By Rosangela Melendez
I hated mirrors as a child.
Small eyes, short eyelashes, big nose, thin lips, eyebrows in need of grooming,
round, chubby face, and a short neck.
Whenever I looked at my reflection, I did not see anything worth liking. I did not think I was beautiful. I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be a Disney princess, but I knew I could never be one. (more…)
By Kara Chyung
As a member of PBG’s fabulous Tumblr team, I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently searching through all of our saved tags, such as body image, sexism, and even Gloria Steinem. However, I’ve been avoiding the feminist tag recently due to all of the anti-feminist content that gets posted there. Some of the content attempts to be diplomatic, but some of it is just appalling. It can be offensive to see someone call something that you believe in useless, and it makes me a little sad to see that some people view feminism in such a negative way.
Here are some of the most common misconceptions about feminism that I have seen on Tumblr. Some of them refer to specific posts, and others I’ve seen many times.
1. Feminists hate men and believe that they are better than them.
Many people confuse feminism with misandry, but feminism is about equality, not superiority. Some people make the assumption that since feminists want to empower women, that means that they therefore want to suppress men. I support feminism because I believe that female gender inequality is more prevalent, but I also believe that men suffer from gender inequality and that these issues should be addressed along with women’s issues.
2. Feminism is a movement for the privileged.
I saw one particularly disparaging YouTube video about this topic. Basically, the maker of the video claimed that it was pointless and useless to spend energy advocating positive body image and reproductive rights while women in other countries are forced into marriage, banned from receiving an education, and raped on a regular basis. Of course female genocide is a more urgent and serious matter than objectification of women by the media. But both are their own breeds of bad, and it’s silly to suggest that one cannot be an advocate against both.
3. If you try to argue with feminists, they’ll just call you stupid and insult you.
There are probably feminists who refuse to listen to others’ points of view and maybe go a bit too far when trying to prove a point. But guess what? There are people who dismiss any opinion that isn’t their own in every movement, and feminism is not supported by a disproportionate number of them. To claim that an entire group of people with the same beliefs is by definition uncompromising (and rude) would be both unjust and incorrect.
4. Feminists are ugly women who can’t get laid
This is a reference to one awful post that I saw. According to this person, the problem is not the tremendous pressure that women face to be attractive, but the fact that some women are not attractive by society’s standards. Not only does this post belittle the importance of feminism in our culture, it also trivializes women’s experiences with gender inequality by labeling feminism as a way for women to justify their hurt feelings. That’s not to mention the glaring problem of attempting to set standards of beauty for women. Grr.
I’m not saying that the feminist movement is flawless or that women who don’t call themselves feminists are horrible people. But I wish that more people would see the strengths of feminism, because ultimately feminism does not only advocate for the rights of women. Feminism is a movement that is founded on the belief that no one should be discriminated against for who and what they are. And that is something we should all get behind.
By Guest Blogger Aimee Polimeno
People Magazine’s Epic Photoshop Fail of Lupita Nyong’o
It’s no secret that our media-driven culture values an extremely narrow and stereotypical version of beauty, usually represented by a Size 2, photoshopped model. Most people know that judging and media photoshopping any girl larger than a size 4 has a detrimental impact on girls’ body image, and so it’s an issue fought by activists on many fronts. However, what many of us tend to overlook is that our culturally biased ideal of beauty does not encompass only body size, but also race.
The lack of models of various races and ethnicities in media, not to even mention the tendency to photoshop lighter skin tones on those few models and artists who do make the covers of magazines, is one thing. The association in movies and TV between violence and skin color is another. We teach children that when race is visible at all, light is right and everything else is…well, wrong. Consider seemingly harmless animated films like The Lion King, where our main man Mufasa and his family are a lighter fur color, while the evil and calculating Scar is a darker shade. Think about all those dark-skinned evil queens in Disney films.
Multiple studies have been done in psychology and sociology dealing with this early priming of children to favor light over dark, and the results are heartbreaking. A recent study conducted with young children in Mexico featuring a white doll and a black doll found the same results as a famous U.S. study conducted in the 1930’s by Kenneth and Mamie Clark. “Which doll is good?” the children were asked. “Which doll is bad?” “Which doll is ugly?” Almost all of the children associate positive words like “good” and “pretty” with the white doll and words like “bad” and “ugly” with the darker skinned doll. When asked why they like the white doll better, the children aren’t entirely sure; they just know that it’s the better doll. And here’s the heart-breaking part: when asked which doll looks most like them, the children struggle, knowing they have darker skin too, knowing that choosing the darker skin doll forces them to associate themselves with being bad and ugly.
These children are not born with a preference for lighter skin and the lighter dolls; this value has been forced on them unknowingly by the images they see and the stories they are told. This damaging set of values is deeply rooted in our culture and media and, as a result, we as consumers support and perpetuate the problem. There are entire shelves in drugstores dedicated to skin-lightening creams and hair relaxants, but these would not exist without significant demand. It’s difficult to be a critical consumer when we’re constantly barraged by images and ads telling us how we should look and what it means to be beautiful. But the fight has to begin with each one of us.
Shirley sings “I Love My Hair!”
There are some positive signs of change. In 2010, Sesame Street featured Shirley, an African-American puppet girl singing about all the reasons “I Love My Hair.” With over 5 million views to date, it’s clear how important (and rare) it is for young African-American girls to see a character representing them who believes her untreated hair is fun and gorgeous on its own.
Shirley and her message of self-love and acceptance became a sensation and an inspiration for young Black girls. If one puppet can make such an impact, why can’t we as a collective group follow Shirley’s lead? It starts with challenging what we are sold in the media and then looking in the mirror and within ourselves to realize that we are beautiful. I am beautiful, and you are beautiful. Together we can push back against the cookie-cutter image portrayed in our media so young girls of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities can open a magazine and see a beautiful women who look like them. Like Shirley, love your hair, but also love your eyes, your curves, and your mind, and let the world hear it.
