Tomorrow (October 18th) is National Organization for Women’s annual Love Your Body Day .
Their presentation is available in flash or pdf, available for educators and parents, or your boyfriend.
Sex, Stereotypes and Beauty:
The poster winner is listed here . I just happen to prefer this entry.
Speaking of loving bodies, Mother Jones says it all for me regarding the whole Dove campaign. Two Knives has been discussing this as well in Girls, pay no attention to the naked supermodel sitting next to you, or, Dove’s at it again
I suppose it’s better than nothing, but who do they really think they are fooling?
So on love your body day eat healthy but well, wear comfortable clothing and shoes, don’t feel like you have to wake up and put on a mask, but for god sake please brush your teeth.
Well, I brushed my teeth and left the mask at home again.
You are loved by many for your compassion and mature insight to what is right and what is possible.
[…] Love Your Body — America Ferrera, and you. Coop reminded me it was NOW’s Love Your Body Day with her post Love to Love Me Baby…….Me, not my fake breasts and ruby red lips. […]
Ha, a trackback. I made a contribution.
I think you choose the best poster too.
Dove, yea waht fools we are to buy into it.
The poster is wonderful So are you
Unfortunately women will never love their bodies as long as – well take the blogosphere – some bloggers find it funny to bash fat people or all people who aren’t blond and maybe too skinny. I would have returned the book I bought from that blogger but it was too much work.
I almost gave it to a homeless person but wouldn’t saddle a person with it – so I threw it out
I so wish I grew up in a culture where volupturous bodies where accepted. Then I wouldn’t have constantly dieted myself down to a size five which isn’t good for me
I’m paying for all the yo-yo dieting now. If I could have just been satisfied – but I found dieting fun and would lose too much weight so I could have a few pounds to play with
Now my life is a constant diet and it’s fortunate that I actually love every vegtable but beets
Another true confession in Cooper’s comments.…
I feel blessed to be able to say that I am comfortable in my skin…and when I look in the mirror, I like my rolls and bumps, my fat ass and huge tits…probably because I made a choice a long time ago to either embrace them or hate them…I decided to embrace them…that doesn’t mean that I don’t exercise or treat myself well, because I do…but I refuse to be drawn into the notion that I have to look like the photoshopped photos of models on magazine covers.
It is a sad, sad world we live in indeed.
Having survived anorexia, it has been a top priority of mine that the only angle directed at the body in our household be that of health. No adults in our house and around our children are allowed to “feel fat”, to applaud the skinny, to make remarks good or bad on my body or my children’s and if such remarks escape anyone’s mouths I am on it and let them know where we stand on the matter at hand and it is nipped in the bud before it takes on a life of its own.
But there is no controlling the outside world and what is said there and what our children see and hear and the only way to battle that is to lay as strong a groundwork at home as possible.
But the battle is not limited to the immediacy of food and a healthy mindset with regards to the body. When an anorexic, needing to be thin had nothing to do with the media’s portrayals of the ideal woman (though it served its purpose to my detriment that is for sure) and everything to do with self loathing which was directly linked to a highly dysfunctional upbringing and many doses of freely dished out emotional abuse.
So communication and compassion are key elements to health, emotional and physical for they are inextricably linked, in our land o’ blue. Yeah, I fuck up as a parent but then the kids and I talk about it and I apologize and we reach a compromise and they speak their minds and we forgive, learn and move on.
And as for the direct issue at hand, thoughts on the body, I tell it to them, well mostly her as he is still too teeny to get it, like it is.
A couple of weeks ago, as we walked to school, I noticed that Lil’ BoheMia had her hands strangely over her stomach as we walked to school. It didn’t stand out as a gesture one would notice but it was not characteristic of her and throwing the notion of my perhaps being nosy aside I asked her why she walked that way. She finally answered that she didn’t want her stomach to look fat.
I was floored. I immediately asked if I had made her feel the need to do that in any way.
No, she said. She had heard girls in school taunting another girl, not her, but the taunting happened and she witnessed it.
So we had a loooong conversation about food, and exercise, and needing a balance between both in life… of her not needing to worry because she was in good hands and we were very careful as to what we fed them and made sure it was healthy and not harmful to her and that we would teach her, as we always had, along the way and throughout her life how to remain healthy and that if the worse case scenario is gaining weight that it isn’t such a problem as it can always be lost in a healthy way if need be and that as long as she had me I would help her… though the focus of society was wrongly on weight and that that had to be acknowledged and that she was beautiful whether teeny or not and would always be loved by me and her father no matter what… she was told that children are mean, as are adults, and nothing is ever perfect in anyone else’s eyes and anyone who goes to the trouble of critiquing someone else’s body is a nobody and not worth her time of day…
And then she was shocked to hear that being too skinny is also as dangerous as being too big and that it can kill you… and she heard that her mom was once sick and could have died but didn’t but she learned the hard way so hopefully she, Lil’ B, would not have to…
And it worked and she eats and all things go… though she also went, albeit briefly, through a stage where she shunned anything with sugar in it as she wanted to be healthy but then we explained that such shunning was dangerous as it could lead to a fear of food and that that too was bad and we told her that she should eat as she pleased but to do so moderately, especially with sweets but never to fully shun them, and so then she had ice cream and on we go with the show…
Communication and a healthy life at home… there is always hope and good for you for opening yet another channel of brilliant communication here amiga mia…
Verbose of me, I know, but this subject matter is near and dear to my heart and the objectification of women (and sadly so we are the culprits in this vicious cycle too) into a pile of skin and bones simply makes my blood boil…
Wishing everyone much health…
And OH the irony of my not being able to eat today, perhaps also tomorrow, as my left side is sore from a re-touched root canal and my right side still misses its tooth… HAH! Cruel, cruel joke! Oy!
