Let’s Talk About Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines Just a Little More
Yes, I know that most, if not all, of you out there have heard quite a bit already about the whole Southwest Airlines telling Kevin Smith he’s too fat to fly thing. I also know that you all have also seen and participated in discussions on the real issue behind this one incident and have also probably gone off on those who had picked up their close-minded asshole cards declaring that all every fat person in the world has to do is go on a diet and their lives will instantly be awesome–because it’s just that simple, of course. I had originally posted about Kevin Smith being deemed too fat to fly by Southwest Airlines on another website, before I saw his original SModcast go up (#106), which he recorded after returning home from the flight from Southwest Hell, before every media outlet opened discussion on Kevin Smith’s level of fatness and before Larry King asked him to go on his show (which, just for the record, he did not–he opted to record videos and post them to his YouTube account instead because he is just that awesome.)
I have watched this entire incident turned media circus turned fat shaming brigade unfold throughout the past few days and regardless of what platform is being used to discuss this topic or how seemingly open-minded you are used to a discussion being on a particular website, including very well-known progressive websites, the discussion always, always, always comes back to one thing–fat shaming and blaming.
If you have yet to hear about this incident, here is the Reader’s Digest version.
Kevin Smith boarded a Southwest Airlines flight last night from Oakland to Burbank, California. After his bag was up and he was seated (with the arm rests down), he was deemed a “safety risk” and thrown off the flight–as about 200 people who had already boarded the same flight had IDed him as “Silent Bob” and after he had explained to the flight attendant that he could indeed put the arm rests on both sides of his seat down and could also buckle his seatbelt, basically pleading the flight attendant to let him stay on the flight and not take the “walk of shame” out of the airplane.
The flight attendant told him that the pilot of the flight had deemed him to be a “safety risk” and it was not something that she had control over. When being ejected from the flight, he started tweeting and it all started with this:
“Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?”
Through the course of the past few days, as Kevin Smith has told and retold his story of this event and we were given the chance to learn the whole truth of the story, it turns out that the pilot did not see Kevin Smith and instuct the other Southwest Airlines employee to throw him off of his flight; this was one or two employees of Southwest booting a man who they deemed as too fat to fit into one seat on their airplane, put the arm rests down and give the other passengers he was sitting with their personal space. In other words, he was booted off a flight for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
While Kevin Smith was deemed to be a “safety risk” for this flight, he did end up boarding another flight, using two seats he had purchased. It has been noted by many, many media outlets that he usually buys two seats and that obviously he needs those two seats in order to fit on a flight and using that as the excuse as to why he was ejected from the plane. This, however, is absolutely false. While it’s true that he does often purchase two seats for one flight, he does this because he merely doesn’t want to sit by a stranger because there always seems to be that person, the same kind of person you often find at movie theaters, who have many other seating options, but choose to sit next to a stranger and when you’re on an airplane, these creepy folks can often be very chatty and not everyone really wants to deal with that, either.
Obviously just because he was able to board a later flight he didn’t stop tweeting about the incredible lack of compassion and courtesy not just human beings, but paying customers deserve from any business they are making money off of, and he even tweeted a picture of himself making the “fatty face” while sitting on his flight.
“Hey @SouthwestAir! Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off! http://twitpic.com/1340gw”
Anyone who knows of Kevin Smith and his work knows that he’s a pretty humorous dude and that he injects humor into all of life’s little “fuck you’s,” but this does not mean that this entire experience he was forced to go through wasn’t humiliating, because it very much was and no person, regardless of their size, deserves to be treated in the manner in which Southwest Airlines treated Kevin Smith. But this wasn’t just a one-time occurance as far as Southwest Airline’s blatant fat shaming goes. On his later flight, Kevin Smith sat by a woman named Natali who was also a bigger person. Natali was taken aside by a member of Southwest’s customer service and told that she would have to purchase a second seat if Kevin Smith didn’t say it was okay for her to sit next to him, with his purchased, unused seat between them. After a number of people started to speculate about the validity of Smith’s story of Natali, claiming that he made her up in order to truly drive home his point that he was being discriminated against or that Southwest Airlines was comprised of a bunch of thin, fat-shaming, fat-phobic assholes. To prove that Natali is indeed a real person who also faced very real discrimination by the airline, Smith had her as a guest on his SModcast (#107).
And I realize after typing all of that that I truly missed the mark on that whole “Reader’s Digest version” thing.
The way that Southwest Airlines treated Kevin Smith, Natali, and the way that they have and will most likely continue to treat “people of size,” as they put it, is an absolute disgrace. This is truly a case of fat shaming and while most, if not all, airlines have very size-ist policies, Southwest Airlines obviously enforces theirs to the fullest.
