This made me reflect not only on society's standards of beauty but on the standards I impose on celebrities. Once a few years ago, I was watching the NCAA basketball tournament and it came on me in a flash that the players were absolute BABIES. College kids! Putting themselves out there on national TV, playing a game that so many people expected them to win handily! Why did I think it was OK to crap on them when they messed up, when I should really be rooting for everybody on the floor to do their best and not get hurt? Was it because they had a highly developed ability that I did not possess and their performance was so proficient that they seemed beyond me in some way?
Same with general celebrity. I've read media coverage of Taylor Swift and interviews with her and been less than impressed. She's so famous and such a fantastic musician and songwriter and so in control of her business affairs and her personal style (see where I'm going with this?)...yeah, same place as the college ball players took me. Her accomplishments made me forget that she is THIRTY YEARS OLD. When I was thirty I had yet to become a mother, I had just finished grad school and was working to establish myself professionally, and most importantly I was still not a full-grown person with a confident and consistent world view. Good LORD, I'm STILL not fully baked in that way. So why do I expect it of other people just because they LOOK like they're finished products? Aren't we all human and never perfected?
I identify as a Christian and I'm a little ashamed of this failure to extend grace to others. My promise to myself and to everyone else is to do my best to take a deep breath before I form an opinion of a person and another before I express it. Thank you for making me think.
This is great. In my case my little one was obssessed with being "thicc" and hated her small frame. This applies either way as instagram now serves as an advertisement for workout videos, fashion, and unattainable goals of what men want to see. I'll pass this around to my kids.
Ah, thank you!! Instagram has updated image of perfection since the one concocted by VS, but I think unpacking the brand's legacy of toxicity makes it all easier to see all the ways we aspire to standards we didn't set for ourselves. (Related: I wish my dad was sending me shit like this when I was in high school.)
Oh yeah they absolutely started a bad thing. I’m a toxic guy sometimes. I grew up wanting every girl in school to be a VS model. (Welp, thanks. It helps me when I’m stuck)
Thank you for saying what's been on my mind a lot lately. I've been very, very critical of Taylor Swift and her lack of political activism in the past, yet I also say "too little too late" when she is politically active now. Likewise, I've been upset with her implicitly racist actions and lack of privilege awareness, while I also view her using people of color and LGBTQIA+ people just for marketing by including them in her work more often now. The point is, it's hard to see where my justified criticism ends and my internalized misogyny starts. I think at the root of my outrage, and why it's directed at her more than other stars with similar errors in judgement, is some jealousy. I've struggled (and still struggle) with my own eating disorder and wondered why Swift seemed to "have it all." Me realizing I have a shared struggle with Swift made me stop and re-evaluate why I hold a grudge against her. Maybe her eating disorder reveal is my wake-up call that all women need to stand together right now, or at least be more forgiving of each other (at least as forgiving as this culture is to men, sheesh!). Not sure I'm making sense, but I'm hoping this is a safe space to voice my conflicted feelings around public figures like Swift and the messages they send.
YOU ARE TOTALLY MAKING SENSE. Thank you for this. I also spent a long time furious with Swift's lack of responsibility, and I definitely think part of it was my own sense of envy compounded by a sense of raised expectations for women. I'm still untangling a lot of that with Swift specifically, but since the 2016 election, I've watched it happen with more clarity around other famous famous women. For example, I woke up one day, and thought, "Hold on, I don't fucking hate Anne Hathaway." Just like the flat stomach idea, I had to poke at the concept to figure out I didn't come up with it myself...
Lauren you are absolutely amazing. And I’m totally glad to see vs failing as it’s a perfect example of everything that’s wrong w the patriarchy. And I’ve heard stories of them being trained to purposely size women wrong to better fit their image as a brand. And it’s interesting how we find our version of healthy when we come out and begin to love ourselves. When I came out for the first time in I gained the desire to live and to be myself and the best version. I was closer to 300 pounds than I was to 200 when I came out and today I’m getting close to being under 200 for the first time since I was 21
Purposely. Fitting. Women. Wrong. The scam just runs so deep.
It's been really amazing to see the arc of my body issues in tandem with coming out. A lot of my eating and body neuroses seemed to fall away as I fully become myself. (Read: I'm fully convinced being queer is a super power.)
I'm a transgender woman who transitioned as an adult, so I wasn't raised as a young woman in this society — I can’t even imagine the kind of poisonous pressure VS and the like must have put on girls. I was raised as a boy (and, I’ll be honest, not an especially thoughtful or introspective one), so for me, seeing their ads was just “huh huh, she purty” without thinking through the awful ramifications on the girls I knew of what I was seeing (and probably saying).
Now that I’ve grown up to be the wonderful woman I am, I feel like I can empathize more, though it will never be as intense as it would have been to face this barrage of images and implications in my teens and twenties. I’m constantly feeling that my body isn’t even remotely womanly enough, even though what constitutes “a womanly body” comprises infinitudes. And I know it’s not from anyone else *telling* me that I’m not enough, at least not literally or directly — it’s entirely in my own head, and that head has been stuffed with messages of What It Means To Be A Woman for my entire life, even before I realized I was one.
Wow, yeah, that idea of "womanly enough" is so interesting. My partner is non-binary, and every since we started dating, I've gotten in touch with the full scope of my masculine energy, and come to grips with the fact that I was terrified of it before. The wildest thing is the role we all play in enforcing these concepts, holding ourself prisoner to expectations we didn't even come up with in the first place.
Thank you so much for sharing! I'm excited to hear more of your perspective as we go. <3
Look at the crazy ways girls are altering their appearance using filters & photoshop on sites like Instagram & Tik Tok.
