Recently in Beauty Category

UPDATE: I have been contacted by a L'Oréal spokesperson and the picture above was actually NOT taken by L'Oréal but a publicity photo submitted to them by Pinto's management.

After Beyonce was pretty much airbrushed whiter by L'Oréal not too long ago, it's all the more infuriating to see that their tendency to equate lighter skin with beauty hasn't changed. When they say Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire "is the new face of L'Oréal," what they seem to really mean is she has a new face of L'Oréal. Un-fucking-real.

Via the Frisky.

This weekly Saturday column "Ask Professor Foxy" will regularly contain sexually explicit material. This material is likely not safe for work viewing. The title of the column will include the major topic of the post, so please read the topic when deciding whether or not to read the entire column.

Hi Professor Foxy,

Thanks in advance,
Lonely

Hi Lonely -
Although I vowed not to bare the intimate details of my life in this column, I cannot help but respond personally as one not-thin woman to another. I have never been thin and get what it's like to walk through a world that tells you that you are inherently unattractive for the size you wear.

I don't doubt that some men will reject you due to your size, but others will not. Still others find women of size the hottest thing since butter on bread.

But I've found that bigger is better only when you sell it that way. Simply put, you have to think yourself Hot Stuff.

What about you do you find attractive? Yes--society, media, etc. says women over a certain size are unattractive, but I call bullshit. For many of us--size irrelevant given the malarkey all women are taught-- it is believing that we are hot that is difficult.

So how do you find yourself hot? What body parts do you like on yourself? Close your eyes and run your hands over your body . . . isn't there something lovely about how soft you are? What do you wear that feels sexy- playing dress up can help us see the erotic parts of ourselves.

There are thin men out there who date bigger women. The trick is finding them. How are you looking to meet men? Have you tried personal ads? In ads you can put it out there that you are bigger and what you want in a man. It helps lower the rejection factor.

For me, a basic tenet of feminism is not to beat yourself up over your likes/dislikes. Yes, there is some hypocrisy in being attracted to a man of a certain size, but your attraction is there and we can acknowledge our own hypocrisy and then move on.

Losing weight is something that has to be done for you. I would urge you not to focus on your size or weight, but instead on your health. How far can you run? How heavy a bag can you carry? Those numbers are often a better reflection of our health than the numbers on a scale.

As for flirting, there is not some magical code, and frankly, lots of people don't "flirt" at all. Men are just people. Talk to them, have a conversation, laugh. Somewhere in there, you will likely find that you are flirting. Nothing magically leads to another, but a good conversation can lead to a good relationship and/or good sex. Put yourself out there; try to be clear about what (and who!) you are interested in.

The risk of rejection is part of dating, regardless of size. The trick is to realize that being rejected is part of life. Only by putting yourself out there in all your fabulous size are you going to meet someone. I'm not saying it is easy, but only by putting ourselves out there do we get what we want.

If you have a question for Professor Foxy, send it to ProfessorFoxyATfeministingDOTcom.

It is not just that Miss California spoke her mind about gay marriage that makes this uniquely a feminist issue, but it does make her an asshole. For all the arguments defending her right to speak on this topic, to me, it is so sad that people so quickly fight to defend the rights of bigots to speak. So, I obviously fall too left of that argument to even participate in it. Or rather, I just agree with Jill,

It's not "religious persecution" to say that someone is a bigot for having bigoted views. It's not "religious persecution" to argue that those who want to deny basic civil rights based on sexual orientation are bigots. It would be persecution to, for example, pass a law stating that a consenting Christian adult wasn't allowed to marry another consenting Christian adult because of his or her faith, or to criminalize consensual sex between adult Christians. That's persecution. Not, "I didn't win a beauty pageant and then Perez Hilton called me a bitch."

As Jay Smooth pointed out in his video, the issue of pageantry and their role in our society raises bigger concerns. The reliance on heteronormativity and beauty standards in pageants is indeed a point of inquiry.

As a feminist, I hate when women's breasts make the news, since it is rarely to uncover the sexism embedded within a system. The fact that Carrie Prejean got breast implants is not newsworthy to me. The fact that the California Pageant Association paid for them, well that is. Not because it is scandalous, but because it shows that pageants aren't about highlighting women as they are or for their talents, but for their physical appearance and to make spectacle of a specific type of femininity.

Pageants only make sense because of binary gender roles that cater to mainstream understandings of femininity. They are a fetishized spectacle of femininity to the point where it is even OK if they are artificially constructed as long as they are pushing a normative ideal of what a "real woman" is. As feminists we know already that ideal is socially constructed. Her blatant homophobia just adds to the already established straight, cis-woman and white standard of beauty necessary for pageants to exist and to perpetuate the illusion of binary genders.

The April issue of French Elle features eight female European celebrities--including Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau, and Charlotte Rampling--all without makeup and, perhaps even more revealing, all entirely without Photoshopping or retouching of any kind. The mag's headline "Stars Sans Fards" translates to "without rouge/makeup," but it's a French saying that also suggests a sense of "openness."

I think this is great, particularly in an era when the only time you see celebrities without makeup is from terrible paparazzi shots.

What do you all think?