It is an absolute tragedy that we live in the World of Thinicism (word originally coined by Kevin Smith and the title of his SModcast with Natali, but how cool is that word?) where while two out of three Americans are “obese” yet those same two out of three people are so often discriminated against in our world where thinness trumps all. As Kate Harding has previously mentioned, the fact that Kevin Smith, the human being, had to go through that is absolutely horrible, but it’s okay to be really happy that Kevin Smith, Famous Person with 1.6 Million Twitter Followers, got really pissed off and knew very well that they way he was treated was not even close to being okay and had the courage to speak up for himself and not just sulk away and let Southwest Airlines get away with what they did.
Everyone has been discussing this incident since Kevin Smith’s first tweet to @SouthwestAir and while a bulk of what has been said about it has been sentiments of how wrong it was for him to be ejected from a flight he had every right to be on and did indeed fit on, some of the remarks that have been made and continue to pop up all over the place have been from aforementioned close-minded, holier than thou assholes who believe that fat people are fat because they want to be and just need to go on a diet and lose weight and cease being drains on society. While I expected a great number of these comments I’ve seen, where I did not expect to see close-minded comments was from well-known feminist media–and I don’t mean in the comments section.
Bitch Magazine recently started a discussion on their Facebook page that I was very surprised to see:
So we get that Kevin Smith is pissed at Southwest Airlines, and with good reason. But does anyone else think it’s weird that he’s spent more than a decade in one of the most inhospitable environments for fat people ever – that’d be Hollywood – and apparently never had issues with that? Discuss.
The first thing that went through my head upon being confronted with this post was Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even know who Kevin Smith is? Anyone who has seen just one Kevin Smith movie gets the gist of what he is all about. Sure, he built a career making films and plays a role in Hollywood to some degree, but he makes comedies and according to Kevin Smith himself, he has made a career out of repeatedly cracking dick and fart jokes and during his appearances at colleges, he pokes fun at himself for being fat and never once, throughout this entire incident, has said he wasn’t fat; he just isn’t too fat to fly. He is just one of those people who has excelled at making a career out of seeing the humor in every single situation a person can possibly be confronted with and when it comes to Hollywood, it’s pretty hard to make fun of or attempt to shame a person for being fat, or for any other reason, if they are already making fun of themselves and owning what could possibly be said about them. Secondly, while men as a whole do very often scrutinize themselves because of their bodies and do feel the same pressures women do when it comes to body image issues, Hollywood doesn’t cast such a discriminatory light on overweight men, as opposed to overweight women.
To ask if it is weird that someone who is fat to find a career within Hollywood is exactly the same as asking why a woman director has the audacity to make porn when the sex industry makes a living off of objectifying women. It is very much saying You do not belong there, so why try? and to me, that is just about the most un-feminist you can get. Feminism is not about enforcing double standards; if a woman of any background at all faced this exact situation, feminists would be expressing their deepest outrage over size-ist policies and for ejecting that person off a flight for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but when a man goes through a humiliating walk of shame off of a flight, we are allowed to compare the situation to his career? It does not work that way and we really do not need feminist media making comments that just make feminism look judgmental and uninviting. I have said it so many times, but I believe people really do need to be reminded that feminism is not a woman’s issues only clique; we must speak out and raise awareness when we see inequality being played out against human beings, regardless of their genitalia or gender identity. I have had many people challenge me in some pretty great, intelligent debates on feminism and I have always said that when I see men being treated or being represented unfairly, I would be raising awareness about it and that is what makes a truly fabulous feminist.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Fat Talk
Considering my last post, I probably could not have found out about Fat Talk Free Week at a better time!
Check out this awesome video from Tri Delta’s Fat Talk Free Week:
Fat Talk Free Week is an international body activism campaign spanning over five days (October 19th-23rd) that draws attention to the damaging impact of the thin ideal on women in society. It is so easy to look at yourself in the mirror and think that your thighs are fat, that you have fat rolls, that you’re too fat to wear something (even though it may look amazing on you!) and saying things to your friends and family members like ‘You look great have you lost weight?’ is all damaging to yourself and to the women around you.
If you haven’t already, promise to eliminate Fat Talk from conversations with friends, family and also with yourself! Strive for the healthy ideal without focusing on weight or size. Make the promise today!
Fat: Masculinity & Sexist Put-Downs
I probably should have prefaced this post with an earlier one containing a more detailed explanation of where this post originated, but just bear with me for a bit here. Over the past few days I have been marinating on a series of complicated, highly-stressful, mind-boggling, eye-roll-inducing, leave-you-utterly-exacerbated events. I have been compelled more-so now than ever before to get all of these feelings that have stemmed from this series of events out of me but have been hitting a great amount of roadblocks every time I come here to get everything out because sure, day-to-day observations and questions we have that stem from our daily lives in a particular society or culture are often put on public display for open discussion, but when you truly need your blog and need the comfort that comes with blogging, which before I started running Menstrual Poetry more like a news aggregator plus my particular views and input on current events is what I used this website for, well that’s when it’s the hardest to get all of your mental ducks in a row, for lack of a better term. For me, and for I’m sure a lot of other bloggers out there, my personal life has often come up on my blog which is what we agree to when we start blogging in the first place. Personal views on society and politics are often a direct result of our personal lives. Many bloggers refuse to put their family life on display, which until now I have always respected because while I have a blog and while I will write about my own life, my family did not sign on for their personal lives to be on display just because I have a blog. But when does the time come where we simply must nudge that ‘rule of blogging’ aside? For me, that time is now.
