Phenomenal Women

   Last week, while waiting in line at the grocery check-out and as usual being lost in thought, the exclamatory sound of, "I'M GONNA BE ON THE COVER OF THAT MAGAZINE SOMEDAY!" jolted me out of my daydream.  I looked down to see an eager four-year-old staring at me intently and pointing to (insert any title) Celebrity Gossip magazine. I smiled at her but thought, "Great! Our celebrity and fame obsessed culture is nabbing them earlier and earlier."  Then the little girl added, "But I have to be pretty first."  My smile faded.  It reminded me of a time a few years ago when I was in the same situation.  Grocery store check-out line, dad of five-year-old girl in a hurry, five-year-old girl staring at magazines on rack and grabbing at her waist and hips, five-year-old girl then asking, "Daddy, am I fat?" while continuing to stare at the models on the covers.  It is one thing for a grown woman to be dismayed by her size, weight, body type, and overall attractiveness, but what is happening when kindergarten aged girls are making comments like my grocery store companions?

In short, the answer lies with what prompted their comments.  Media. Images of women in the media are nothing new.  Women's faces, looks, and the female figure have been honored for centuries in art, literature, film.  What has been revered as attractive, however, has changed.  Below are a few images to confirm that.

    The ultimate question is why? Why did we go from Rubens Graces, to Marylin, to nameless waif as the ultimate female representation?  I do not think there is a clear answer, but I suppose another question is why does it have to be one or the other? Can the thin model not exist next to the curvier model in the same magazine? Both women exist in real life!
      The fashion industry has recently tried to address the trend of the too-thin model that has permeated magazines and runways for the past two decades, but they are doing it in a sort of haphazard way.  There are "Special Editions" of magazines that feature plus-sized models.  Why does it have to be labeled "Special?"  Does that not still proclaim that someone who is bigger than a typical model is not NORMAL?  And most of the photo spreads in these special editions feature models who are in various states of undress or in "themed" photos (Look! She is a fifties pin-up girl, a temptress!)  So women deemed larger by society's standards should only be gazed upon as desirable if they are naked or in costume?  Consider the photo below from Vogue.  Forget that they are lounging in a restaurant in lingerie; they are doing so at a table filled with food (Not just any food--PASTA. Yikes! A CARB!) and wine. I will let you stew on that irony.

    But let's not forget about the real models.  The thin women who grace the regular editions of magazines, because as I said earlier, why can't we all just get along? Bottom line, clothes showcase (please note I did not say "look") better on thin models.  They are human hangers.  Curves manipulate the lines of clothes and how they are designed to fall and hang.  A phrase that I cannot stand is, "Real women have curves."  So a woman who is devoid of said curves is fake?  She is not.  A thin woman is as much a woman as the one with larger breasts and hips.  I am not in favor of replacing the thin model with the zaftig one simply because she can be labeled "real."  And what about the woman who falls somewhere in between?  Does she get a "Special Edition" of Vogue?  I can see it now: Vogue the Completely Average Edition.  Why do we need to exist in extremes?
      I was saddened by the comments that the girls in the grocery store made not because I was worried that they will spiral into eating disorders or emotional abysses, but because they only saw one example of pretty, and it does not always represent women well.  One of the young ladies was black.  She was pointing at a magazine that had only white women on its cover. Think about it; in her four-year-old naivete she was exclaiming that only white women are pretty.  But how many times a day does she see a woman like the one below pictured on a magazine, on the television, in advertisements? Guess she will have to wait for the Vogue Black Edition (Yes, this exists.  Only in Italy, though.)

 What I am talking about is not revolutionary, nor is it the last time the issue will be addressed. The concept of female attractiveness is perhaps another one of my anthropological pursuits.  I find it very interesting that what is valued as beautiful to one person can be deemed unattractive to another.  There are a lot of pretties out there. Would it be so weird to see them represented all at one time, without any special editions?