Via Shine

H/t to llevinoso

Kim Kardashian posted a pre-photoshopped picture of herself from her Complex Magazine photoshoot to her blog saying she is aware she has cellulite and "which curvy girl doesn't?" Complex had "mistakenly" run the pre-photoshopped picture showing her *gasp* cellulite. Soon after they took the picture down replacing it with one that trims down her thighs and lightens her skin.

Kim's response,

"I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect."

Kudos to her for saying that. Frankly, I see very little actual difference between the two pictures, but the subtle changes make a huge difference and I think it speaks to the extent popular culture will go to produce unnatural and unattainable images of women.

Hortense from Jezebel has a hilarious post about one of my pet peeves-magazines that try and help you "dress for your shape." I am so sick of being inundated with magazines that are supposed to help me look thinner or dress better, because you know, fat girls can't wear sexy clothes, we must hide our bodies. A quick google search and I found plenty of links about how to figure out what shape your body is, so you can figure out what clothes to wear.

As Hortense points out it is difficult to have an exhaustive list of body sizes because we are all shaped differently and therefore, not only are most of the categories limiting and exclusive, they are often downright offensive.

Take, for example, this Glamour feature from last year, which breaks women's body types into these categories: Tall, Busty, Petite, Boyish, Plus-Size, and Pear-Shaped. Which is all well and good, I suppose, unless you happen to be a Pear-Shaped Busty Tall Woman looking for ideas on Plus-Size gowns, because the advice for each category is markedly different, which would lead many women to believe that there are only certain aspects of their bodies that are truly worth addressing, as opposed to concentrating on what fits and feels good.

Also, as someone who generally falls into the "oh, dear, puberty forgot to deliver your boobs" category, I think it would be nice if fashion magazines could stop referring to thin women without many curves as "boyish." Femininity comes in many shapes and sizes, thanks, and Glamour's advice only reinforces the fact that they feel that flat-chested women need to blow up their bust lines to achieve sexiness: "Don't have voluptuous curves? Fake 'em!" Ah yes, because nothing makes me feel more confident than putting in my fake temporary boobs in order to wear a dress.

Read the whole post because at the end she gives some humorous advice on dressing for you shape. In any case, imagine headlines in women's magazines that said, "feel beautiful no matter what!" or "you can rock it, yes you can!" I guess the whole industry that perpetuates women's insecurity about their bodies and therefore marketing us products, tips, techniques and torture devices that will make us "feel better" would fall apart as we know it. All I know is I really don't want my body to be compared to a piece of fruit.

A few readers wrote in about this commercial, which I had the misfortune of also catching while nursing a headache last night, post-panel:

First of all, can we talk about how totally clunky this whole shtick by Schick is? Could the metaphor be any less subtle? Did they do a focus group where some misguided ladies said that they feel like overgrown hedges just waiting to be trimmed back? (I can understand a little Edward Scissorhands fantasy--Johnny Depp is h-o-t--but otherwise, come on.)

This commercial actually brings up the issue of nature and control. I think women should be able to do whatever the hell they please with the hair down there, but I'm also a pretty big fan of letting it just be. Too many of us spend an exorbitant amount of time on "maintenance" when it comes to our bodies, often motivated--not by a sense of playfulness or joy--but obligation, shame, societal pressure. If you find it fun to trim around or wax it off, more power to you, but I wish women didn't feel like they had to do anything in particular with their own pubic hair in order to be pretty, clean, or acceptable. (Health-wise, your pubic hair actually serves to protect you from infections, FYI.)

P.S. In the mixed messages department, Jersey is considering enforcing their long-standing but neglected ban on bikini waxes.

There has been some discussion lately about the impending remake of Dora the Explorer, one of the first Latina cartoon characters. Well Dora is growing up and they've just released her new image.

Veronica at Viva La Feminista has some thoughts about the make-over.

The outrage is not just about Dora, it is because we know that Dora is the safe one. The good girl. The toy and cartoon that we haven't had to monitor. Any tampering with our Dora rocks our world. If Dora isnt' safe, what the hell will we do?

The outrage is powered by pent up outrage over the sexualization of our daughters, of their dolls and their clothing.

The outrage is far more than just tween-ifying Dora. It is about all the other small things that inch our daughters closer to 90210 and further away from cuddling with us on the couch with the Backyardigans. It'll happen in its own time...if society let it happen in its own time.

My first thought was, well I'm glad they didn't lighten her skin. It's frustrating how little control we have over these representations of women and girls and how large of an impact they have on us.

What do you all think of the new Dora?

For those who don't remember, her before picture is after the jump.

For more pics, check out Women's Glib.

America's Next Top Model doesn't have the best track record when it comes to sexism and photo shoots, so I guess this shouldn't shock me. The show had the models dress up like little girls as a way to promote...purity?

This issue is really important to me, the issue of teen girls and being what I call 'out of control.' I did a survey on my talk-show website, and I found that one in five girls that are teens that we surveyed actually want to be a teen mom. Purity and innocence is something that's being lost and as you Top Models are doing this photo shoot, you guys are role models, too. The assignment was for you all to embody different little games that little girls play on the playground.

I write about this a lot in The Purity Myth (cough, buy it, cough), but I'll say it again: fetishizing "purity" and "innocence" generally just means that you end up fetishizing little girls.

UPDATE: Community blogger LTB also wrote a kick-ass post about this (long before I did, it seems - my bad!).