Browsing the news yesterday I happened to discover an article on the BBC (BBC News Magazine: Does Christina Hendricks has a body women should aspire to?) discussing comments made by Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, where she used the actress Christina Hendricks as an example of the body shape that healthy women that should aspire to.
Now at first I read this in a related article, and was immediately struck by thoughts that this was just incredibly condescending to women in general. It's fair enough that the modern fashion to be slim can be damaging; that the “ideal' image of the impossibly tall, slender framed models in magazines are photoshopped to impossibility; and that in the past a completely different shape was the fashion; but claiming that curvy, fuller figured women were the ideal was just as bad. Telling naturally thin women that they should be aspiring to an hourglass figure they can never achieve is just as bad as the other way around.
I sat down and I wrote the first draft of this post on my lunch break, happily ranting about the government jumping on bandwagons, trying to grab the attention of woman with lowest-common-denominator policies, etc. etc. But when I got home and typed it up I spent a moment on the internet looking into what they actually said, In actuality what Lynne Featherstone said was part of an interview in The Times, promoting an Anti-Airbrushing campaign she's involved in. I don't know any clear details of this campaign, but I'm all for ridding our world of unrealistic images of beauty. (I would link her blog here, but when I went to get the links it appear that here website it down. Oh well, I'll try to remember in the future.) Her use of Christina Hendricks as an example came from the fact that since staring in the TV series Mad Men, Hendricks has become a fashion icon and is often listed in various 'Sexiest Women in the World' lists across the magazine world, which is atypical for a woman with a buxom, hourglass figure.
I won't say “womanly” hourglass figure, or “healthy” hourglass figure. While these are qualifiers that you often hear use when describing bigger woman, it always seems to me as if they are used in retaliation against all those women who are naturally skinny, as if they have done it on purpose. Without wanting to sound nasty, adding qualifiers like that to any aspect of a woman's appearance only indicates that the user is asserting that to be the opposite of the “womanly” figure, in this case skinny, is to be wrong. If they can't have it, nobody should. It's a offensive use of the term, normally used by someone who considers body shape important enough to resent someone for it. I'm trying very hard to describe the body shape in question without using words such as “larger” or “fuller”, as I know some people would take that as insulting, and I shouldn't be worried about that as I know full well people shouldn't take offense at their physical size.
But now the whole thing has been jumped on, either by those agreeing with the small section of the article they're read and extolling the virtues of the larger woman, or attacking Mrs. Featherstone's views on behalf of skinny women everywhere. But the whole thing comes down to the unfortunate obsession people have with appearance. Fashion is a terrible thing to follow, as it constantly changes and so no one can ever match up to it's expectations for more than a moment. If you look at the front of the hack-rag celebrity magazines you will notice that one week they will be highlighting how certain celebrities have piled on the pounds, and then the next there will be photos of the exact same people but extolling the fact they managed to lose so much weight, it's ridiculous.
The basic fact of the matter that when you get right down to it, your appearance is dictated by how you were born to look. Let's look at Miss Hendricks shall we. She is a very attractive woman; a curvacious redhead with a 'classic' hourglass figure. It's clear why women with the same body shape would want to emulate her 'look' and, when made to feel bad that they do not look like the latest model/actress pinup who stares at them from the front covers on the magazine racks, hold her up as a counter focus. But do you know why she looks like that? Her genes. She was born with a large bust and hips and a slim waist which gives her those curves, and then she has been made the focus of a fashion craze but the production department of the TV series. If a woman her size and shape was desperate to have the figure of, as a random example, Kate Moss, this would be unhealthy as it would involve her starving herself in an attempt to reach a size and shape which her body is just not built to achieve. But equally if Kate Moss wanted to look like Christina Hendricks she would never achieve it, as she has a completely different body shape and metabolism.
So if the essence of what Lynne Featherstone's Anti-Airbrushing campaign is to rid our media of images that have been altered to perfection, so that the images we are driven to strive to are not impossible goals, then all speed to it. But the real solution is to encourage people to stop accepting what they are told is the ideal look. The vicious cycle of wanting to emulate what it “fashionable” is fed by our encouraging said media by enforcing it. Be happy with how your body. If you live healthy it doesn't matter where we're chubby or skinny. Once you have come to accept what you look the you can work out what look works with you. As long as you're physical healthy and eat well, then you'll probably feel happy about yourself. Oh, and stop buying fashion magazines.
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