I have always had a very unique relationship with my younger sister. Due to our childhood I had been forced to look out for her well-being before my own; I made sure she had enough food to eat even if I did not, I made sure she had clean clothes to wear and that she had a bath as often as possible. That in itself is the life of abused and neglected children. Given this upbringing at the hands of our mother, we grew up relying on each other very much, so when she was 16 years old and had started acting completely erratically and not making the best life choices, I chalked it up to teenage rebellion; hell, me and teenage rebellion had a very strong, one-sided relationship. To say the least, I know it well. But this behavior came to a head when she wound up in a mental hospital for a week after divulging self-harming tendencies and a transfer to a much smaller school that incorporates therapy into their daily curriculum. She was put on medication after being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and for a little while, she was doing perhaps even better than she had been years earlier. My family thought that they had finally seen the end of behavior that wasn’t just hurting her, but also the entire family. They thought this because anyone would and finally she was on the right track. She was getting straight A’s in school, had goals to graduate and then go to college to become a nurse and she had big plans for her impending future, until maybe two months ago when it all picked up again and this time, it was worse.
To make an incredibly long and painful story short, she’s a runaway and all of the services and people who are put into place to help children have stopped trying to help. She has been staying with her boyfriend (of a month and a few days) in a hotel/halfway house where convicted felons and sex offenders reside. Not the best housing arrangement in the least. So I spoke to her on the phone earlier this week and I went to this place she has been staying to pick her up because staying with her sister in an apartment in a place that I can only think to compare to Pleasantville is a lot better than the previous. Me and my partner were greeted by her “boyfriend” who is not a minor and who I had initially suspected was making her stay with him against her will due to the fact that he had met me at the door, the inside door of which locks and needs a key to get past due to the fact that once word gets out to a community about sex offenders cohabiting their space are never too thrilled with the arrangement. So this kid (who is not a minor, but is younger than I am and has no idea what the word ‘respect’ means, which makes him a kid) refused to let me pick my sister up and who thought the best and most logical way of going about getting rid of me was to call me a cunt and crazy.
I did get my sister home to our family with the help of the police and after she adamantly refused to come to my apartment for a few days because it would put her a reasonable distance away from her boyfriend. As it turns out, she was staying there of her own free will, she is just not functioning with a sane mental capacity and is the utter definition of an out of control teen, which is why a day later she was back with her boyfriend and she had signed online with the sole intention of letting her boyfriend harass me via instant message.
So, to the actual point of this entire post (yes, 1200+ words in…) is the word ‘fat.’ Sure, feminists all across the blogosphere as well as anyone who knows the name Kate Harding knows that we are very accepting to body image and also of the word ‘fat’ itself. So why is it in the mass populace of boys and men alike, do they immediately start to hurl the word fat at women who they are trying to piss off? My sister’s boyfriend IM-harassed me for over a half hour, at least, about me being fat and when I stopped typing back (and didn’t block the screen name in case my sister did actually need to get a hold of me at some point when the shades of grey and clouds that Bipolar Disorder infects people’s minds with faded away) actually said that I wasn’t typing back because my 3am pizza had arrived and I was eating since I’m so fat. Now of course this is so ridiculous that all you can do is laugh and brush off your shoulder as an ignorant boy’s banter but it does have something with the initial reason why the word ‘fat’ is used as a slap in the face to women by men who feel they are the epitome of masculinity. It is socially acceptable for women to fear that they are too fat, that their ankles are too big, that their asses are too wide, that they have cellulite and stretch marks and it’s all repulsive because we live in the land of ‘you can never be too thin.’ The more we push back against this social normality, the less we will hear the word fat being used as a put down that is supposed to make women run to their treadmills and starve themselves so they can look like the women on the airbrushed and photoshopped covers of magazines. Masculinity should never be about how bad you can make a woman feel about themselves.
And hey, if he thinks my size 12 figure is fat, what exactly does he think my sister will look like in a few months, since she is now a pregnant, unstable, runaway teen?
Another lesson in why immature teens and young adults who are unable to take care of themselves should be educated in the importance of responsibilities, birth control, condoms and respecting women.
PETA Continues Unethical Treatment of Women
PETA, as an organization who claims to be working to end the unethical treatment of animals has absolutely no problem at all treating women unethically–as we’ve known for a while now. PETA has a very extensive history of using sexist, woman-shaming, fat-shaming, racist, violent, hurtful, and downright disturbing tactics in the way they choose to present their organization and in turn, their message. And their most recent Florida billboard campaign is no different.