Women, imho, tend to be obsessive about themselves. Some men like their women that way. They want their women toned, sleek, and undimpled in a way that Mother Nature never intended. With the exception, perhaps, of Christie Brinkley. If women want to be that way, so be it. But the 2nd grade teacher who told my ice cream and bacon loving scooter that all fat was bad really got my goat. Years later, the teener still has a problem with fat. Both in food and on his female friends.
I love the idea, but I wish there didn’t have to be a day where women are told “it is ok to be comfortable with yourself.”
Doug: Thank goodness.
JD: Is possible, but is it probable? I wish. We wish.
Kait: Hey kait, nice. I saw you veered out of your usually territory. Great stuff.
Pia: I love the kid poster, and the color as well.
i love my body, i feed it vegetables and run it and don’t wear masks when I wear make-up it is with full kowledge it is theater.
True confessions are excellent.
Marv: You are so lucky and not being sucked in by it all is so hard sometimes.
Mizzy B: I know the struggle you have had and do no envy you. I’m certain your daughter will be prepared psychologically for all that may be thrown at her — with ou are her mother she is safe. Home, yes you know that whole foundation thing is very important.
Hope those damn teeth feel better and you can eat tomorrow.
SK: You must have a limited experience then, as I see it there are some women obsessed with themselves. Maybe you have just been hanging around some very unenlightened people I don’t know. I personally can’t stand being around people in general who are overly conscious of their every little piece of hair or fingernail or anything like that.
Women can eat well get plenty of exercise and still not look like any of those models you see…for god sake those models don’t look like any of those models at last not in real life.
Coyote: There really shouldn’t have to be a day but for purpose of education I am all for starting with little girls on this.
I had the benefit of never having much access to television when really young. I never really saw much of what was there. Even at that it is hard not to fall into it when exposed, even if exposed very little until age 13.
Thank you for the reminder of the day. My future daughters thank you. My son thanks you, and you did choose the best poster.
The Dove camapign — tranaparent, but if they are going to sell beauty products there probably isn’t a better way to do it. If they didn’t think there was a market for it they would not touch it with a ten foot poll.
[…] How nice that my blogiversary and Love Your Body Day fall on the same day — today! (Heads up from/thanks to cooper). […]
Well, after watching the Dove clip and reading the MoJo piece, I’d hate to say it, but, well…
Unilever, just like any other multinational corporation in the consumer products industry, is at least trying to figure out how to do business in a changing society — sure they sell Axe, but how many other companies that size have ever gone after a socially-conscious demographic, or have considered that, yeah, there may be more money to be made in promoting a more positive image of women in an ad campaign?
I mean, what better way to cut down on promotional expenses than to create something that stirs up debate, and say, gets bloggers to inadvertently provide free publicity through what the bloggers right off as “being socially conscious?”
C’mon. Getting social activists in an uproar has been putting just as much food on the corporate table as getting Religious conservatives riled up. It’s free publicity, creates branding that money can’t buy. And it’s give-and-take, too. Hell, Wal-Mart will become the largest organic food distributer in the world this year, tradeswomen (plumbers, electricians, etc) are now represent one of the heavily recruited sectors of the Glass-Ceiling Good Ol’ Boy manufacturing sector…
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that, heh, it’s a brave, new world, and while its great to point out shortcomings, its always surprising how nobody really looks at the positive side of things like Unilever’s marketing campaign — if the marketplace is beginning to force companies to adopt anti-sexist imagery in campaigns, then that means they’re acknowledging that they can make a buck off of it.
Either way, regardless of whether or not it’s good or bad for women, for those concerned, somebody’s getting richer.
Jason: Long time no see. I had to check to see which Jason this was.
As already pointed out, it is better than nothing. I think the positives have been covered very well, but let’s not pretend they give a shit. Let’s not forget they still sell that stuff to make your skin “oh so soft”…and make you too sexy for your…skin.
Jacob: Your right, it’s better than the alternative.
I don’t know if I could ever fully love my body.
Heh, well, I’ve been trying to survive this friggin’ month (renaming October FuckedTober seems to be the only humane thing to do) and I’ve been sorta hiding from Cyberspace (lol, Facebook has really become my damned vent about online/offline snafus lately), but just wanted to say hi, piss ya off, and leave
I’m working my way back though…