Body-affirming song by Rebecca Riots

27th October 2007

Body-affirming song by Rebecca Riots

posted in Arts and Music, Body-Affirming, Pop Culture |

Conversations on blogs that address fat acceptance have been kind of serious and grave the past few days. So, to counteract the negative divisiveness, here’s a message I think we can all rally around.

I was alerted to the band Rebecca Riots and their song Women’s Bodies by Nina Feldman via the Fat Studies discussion group. Frankly, I love not only the song and its message, but also the band. I’m a folk music fan anyway, but band members Andrea Prichett, Lisa Zeiler, and Eve Decker combine to produce a beautiful sound (guitar, mandolin and harmonica) with soul-stirring lyrics.

Here are the lyrics. I suggest you read as you listen to maximize the effect.

A piece of the history of Western Civilization
is that women were permanent children under the law
You went from your father to your husband
and you had no rights at all
Does it strike you as connected to this piece of our past
that the women of today we hold up as ideal
are without exception small, slender and youthful
No room for variation, no room to heal

Chorus:
Don’t teach me to hate my body
I’m a woman I’ve been around a while
Don’t teach me to hate my body
I have a woman’s body not a child’s

I stopped watching television and looking at magazines
But I still feel oppressed
by our culture’s expectation of me
Don’t put me on a metal scale
and tell me I’m not small enough
With furrowed brow you imply that if I’m not small
I won’t be loved

(Chorus)

Let’s look at the roots of this sickly tree
We’re livin’ in the branches of 5000 years of patriarchy
Don’t let it hypnotize you remove yourself from the scene
Your body’s beautiful
the problem is the context we’ve been in

To be independent, strong and big
threatens the status quo
It’s only been 75 years since women had the vote
The laws have changed misogyny went underground
Any time you hate your body society’s doing just fine
Keeping you down

(Chorus)

According to the band’s website, other songs address “combating homophobia; gay-straight alliance; police accountability; healing through interfaith spiritual practice (the three musicians are Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist); caring for the country’s homeless; prisoner’s rights; positive body image for women; building with straw bale; gratitude toward nature; facing death and loss; anti-apartheid work; Palestinian rights; love and support of children and teens; and good old celebratory love songs.”

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Arts and Music, Body-Affirming, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On October 28th, 2007, Charli said:

I normally don’t enjoy the folksy, protesty-type songs. But this was different. I’m going to have to look these gals up!

posted on October 28th, 2007 at 5:44 am

2 On October 28th, 2007, Jeanne said:

Awesome song, rebecca!!

Thank you so much for sharing this group with us!!!

jeanne

posted on October 28th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

3 On October 28th, 2007, Misty said:

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. During those centuries of supposed “patriarchy,” women were revered for the FULLNESS of their figures. In fact, it is only as patriarchy as diminished in power, over the last century, that the ideal has become so thin.

Men (or at least heterosexual men) can be blamed for many, many things, but the one thing that they are most certainly NOT responsible for is imposing an androgynous standard of appearance for women — of else the size-0 standard would have been in place from the Greeks through the Romans, the Renaissance, the Baroque, up until today. The more “patriarchal” a culture has been, the more the full-figured Classical ideal has been dominant, and not the boy-thin look.

The premise of the song is an out-and-out lie.

posted on October 28th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

4 On October 28th, 2007, Rachel said:

Misty – There are lots of other societal, economic and political forces apart from patriarchal influences at play during those times in which bodies were revered for their rotundity. Most often, fuller bodies have been admired during times in which food is scarce, of epidemiological disease and other issues which result in a percentage of the population becoming thin and most often, malnourished. Look at African countries like Nigeria, where eligible brides women are sent to be fattened up before they are suitable for marriage. It is because fat is seen there as a sign of wealth and prosperity that it is revered – not because men rule the country.

But while I don’t think we can entirely blame men or the patriarchy for the ways in which women express themselves through their bodies, I do think we can’t entirely rule this very influential force out.

In fact, it is only as patriarchy as diminished in power, over the last century, that the ideal has become so thin.

What this suggests to me is that the thin ideal is a backlash of the women’s rights movement. What better way to keep women from assuming leadership roles within the public sphere than by keeping them obsessed, and firmly entrenched within the private sphere. Naomi Wolf talks of this very subject in The Beauty Myth.

In fact, if you examine the historical scholarship on the transition from society’s transformation from fat as ideal to fat as abhorred, you will see that it develops almost in tandem with the women’s rights movement of the early 1900s. And as the movement gains force again in the 1960s through the end of the century, the standards for thinness continue to become smaller and more narrow. I find it to be more than just coincidental.

Regardless of your conclusions about fat and the patriarchy, I still think the underlying message of the song – to love yourself and your body as it is – is one we should all rally around.

posted on October 28th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

5 On October 29th, 2007, Misty said:

Rachel, you and I are noting the same circumstances, but drawing opposite conclusions:

Naomi Wolf has it backwards. It is feminism and the women’s rights’ movement that have (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) CAUSED the imposition of the androgynous ideal. If you go back to the origins of what became the feminist movement, back in the 19th century, the early feminist female writers of the time consistently cast fuller-figured beautiful women as the antagonists of their heroines, because those antagonists represent (to these early feminist writers) the traditional values of motherhood, and are revered (in the society of the day) for being visibly, womanly beautiful (values which the early feminists opposed, rightly or wrongly), while the same early feminist writers cast their heroines as thin. Jane Eyre, Villette, The Awakening, Aurora Leigh — all of these and many other proto-feminist books contrast thin heroines which beautiful, full-figured antagonists.

This dynamic still operates in the fashion industry today. Not long ago, when the size-0 debate was raging, a female designer openly stated that she promoted a thin ideal because this thinness represets “speed” and “the modern woman” (meaning a professional career woman). The full-figured woman, to the fashion industry, represents a throwback to conservatism, to unmodern beauty, a hausfrau, and is opposed for that reason.

Of course standards of thinness become smaller as the women’s rights movement gains power. The former happens BECAUSE of the latter, not as a reaction to the latter.

The more powerful and prevalent the “modern” notion of the “liberated woman” becomes, the more androgyny is idealized, because the same personalities who promote the modern notion of the liberated woman also promote the androgynous standard.

I certainly agree that a “love your body” message is one we should rally around. However, it is simply disingenuous for the philosophy that initiated the suppression of the full-figured ideal to be co-opting that same ideal for its own benefit.

The early feminists are perhaps not to be faulted for this. They probably couldn’t conceive of a world turned upside-down, in which the popular full-figured beauties whom they resented, and cast as their antagonists, would ever become unfashionable, and that their own less visibly womanly aesthetic would become dominant. But the fact is that early feminism initiated the turnaround in female aesthetics that we are still living with today.

posted on October 29th, 2007 at 2:09 am

6 On October 30th, 2007, Arielle said:

Thanks for posting this (especially the lyrics). I love folk music such as this…and I love the message. I visited the band’s site after reading your post and I’m glad I did.

Arielle