PETA has put out numerous ads picturing naked women with taglines like ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’ and most notably ‘be comfortable in your own skin.’ However, their most recently Florida billboard campaign that features a woman with “blubber” in a bikini and the tagline ’save the whales’ really drives home another message they’re trying to spread–that you should be comfortable in your own skin as long as you’re an “acceptable” society-approved size.
As if the billboard wasn’t enough, PETA’s press release for the billboard goes on to use even more fat-shaming, degrading, and insulting language:
Jacksonville, Fla. — A new PETA billboard campaign that was just launched in Jacksonville reminds people who are struggling to lose weight — and who want to have enough energy to chase a beach ball — that going vegetarian can be an effective way to shed those extra pounds that keep them from looking good in a bikini. The ad shows a woman whose “blubber” is spilling over the sides of her swimsuit bottom and features the tagline “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian. PETA.”
Anyone wishing to achieve a hot “beach bod” is reminded that studies show that vegetarians are, on average, about 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters. The meat habit can ruin the fun in other ways too. Consuming meat and dairy products is conclusively linked to heart disease, diabetes, and several kinds of cancer — not to mention higher rates of infertility in women and impotence in men. And not only is following a healthy plant-based diet good for the environment, it is also the best thing that anyone can do to help stop the routine abuse of animals raised and killed for food. Animals on factory farms are subjected to mutilations like debeaking, tail-docking, and branding (without any painkillers) and are often slaughtered and dismembered while still conscious.
“Trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA has a free ‘Vegetarian Starter Kit’ for people who want to lose pounds while eating as much as they like.
*emphasis mine
One grave mistake that PETA continues to make with every new campaign they launch is that they are unapologetically alienating people who are vegetarian and vegan who they could inspire to become vegetarian and vegan if they weren’t mocked, ridiculed, insulted, and objectified in every other PETA campaign. Case in point: many feminists happen to be vegetarian/vegan and if PETA wasn’t such a fan of attacking and using women, each one of those feminists could be a person who would support PETA and their organization. However, PETA has made it abundantly clear that they aren’t going to stop using misogyny, racism, and violence as a marketing tool so the Portland Feminist Action League organized a peaceful protest at the Powell’s book store in Portland when hearing news that PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk was doing a book signing at the location. They held signs that said things like “PETA can kiss my big fat vegetarian ass!” and “Animals for ethical treatment of women.”
Here’s a video from the protest:
Yeast Infection: When You Want To Make Love To The Toilet Brush
At the risk of being accused of “over sharing,” I have decided to talk about yeast infections. I have not had one in about three years but this past week let me tell you, I could bake a loaf of bread in my vagina. Women get this annoying infection all of the time and we don’t talk about it because to admit it is to confirm in the minds of many that the vagina really is a polluted place.
Yeast infections are accompanied by a thick white discharge, redness, swelling, and itching. Believe me, the minute you have one the toilet brush suddenly seems like the most appealing lover that a girl could ever hope for. If you have never had one it is best to get it diagnosed by a doctor before buying over the counter medication to deal with the problem.
Like periods, yeast infections are something that we suffer through in silence. Unlike menstruation there is even less conversation about this issue. This is yet another sign of how disconnected we are from our bodies. With the medicalization of labour and delivery, women have lost our traditional ways of healing and we have learned to become ashamed of our biological processes; whispering about it occasionally to friends, only to discover that they are just as ignorant of female biology as we are.
Can you imagine announcing that you are cranky because you have a yeast infection or freely scratching yourself with impunity the way that men do? If even saying the word vagina is deemed faux pas in public, touching yourself is definitely out of the question. Our vaginas are deemed the property of men and therefore unless we are washing them or neatly trimming our pubic hair they are understood as a no “fly zone”.
There are still women that douche regularly because they believe that their vaginas are dirty. Many don’t even know that they are supposed to have discharge or that its consistency and color can change as we go through our monthly cycle. We would not tolerate such ignorance about our hands, or legs but when it comes to the vagina, the occasional hushed whisper often suffices.
This willful ignorance continues on because mothers who are not aware don’t teach their daughters. How many women still wipe back to front, instead of front to back? If you can take the time to clip your fingernails and brush your teeth, perhaps investing in your vagina might not be such a bad idea considering you are going to be in possession of one all of the days of your life.
So yeah this week I had a yeast infection. It was less than pleasant but you know what, it is part of being a woman. We need to acknowledge all of the things our bodies do even when it makes us uncomfortable.
Cross Posted from Womanist Musings
Scarlett Johansson Speaks Out About Body Image & Tabloid Media
According to the National Eating Disorders Association, as many as 10 million females and 1 million males currently living in the United States are fighting a battle with an eating disorder; with statistics this high, the situation presents society with a decision to make. Keep going in the direction we are going, letting media falsify the bodies of the people we see in print or make a commitment to stop presenting people with impossible body standards that are not even possessed by the people themselves who we see in magazines and tabloids.