By Guest Blogger Maddie Wadington
If you’ve been reading Time Magazine, The Guardian, Glamour, or just about any popular magazine or newspaper of late, you’ve seen reports of a new study that compares men and women’s perceptions of beauty. The researchers asked both men and women to judge which photo of a model, wearing various amounts of makeup, was the most attractive to them, which photo would be the most attractive to other men, and which photo would be the most attractive to other women. Both men and women believed that the models wearing more makeup would be judged as more attractive by men. Interestingly, that wasn’t the case. Results showed that more women than men preferred the model wearing more makeup.
So what’s going on here? The researchers conclude that women are holding themselves to a standard of beauty that does not exist. Well, yes, that sounds right. But in spite of their findings, these researchers assume this standard of beauty is created and maintained solely by men, reflecting their version of attractiveness. This doesn’t make sense to me. We’re bombarded 24-7 with photoshopped beauty ideals, so doesn’t media play an overwhelmingly large role, not only in the creation of this “make believe” version of beauty but also in maintaining this standard in girls’ and women’s everyday lives?
Sure, maybe there are more men making decisions about what images are created and sold, but are they doing this because of what they individually like or because they know what sells to women—what makes women anxious enough to say, “I want what she’s having?” Isn’t the bottom line all about marketing and money and grabbing women’s attention (and as we’ve seen from the likes of Veet’s recent ad campaign, anything goes). Isn’t the corporate bottom line and not individual male desire responsible for perpetuating these unrealistic beauty standards?
It is also interesting to note that the Time Magazine article that I read about this study was titled: “Science Shows Men Like Women With Less Makeup.” But I have to wonder, why is the emphasis placed on how men prefer women? What about considering how women view other women? From my experience, girls and women compare their own beauty to that of other girls and women (just like girls and women do in the media). Could the results of this study-women preferring the model with more makeup—simply be due to the pressures they feel to look like the models they see in magazines?
When we think about how males and females perceive beauty, it’s important to consider more than just the physical attractiveness between men and women. In our society, there are so many more factors affecting what we think of as attractive: like media, marketing, and the ways they impact our views of each other. This isn’t just about gender or even about biology. Only when we consider the larger forces at play here can we affect how these unrealistic beauty standards affect our relationships and how we feel about ourselves. Only then can our voices can be heard.
By Suzanne Warshell
As evidenced by PBG, the media loves to hate on girls - teenage girls in particular. In a feature by The Guardian (that we can just tell was totally written by some grumpy-middle aged man), Youtube beauty guru Bethany Mota, better known as macbarbie07, is profiled … if you can even call such a condescending, and sexist review a “profile”. The article calls her “a highly successful version of ordinariness,” and “ the future of bubbleheaded consumerism,” reducing Mota and her hundreds of YouTube videos - which include cooking videos, makeup tutorials and honest vlogs on problems facing teenage girls today - into “a teenager who makes videos in which she discusses her latest purchases.”
I’ve followed beauty gurus on YouTube for years, and have always admired the way they have turned their passion into a career, especially at such a young age. These girls spend hours developing, filming and editing videos, only to send them out into a sphere where they are bound to receive extremely harsh criticism veiled behind anonymity. If you’ve ever read the comment section on one of these videos, you’ll know what I’m talking about. These girls are constantly barraged with hundreds of nasty comments insulting their voices, appearances and personalities on even the most non-controversial videos. Interspersed between the hate, however, is feedback from the gurus’ adoring fans. While The Guardian reduces these young fans to blind sheep following the ever-so-evil influence of “consumerism,” I, as a teenage girl, know better. These are girls trying to navigate their way through a culture in which everything they do, say, or care about is ridiculed. In the young beauty gurus of YouTube, these fans find girls “just like them” who are succeeding solely through their own merit. It’s a true self-made success story: Mota started with a camera in her bedroom, and has now landed a deal with a nationwide retailer.
While the most successful gurus often partner with global retailers and companies, these consumeristic influences were not what inspired the girls to begin making these videos. They began making these videos out of a pure love of beauty and fashion, not out of a passive submission to societal standards. Instead, they are now able to use the beauty industry to their advantage and play an active role within it. Thus, through these videos many girls have been able to manipulate the culture that tries to oppress them, becoming empowered in the process.
Finally, the piece completely ignores the sheer magnitude of Mota’s accomplishments. While it flippantly mentions the 40k-a-month paycheck Mota receives from the videos, the article intends for this number to be scoffed at, apparently insignificant because it came from YouTube beauty videos. What Mota and other gurus like her are doing is nothing short of astounding. These teenage girls are building empires at age 18 (and below!) and single-handedly setting themselves up for lives of financial stability by pursuing their passions.
Unfortunately, the YouTube beauty community is not without its flaws. Most (if not almost all) of the girls are white, conventionally attractive and come from extremely affluent backgrounds. It is misguided to teach young teenage girls that they are exactly like these gurus because chances are, they’re not. That being said, teenage girls finding inspiration in other teenage girls following their dreams, and doing it well, is everything but “bubbleheaded.” When the article remarks that “If you’re not a teenage girl, it’s not for you to get,” it proves its complete disapproval of teen girl culture. This profile is not some high-level cultural critique of “consumerism:” it’s blatant sexism. The piece finds itself among countless others, relentlessly mocking things that bring teenage girls joy. I applaud Bethany Mota, I applaud her followers, and I applaud teenage girls in general, for loving things fearlessly, whether it be makeup and fashion, or the countless other things teenage girls (as humans) choose to love.