Fat is the New Skinny? I think not.

"Statistically, half of us must be homelier than average, but the ideology of self-esteem insists that 100% of us are attractive. Somebody is lying." (Aoki, 15).

I am really tired of Dove. I hate their campaign for real beauty. I think it's ridiculous. Like much lazy feminist theorizing, the crux of its argument centers on the idea that contemporary beauty ideals are exclusionary and unrealistic. Let's look at the first bit - exclusionary. If any of these feminists/Dove advertising executives were to grab a dictionary, they would find that an ideal is "a standard of perfection or excellence". Not everything can be perfect or excellent. Perfection and excellence exist as comparative concepts as does beauty. So if we were all perfect, perfection would cease to exist. My body is not the ideal and I have no problem with that. My body is not supposed to be the ideal. Why are we so mad that we are not being defined as idyllic? Are we all flaming narcissists?

(As a side note, I realize that the point here for many feminists is that this "tyranny of slenderness" (a phrase so overused I would classify it as a cliche) justifies the continued imposition of disciplining mechanisms of bodily control (Bartky). But, is that not precisely what Dove is selling - products to be used by women to alter/maintain their physical appearance?)

What really piques my derision is the ever-so-common invocation of eating disorders to justify the absolute necessity of women loving their bodies regardless of aesthetic standards. These tragic women, we are told, are so blindly obedient to the whims of the culture industry's call for size 0s that they have starved themselves into martyrdom. Quick, let's all revel in our beauty before we too contract eating disorders! I find it interesting and endlessly frustrating that feminist analysis so often thoughtlessly appropriates the bodies of other women to rage against the unfair treatment and judgment of their own bodies. It is also interesting that this line of criticism persists even as obesity rates continue to rise.

Also interesting and rather suspicious is the fact that the one group of people this overly inclusive new image of beauty excludes is those who meet the apparently unrealistic ideal - skinny people and supermodels. Perhaps this can be chalked up to our discomfort with the fact that their existence provides the undeniable proof that the “unrealistic” ideal is absolutely realistic – there it is.

I say to hell with the liberating potential of plus sizes. It is nothing more than theoretically indefensible bullshit. Plus, none of us actually believe the “we are all beautiful” propaganda no matter how hard we try. If we did, the rhetoric would disappear as it would have outlived its usefulness. So why (or perhaps more importantly, how) do we hold on to these notions of universal beauty when mere seconds of critical thought would reveal them to be total crap?

Aoki, Doug. "You Look Beautiful Just the Way You Are (But If I Looked Like You I'd Want to Kill Myself)"

Bartky, Sandra. "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power."