Society’s image of the “perfect body” is severely out of touch with reality and it is a fact that the media plays a huge role in the way people look at their bodies; it is a sad world that we live in where publications are looking at the amount of money to be made in the business of self-loathing. Luckily, more and more celebrities are coming out and speaking for themselves on the topic of body image and holding the media responsible for the damage they have caused and continue to cause with every magazine cover they plaster their bold yellow font of body-hatred on.
Scarlett Johansson recently published a piece on her experiences with body image and the media, after seeing herself in the pages of magazines and tabloids containing several claims that she has been on a strict workout routine regulated by co-stars, whipped into shape by trainers she has never met, eating sprouted grains she can’t pronounce, and ultimately losing 14 pounds off of her 5′3″ frame, which she said herself if she had lost 14 pounds she would have to part with both arms and a foot.
In response to all of the media claims that have been made in her name, Scarlett Johansson had a few words of response:
I’m frustrated with the irresponsibility of tabloid media who sell the public ideas about what we should look like and how we should get there.
I’m not normally the type to dignify toilet paper rags with a response, but in this case I feel it’s my responsibility to comment. In a way, I’m glad some dummy journalist (and I use the term “journalist” loosely) is banking on my “deflating” so that I can address the issue straight from my healthy heart.
I am so glad that Scarlett has chosen to speak out against the media that has been portraying her in a false light in order to cater to their usual form of publicizing the “perfect” body and profiting off of the self-loathing of people world-wide. More celebrities need to speak out against the media that uses them as fodder for their obscene profit margins; perhaps if more celebrities spoke out against the lies that have been spread in their name the media would finally see that it is not okay.
Only In A Woman’s World: Frito Lay Goes Girly
There I was happily watching CNN this morning when they reported that women are now no longer seen as a niche market. It seems that the recession depression has largely effected men and companies are now realizing that it is women that have the disposable income and the discretionary power to spend.
Rather than using this as an opportunity to validate women, companies have resorted to ridiculous essentialist pitches to garner our attention. If you identify as female you must love the colour pink, fluffy clouds, and rainbows. The utility of the object in question is irrelevant as long as it is pretty, cause you know how all of us wimminez just need everything to be pastel and cutesy.
While it is necessary to some degree to draw on large generalizations to effectively market, creating a single monolithic representation of what constitutes woman is extremely problematic. The images that we see end up not being about our struggles or our triumphs but womanhood as it is understood through the patriarchal lens. Advertising in this way quickly becomes yet another tool that is marshalled by patriarchy to discipline women into perform a gender essentialist, submissive femininity.
Each year more women seek post secondary and graduate education. We are entering fields that were once male dominated, crashing through glass ceilings at every turn and yet Frito Lay has decided that the best possible way to appeal to us, is to pander to our so called obsessive need to count every calorie because of a fixation on our bodies. These generalizations are not only essentialist, they are highly demeaning.
Frito Lay has even gone on to make webisodes in which these shallow women are featured.
Notice how every single item is either low calorie or low in fat. Women of course never just pig out cause hey we all need a good junk food and pyjama day from time to time. Apparently we are racked endlessly with guilt every time we decide to eat.
Women are so much more than what the advertising industry has constructed us to be. These images are not innocuous, rather they set up damaging ideas that translate into the devaluation of women. In a world in which not conforming to ideal body standards often translates into shaming, and less employment opportunities (read: feminization of poverty) such mode of advertising must be challenged. Commercials like this are made to benefit patriarchy and we internalize these images without thought or resistance we are assuming this unbalanced definition of womanhood.
Just like every other social organization patriarchy is highly dependent on the labour, finances and support of women We collude daily in small ways in our own oppression often without being cognizant that we are contributing to our own second class status. While we certainly do not control the media we do have the power to eliminate or reduce the purchasing of items that serve to create woman as the eternal ‘other’; we not only owe this to ourselves but to our daughters.
We cannot be post feminist until we move away from the idea that we do not deserve to be treated seriously. Since the advertising agency has found a new belief in our purchasing power, it is essential that we leverage this to ensure that the degree to which we are constructed as flighty, brainless, narcissistic beings is reduced. A world in which the full depth of womanhood is equally represented would lend itself to greater opportunities, and a reduction in the degree to which patriarchy manages to maintain its control. Woman is a complex identity and can never be fully appreciated as long as it is continually equated with flower, pastels and diet materials.
Cross posted from Womanist Musings
Confronting Hyper Sexuality In The Black Community
As the mother of a young child who is approaching his tween years, thoughtful consideration of our social dialogue as it relates to sex and sexuality has been of great personal concern. Along with assuring that my child receives accurate information to make the correct decisions for him, ensuring that he understands that even the options that are available to him are strictly a result of his race and gender are an essential part of an evolving conversation on sex and sexuality.