Some of the images are more like caricatures than actual humans.
This made me reflect not only on society's standards of beauty but on the standards I impose on celebrities. Once a few years ago, I was watching the NCAA basketball tournament and it came on me in a flash that the players were absolute BABIES. College kids! Putting themselves out there on national TV, playing a game that so many people expected them to win handily! Why did I think it was OK to crap on them when they messed up, when I should really be rooting for everybody on the floor to do their best and not get hurt? Was it because they had a highly developed ability that I did not possess and their performance was so proficient that they seemed beyond me in some way?
Same with general celebrity. I've read media coverage of Taylor Swift and interviews with her and been less than impressed. She's so famous and such a fantastic musician and songwriter and so in control of her business affairs and her personal style (see where I'm going with this?)...yeah, same place as the college ball players took me. Her accomplishments made me forget that she is THIRTY YEARS OLD. When I was thirty I had yet to become a mother, I had just finished grad school and was working to establish myself professionally, and most importantly I was still not a full-grown person with a confident and consistent world view. Good LORD, I'm STILL not fully baked in that way. So why do I expect it of other people just because they LOOK like they're finished products? Aren't we all human and never perfected?
I identify as a Christian and I'm a little ashamed of this failure to extend grace to others. My promise to myself and to everyone else is to do my best to take a deep breath before I form an opinion of a person and another before I express it. Thank you for making me think.
This is great. In my case my little one was obssessed with being "thicc" and hated her small frame. This applies either way as instagram now serves as an advertisement for workout videos, fashion, and unattainable goals of what men want to see. I'll pass this around to my kids.
Ah, thank you!! Instagram has updated image of perfection since the one concocted by VS, but I think unpacking the brand's legacy of toxicity makes it all easier to see all the ways we aspire to standards we didn't set for ourselves. (Related: I wish my dad was sending me shit like this when I was in high school.)
Oh yeah they absolutely started a bad thing. I’m a toxic guy sometimes. I grew up wanting every girl in school to be a VS model. (Welp, thanks. It helps me when I’m stuck)
Thank you for saying what's been on my mind a lot lately. I've been very, very critical of Taylor Swift and her lack of political activism in the past, yet I also say "too little too late" when she is politically active now. Likewise, I've been upset with her implicitly racist actions and lack of privilege awareness, while I also view her using people of color and LGBTQIA+ people just for marketing by including them in her work more often now. The point is, it's hard to see where my justified criticism ends and my internalized misogyny starts. I think at the root of my outrage, and why it's directed at her more than other stars with similar errors in judgement, is some jealousy. I've struggled (and still struggle) with my own eating disorder and wondered why Swift seemed to "have it all." Me realizing I have a shared struggle with Swift made me stop and re-evaluate why I hold a grudge against her. Maybe her eating disorder reveal is my wake-up call that all women need to stand together right now, or at least be more forgiving of each other (at least as forgiving as this culture is to men, sheesh!). Not sure I'm making sense, but I'm hoping this is a safe space to voice my conflicted feelings around public figures like Swift and the messages they send.
YOU ARE TOTALLY MAKING SENSE. Thank you for this. I also spent a long time furious with Swift's lack of responsibility, and I definitely think part of it was my own sense of envy compounded by a sense of raised expectations for women. I'm still untangling a lot of that with Swift specifically, but since the 2016 election, I've watched it happen with more clarity around other famous famous women. For example, I woke up one day, and thought, "Hold on, I don't fucking hate Anne Hathaway." Just like the flat stomach idea, I had to poke at the concept to figure out I didn't come up with it myself...
Lauren you are absolutely amazing. And I’m totally glad to see vs failing as it’s a perfect example of everything that’s wrong w the patriarchy. And I’ve heard stories of them being trained to purposely size women wrong to better fit their image as a brand. And it’s interesting how we find our version of healthy when we come out and begin to love ourselves. When I came out for the first time in I gained the desire to live and to be myself and the best version. I was closer to 300 pounds than I was to 200 when I came out and today I’m getting close to being under 200 for the first time since I was 21
Purposely. Fitting. Women. Wrong. The scam just runs so deep.
It's been really amazing to see the arc of my body issues in tandem with coming out. A lot of my eating and body neuroses seemed to fall away as I fully become myself. (Read: I'm fully convinced being queer is a super power.)
I'm a transgender woman who transitioned as an adult, so I wasn't raised as a young woman in this society — I can’t even imagine the kind of poisonous pressure VS and the like must have put on girls. I was raised as a boy (and, I’ll be honest, not an especially thoughtful or introspective one), so for me, seeing their ads was just “huh huh, she purty” without thinking through the awful ramifications on the girls I knew of what I was seeing (and probably saying).
Now that I’ve grown up to be the wonderful woman I am, I feel like I can empathize more, though it will never be as intense as it would have been to face this barrage of images and implications in my teens and twenties. I’m constantly feeling that my body isn’t even remotely womanly enough, even though what constitutes “a womanly body” comprises infinitudes. And I know it’s not from anyone else *telling* me that I’m not enough, at least not literally or directly — it’s entirely in my own head, and that head has been stuffed with messages of What It Means To Be A Woman for my entire life, even before I realized I was one.
Wow, yeah, that idea of "womanly enough" is so interesting. My partner is non-binary, and every since we started dating, I've gotten in touch with the full scope of my masculine energy, and come to grips with the fact that I was terrified of it before. The wildest thing is the role we all play in enforcing these concepts, holding ourself prisoner to expectations we didn't even come up with in the first place.
Thank you so much for sharing! I'm excited to hear more of your perspective as we go. <3