece very much. I don’t know what the rest of the portfolio is like, but if you can tell a story as well, I would work with you any time.”

And now on to the feedback. You can read the whole thing over at Escher Girls but essentially the general feedback from the publishers was that it “wasn’t industry standard”. One company was more specific. Brace yourself: (Bolding mine.)

“Her breasts are much too small and do not have the lift that superhero women should have. Her jawline is fat and her neck much too long. The style of her hair is clunky and does not flow in a sense that a super human would. Her hips, waist and thighs are too big and she honestly looks fat. No one is going to want to read a comic with a fat female protagonist. I honestly recommend looking at issues of Sport’s Illustrated to get the right anatomy. Those women are the peak of human perfection, and that is what we want in this industry.”

You know I could post a few recent covers that show off female characters and their lack of anatomy (and backs and normal size asses) but I don’t even think I have too. And the fat comment? Look at the waist — does that look anyone who could be reasonably considered overweight?

And remember we don’t know which comic company this is. Could be a big two, could be an indie.

That said I am not the least bit surprised. Not when I was told by an artist who works at a big two company that an another artist was not given a gig on a female led book because a senior executive didn’t think the artist “drew women ‘sexy enough’”

And there are other tales I’ve been told. But I’ll save them for another day.

The debate about how women are drawn in comics seems to never end. And each time it comes up I am heartened by the folks who get it and then brought down to earth by the amazingly cluelessness of others - both men and women. Kelly’s column on the topic over on CBR practically broke the internet but if you haven’t read it you should. But prepare yourself for some of the comments.

And look this post isn’t about having artists who aren’t ready for the big time getting a pass. This isn’t about female artists and comics. This isn’t about disagreeing that there is a hyper-realism in comics. Of course there is, I know absolutely no one is real life who flies or has the ability to stop a missile with their bare hands. This is about how there is a fundamental disconnect by some people in comics when it comes to the depiction of women. Not by all. But even one like the person who commented on the Batwoman piece is too much.

jenerally:

In one of the bathroom stalls at the university I attend there was this huge message, it started with “It’s true, everyone is born and built differently, but being big-boned or big-hipped is no excuse for being fat.” It continued, but was very hard to read, as was the rebuttal.  The original writer, self-proclaimed “sexy biatch”, then wrote how “not all men want a girl that’s skinny or anorexic looking but being fat shows your lack of control and your unwillingness to care for yourself” and here’s the kicker, “If you don’t care for yourself you can’t expect someone else to” - because we’re all just waiting to be cared for, right?

I yanked out my pen, popped of the lid and with rebellious exhilaration fuelling me, I wrote:

“Change the society that perpetuates this ignorance, not your body.”

The potentially harmful effect of ultra-thin models and air-brushed female celebrities on the body image and self-esteem of women is well-documented. Could the increasing participation of women in professional sport prompt the media to portray female role models in a different, more beneficial light? Anecdotal evidence suggests not. To take just one example, prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics, female Olympic skiers and snowboarders appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in - you guessed it - bikinis. A new study of 258 US school girls and 171 female undergrads by Elizabeth Daniels has investigated how women and girls feel when they see sexualised images of female athletes.

The participants were allocated to one of three conditions - they either looked at five images of female athletes in a sporting context in their full sporting attire (the basketball player Anne Strother; the skateboarder Jen O’Brien; the tennis player Jennifer Capriati; the surfer Lisa Anderson; and the football player Mia Hamm), or they looked at five images of female athletes in a sexualised context with lots of flesh on display (the basketball player Lauren Jackson; the ice-skater Ekaterina Gordeeva; the swimmer Jenny Thompson; the softball player Jenny Finch; and the tennis player Anna Kournikova), or they looked at five images of bikini-clad magazine models given random names.

After looking at the first and last of their five allocated photographs (this was Lauren Jackson and Anna Kournikova in the sexualised athletes condition and Anne Strother and Mia Hamm in the sporty athletes condition), the participants were asked to write a paragraph “describing the woman in the photograph and discussing how this photograph makes you feel”.

The key finding is that the girls and undergrads who viewed the sexualised athlete images tended to say they admired or were jealous of the athletes’ bodies, they commented on the athletes’ sexiness, and they evaluated their own bodies negatively. Some also said they found the images inappropriate. The participants who viewed the bikini-clad glamour models responded similarly, except they rarely commented on the inappropriateness of the images, as if they’d come to accept the portrayal of women in that way. Daniels said that sexy images of female athletes “are no more likely to prompt viewers to reflect on their own physical activity involvement or appreciation of sport than sexualised model images.”

By contrast, participants who viewed the female athletes in a sporting context tended to comment on the athletes’ determination, passion and commitment; they wrote about feeling motivated to perform sport; and they reflected on their own sporting participation or sports they followed. “Infusing more performance images of female athletes into the media may be helpful in promoting physical activity among girls and young women,” Daniels said. “Currently, female athletes are largely absent from magazines targeted at teen girls.”
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Daniels, E. (2012). Sexy versus strong: What girls and women think of female athletes. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33 (2), 79-90 DOI: 10.1016/j.appdev.2011.12.002

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.