When educating black children about sex, it is not enough to speak about the mechanics of the act. Though it is an absolute necessity to stress safe sex in a time where AIDS has reached a truly epidemic stature within our communities, the why we choose to engage in sex can and should be an equally important conversation.
Children come to an understanding of our world by interacting and confronting the agents of socialization. They will receive clear and direct instructions on performing gender, race and sexuality. These intersections are internalized and accepted as normative, despite the fact that they are often damaging on multiple levels.
Black children in particular must deal with the social idea that their bodies are hyper sexual. This can be seen in the overtly sexualized images of black women in rap videos, or the black male as rapist construction. In both of the aforementioned examples, sexuality is perverted in that it is presented as overly aggressive, and existing outside of normalized engagement.
The virgin/whore dichotomy is continually reified through the lens of race wherein white women exist with the construction of purity and the black female is reduced to the ever wanton Jezebel. This construction has its foundation in slavery. It was meant to justify the repeated rape of black women by their white male slave owners.
Though we have long since moved beyond slavery as a condition of living in the broader culture, its shadow continues to interject itself into our discourse about sex and sexuality. Young black girls quickly internalize the idea that their bodies exist for consumption based in the falsehood that they are continually desirous of sex. This construction removes the agency from the decision to have sex and implies that sex must occur because that is the foundation of the black female identity. It further reifies a hierarchy of beings wherein the black female is routinely located at the bottom. Bell Hooks theorizes that the black woman has no institutional other, and when we examine the discourse of sex and gender what immediately becomes clear is that the politics of colonization and oppression continually manifest in ways in which foster a negative sexual identity in black females.
Reducing black women to simply sexual beings without agency or autonomy over their physical beings translates into high rates of teen pregnancy and a low cultural self esteem. If your identity is based on sexual performance rather than achievement in education, it perpetuates the idea that success can only be achieved by conforming to the role of eternal Jezebel. This creates an unhealthy sexuality in that sex is no longer something one engages in to share pleasure or manifest a loving relationship, but to assert a form of self worth.
While a healthy sexuality is important to achieve a well rounded sense of self, the overvaluation of it is detrimental. Reducing women to what they do with their vaginas rather than with their brains serves patriarchal interests. For black women who have a history of slavery the perpetuation of the Jezebel complex amounts to the continued colonization of black female bodies.
This form of sexuality is also heterosexist nature in that it constructs women as existing solely for the purposes of male sexual pleasure, while ignoring the existence of same sex loving women. Lesbian love is delegitimized because it does not actively serve patriarchy; and therefore its erasure is not only a slight on black women, but on all women that identify as lesbian. Queer culture is very much a part of the black community, but when sexuality is controlled by outside forces instead of individually, certain identities become invisible if it is deemed that their existence does not help to maintain the race/class/gender hierarchy.
The model held for the black male is quite similar to the black female. It once again finds it origins in slavery; wherein the black male was constructed as the sexually aggressive savage to promote distrust between black men and white women. In this way white men are assured their place at the top of the race and gender hierarchy, while constructing themselves as the saviour of white women and the socially evolved masters of black men.
The hyper masculine sexuality that is presented as a model to black men can be seen in rap videos, and throughout mainstream media. The black male sexuality that is offered is one that is desirous of continues conquest; wherein the pleasure of the act itself is over looked. Black men are perceived not to engage in sex because it is an act of intimacy between two beings; rather it is construed as an act that reifies their masculinity. In a world where in the black male is continually reduced to an exotic “other” combating such images can be difficult. If masculinity is derived through sexual conquest, then this reinforces a problematized identity.
Just as same sex loving is detached from black female sexuality, a queer identity is similarly not associated with black male sexuality. Black masculinity is forever measuring itself against that of the white male. Due to the historic imbalance caused by racism any form of sexuality that is deemed “socially deviant” is actively denied. This has given rise to living a life on the “down low”. Though black males are certainly not the only ones to lead closeted lives, the tendency to deny sexual orientation is higher because of the association of black masculinity and sexual conquest. This is not healthy and is ultimately damaging to the individual on many levels.
We have a tendency to speak about sex as though it is divorced from other social elements, yet it is one of the most complex forms of human interactions. When we ignore the complexities of race, class and gender in our discussions it has a tendency to minimize the ways in which different groups of people not only understand but experience sexuality. What must be paramount when we seek to educate our youth is that they be made to recognize that though they are the products of social construction, as individuals they exist with ability to transcend norms and create a sexuality that is not only more positive, but a reflection of their right to possess a sexuality in which the onus is on individual agency.
When we begin to discuss sexuality with black children, it is important to make connections to the ways in which racism has affected our understanding of what it is to be black, while at the same time exist as a sexual being. Reclaiming sexuality from the race infused dialog would foster a more positive understanding of what it is to be sexual thus encouraging youth to see this as a decision that is not synonymous with claiming their gender identity, but in sharing an experience of intimacy with another.
Suck It In or Lose It?
Update: Laurie, co-founder of kirtsy has left a comment on this post explaining that kirtsy’s ad space was hijacked and that they did not approve this ad. kirtsy is currently in the process of refunding the buyer’s money for this ad and getting it removed as soon as possible.
Thank you for clearing this up, Laurie!
I was perusing the stories submitted to kirtsy, a social media site for women, yesterday and while I was reading stories deemed popular by women, an ad caught my eye. Yes an ad, something that my mind usually doesn’t even register due to all ads looking the same and my mind possessing a talent to simply ignore entire halves of websites trying to sell me stuff. Upon seeing this particular ad I literally had to do a double take and find out why, exactly, my stomach was featured in an ad.
Of course it wasn’t my stomach, but it surely looked like it; so much in fact that upon first glance, the boyfriend even thought kirtsy had somehow obtained a clear picture of my stomach. Are they stalking me? Hiding outside my bedroom window with their cameras poised waiting for me to put on a pair of jeans? Nope, it’s just another ad made to make women feel bad about their bodies to the point where if they see an ad such as the one pictured to the left here, look down and notice that their stomach looks eerily familiar to the picture, they will surely opt to buy into whatever weight loss product this site “for women” is pushing on women who have low self confidence.
The reason women have low self confidence when they look in the mirror (or avoid mirrors completely) is because sites that claim to be for women are pushing products that are part of a multi-billion dollar industry profiting off of self-loathing.
This ad simply states that there are two options when your jeans don’t fit–Suck it in and be uncomfortable or lose the weight. I don’t know about you, but when my pants don’t fit, I opt to get a bigger pair of pants! I know there are still stores out there who sell pants, right? Why isn’t that an option?
Women out there who find that their stomachs look like the one in the ad or women whose stomachs don’t look like that but feel bad about themselves anyway, go get yourself a bigger pair of pants because you are beautiful and perfect just the way you are. Stop letting a multi-billion dollar industry tell you that you don’t look good. Keep the money you would spend on a weight loss product and go buy yourself something nice–Like some kick ass lingerie!
So kirtsy, you suck and you can lose that ad!
Upon closer inspection of kirtsy’s ad space while writing an email to them about their bullshit ad (sharethelove at kirtsy.com for anyone else who is interested), I noticed an ad for Carson Kressley’s TV show How to Look Good Naked with the following text placed below it:
“The refreshing thing about this show (How to Look Good Naked) is that we’re saying, ‘You know what? You look great just the way you are. We want you to be happy being who you are, and you don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to be a zero.’”
Yes kirtsy, we look great just the way we are and we most definitely should be happy being who we are–Even if our stomachs look like the one placed in another one of your ads. I know money for advertising space is swell, but shouldn’t you be a little less hypocritical when accepting ads?
PETA, You Just Make It So Easy
When many people hear someone start talking about PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, many of their minds immediately start freaking out, sending out red flags and wanting to scream ‘NOOOOOO’ at the top of their lungs. The biggest reason for this is because PETA is made up of a bunch of hypocrites; people who believe that animals shouldn’t be mistreated in any way yet don’t seem to give a shit about their fellow humans and even go as far as to say that people shouldn’t buy pets at pet stores because it is the equivalent of buying a human being as a slave. People also shouldn’t call their pets ‘pets’ because again, they make the comparison between having pets and owning slaves. I don’t know about you, but my cat has never once sparked something in my brain that made me start comparing her to owning slaves; but hey, that just may be me–But I doubt it.
A lot of people hate PETA, some people think it should even be classified as a terrorist group, which I have to say, I can agree with. The thing is–When it comes to organized groups, some members of a particular group can get a little skewed and a little extreme, hence describing these people as extremists or describing an entire organization, as PETA has proved itself to be, as an extremist organization. (Think of the pro-lifers who deem it necessary and effective to blow up Planned Parenthood clinics regardless of whether or not they actually perform abortions at that location.) You may be thinking to yourself right about now “But wait, just because members of a particular organization go all loony and start taking their efforts to dangerous territory that doesn’t mean these organizations are necessarily bad!” And you’d be correct with that assumption. Just because a wide range of PETA supporters feel it’s A-OK to tell small children that their mothers are going to burn in hell because they wear fur coats or post videos on their websites from PETA that show images that may be triggering, offensive and are just downright disgusting that could be seen by a young audience without as much as a warning posted before the video, it doesn’t mean that the organization as a whole is bad. However, when it comes to PETA, their marketing tactics are not only skewed, but they are so horrendous and in general bad taste that even when they try to explain or stand by their tactics, they come off as arrogant, obnoxious, ignorant and/or belligerent–And that’s being nice. How they choose to market themselves as an organization is their fault and theirs alone and when it comes to what ads they choose to release to the public, it is downright appalling.
PETA has put out severely sexist and just plain baffling ads that they should just stop trying to explain their tactics and simply come up with another way to tote their hypocritical bullshit to the public or hey, just stopping their organization all together is another viable option; I know of a lot of people who would be rejoicing if this were to happen.
After so many people have had negative reactions to their ads, PETA took it to the media in order to clear up any misconceptions people had about why they use naked women in the majority of their ads while the rest of their ads are degrading towards all people; all people who aren’t brainwashed by the many clever methods the organization uses to lure people in and keep them yolked and asking for more, that is.
When it comes to the unapologetic and purely sexist ads PETA uses to get their name out into society, they attempted to defend the nature of their ad to The New York Times, saying:
While cruelty to animals is a serious matter that should elicit widespread public outrage, efforts to reach the public through more serious means often fall on deaf ears in a world in which sex sells and there are both a war and an economic downturn.
Basically they just come right out and say it–PETA wants people to see their ads, have people say “Hey, hot chick.” and move on. That is what happens when you repeatedly use naked models and actresses in your ads; your message is not heard. Their comment also makes it sound as if they had used other types of marketing that simply didn’t work; however, that doesn’t seem to be the case as I went digging around for PETA ads.
In this appalling ad which came out in 2000, we can see that PETA has been using the technique of ridiculing women for the past 8 years at least.
Yeah ladies, how dare you go natural and opt not to shave your pubic region. Even PETA thinks it’s disgusting! This ad actually seems to go against the message they’re trying to get across and just using this ad as an excuse to ridicule women who don’t shave or wax and in turn, not living up to the social expectancy. The right way to go about this ad would be to say for ladies who do go all natural to feel good in doing that and think of animals whose fur is used for making fur coats, fur-lined gloves or whatever and make the conscious decision to not wear fut just because women know how good it may feel to them to not go through the torturous and painful act of waxing. But that’s just me, you know, not looking at it from the sexist goggles.
Ms. Magazine received 150 letters when they asked for their reader’s opinion on the above PETA ad and out of those 150 letters, only 6 agreed that PETA was on the right track and did not deem their ad to be sexist or discriminatory towards women and from my snap judgment, I’d have to assume that those 6 people happened to be PETA supporters.
PETA also likes to use images of naked actresses, or in this specific case, failed actresses with one big hit that did nothing but make her come off as a complete idiot–A lot. A recent 30 second ad spot they put out featuring Alicia Silverstone appeared pretty much everywhere for a good week or so.
The ad spot was put on websites and blogs of supporters and also on sites with webmasters who, like myself, wonder about the credibility of an organization who puts something out that a lot of people most likely turned the sound off for to watch and got pretty much the same effect from it–Hot chick, naked, pool…scene from Wild Things?
Other ads that show the true sexist core of PETA include:
The third ad in particular looks more like it came out of a page of Maxim, but again, PETA wants to shock people, they want people to look at an ad that looks as if it should have came out of a softcore porn magazine, enjoy the image of a size 0 woman and not grasp that the fact that there is even text on the image. The latest ad to be put out by PETA is this little gem:
That is now two ads with the text ‘Be comfortable in your own skin’ written across it and by the nature of those ads in conjunction with the others makes me sense some sort of odd connection; that being the size of the women on these ads.
PETA wants women to be comfortable in their own skin and to lay off the buying and selling of animal fur. Okay, got it. Now, why is it that these ads specifically tell women to be comfortable in their own skin but only use women who are sizes 0-2, muscular and socially accepted as being the ideal, beautiful woman? Why not get a woman who is vegetarian or vegan to pose for their ads who looks like they actually eat? PETA is basically saying that yes, you should let animals keep their fur because you should be comfortable in your own skin–as long as you’re a size 2 and conventionally beautiful. There is not one other ad from PETA that uses women of varied body shape or size. This assumption is obvious since all of these ads have this fact resonating through them and not one ad from PETA has used a male nude body. PETA obviously respects the rights of animals over women since time and time again, PETA continues to disrespect women and simply throw their naked bodies up on an ad and say “Look at me.”
PETA’s public protests and demonstrations are also a glimpse at the sexist ideas they give their supporters to take part in such as topless women under plastic wrap and fake blood with a label reading ‘Human Flesh’ in an attempt to give the public passersby a shock by reenacting how meat is packaged. A nearly naked woman painted like a snake to bring attention to the way snake skins are harvested. Girls in yellow bikinis while holding up egg-shaped signs that read “Chicks Suffer for Eggs.” And perhaps the display that really rubbed me the wrong way–The one and only time a woman of a varying size is pictured at a PETA demonstration “just happens to be” a demonstration on pigs.
So thank you PETA, for making it so easy for people to not take you seriously, think your organization should be labeled as a terrorist group, shove images of conventionally beautiful women down our throats and objectify more women with one ill-conceived cause than I thought possible. Your organization isn’t worth the time I put into writing this post, but what you stand for needs to be seen.
Get Social
Flickr
Out Campaign
The OUT Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows.
