The-F-Word.org

Tina Indalecio, a PhD student in media psychology at Fielding Graduate University, sent me a note about a study she’s conducting on how advertising media impacts individuals with body image and/or eating disorders, with a particular emphasis on the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ads and videos.  The study is voluntary and anonymous.  Wanna participate?  Here’s how:

If you decide to participate in this research, you will be asked to complete the Brief Mood Introspection Scale (BMIS), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Test and view and respond to a series of Dove campaign ads and videos. The survey should take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Survey link is here.

The password to enter the survey is: temp1212

Please be sure to participate by Wednesday, October 28th by 11:45pm

Hard to swallow:  Washington mom Juliet Lee has eaten five pounds of ribs, 43 inches of cheese steak sub, 31 dozen raw oysters, 13 slices of pizza, 13 pounds of cranberry sauce, and 13 date-nut-bread-and-cream-cheese sandwiches — all within minutes.  Oh, yeah… she weighs 100 pounds and wears a size-zero.

Not only are “plus-sizes” considered taboo in high fashion, so too are large breasts. The well-endowed journalist Venetia Thompson delves into the issues supporting the busty bias in this Daily Beast editorial.

Progressive or just prejudiced?  After months of guised jabs at Rep. N.J. gubernatorial challenger Chris Christie’s weight, Democratic State Committee Chairman Joe Cryan blatantly “pounded” the issue home to supporters: “What would it feel like if the next governor weighs 350 pounds?” he asked the crowd.  Meanwhile, Sen. Raymond Lesniak told the New York Magazine that Christie “looks hideous! And unhealthy… That doesn’t portray the discipline that’s necessary to lead this state.”

Fat studies scholar Amy Farrell appeared on Colbert Nation this week to discuss fat-shaming, health at every size and her new book, Fat Shame.

Fox and Burger King apologize for mocking Jessica Simpson’s weight.

Meghan McCain: Still Republican, but I can’t help but like her anyway.  In an editorial for the Daily Beast, McCain responds to the Simpson bashing with a call to stop the fat jokes.  “My weight is the great constant in my life, no matter where I am or what I am doing it is an issue that comes up,” she writes.  “I could probably cure cancer and solve all the Republican Party’s problems, and people would still make fat jokes.”

A new study finds that the simple act of exercise itself can improve body image even if you don’t lose an iota of a pound.

D’oh!  The British government is spending more than a million U.S. dollars recreating a “healthier” version of The Simpsons in an effort it says to reduce the two-dimensional “obesity epidemic.”  The campaign, which began last Monday and will run through Christmas, replaces Homer’s much-loved beer and doughnuts with fruits and vegetables and ditches the image of the family sitting on the sofa at the beginning of each episode (the fact that families need to be slumped on the sofa to even view the campaign is overlooked).  No word on how Mr. Burns, the thin-as-a-rake, delicately fragile food minimalist, will be portrayed.

For more news that didn’t make the blog, follow us on Twitter.

French-Swedish supermodel Filippa Hamilton is thinner than 99 percent of American women, but she’s still not thin enough for Ralph Lauren.  After legally threatening the website Boing Boing for posting a horribly digitally altered Ralph Lauren advertisement of Hamilton in which the model was Photoshopped to give her an impossibly skinny body (“Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis”), the fashion house admitted to Extra, “Oops, our bad.”

Here’s the image, originally posted on Photoshop Disasters for obvious reasons.  Photoshop Disasters also received a similar threatening letter and took the image down.

Ralph Lauren issued the statement: “For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.”

Quality and integrity?  There are many, myself included, who would argue that Ralph Lauren’s normal “brand” caliber presents very distorted images of women’s bodies on a daily basis, but frankly I doubt the company cares much or at all.  Jenny Lauren, the niece of Ralph Lauren, developed a serious eating disorder as a teen — her disorder, like others, was complex in nature, but she admits in her deliberately titled memoir Homesick that fashion and her family played a “huge role” in affecting her “psyche” — and even now as a mostly recovered adult, still suffers mentally and physically from it.  Violent bingeing and purging caused Jenny’s colon to herniate so that her small intestines dropped to the space between her rectum and vagina, sparking a lifetime of living with chronic pain and ailments.  Her search for relief has taken her from the Mayo Clinic to a spiritual healer in Brazil, from the East Coast to Tucson, Arizona, and she suffers still.

Ralph Lauren doesn’t seem to care that his upscale rail-thin images contributed to his niece’s eating disorder and subsequent debilitating ailments; why should he care about all the other girls (and boys) who develop eating disorders in attempts to look like the digitally slimmed models gracing his catalogue and website?  The only reason the company objected to this ad is because it went too far and made the brand an object of ridicule and not aspiration.

In a move similar to that of Glamour, Germany’s most popular women’s magazine, Brigitte, announced that it will no longer use professional models in favor of “real women” in an attempt to combat an unhealthy standard of size-zero models its says has alienated readers.  Andreas Lebert, Brigitte’s editor-in-chief, said that the bimonthly magazine will, starting next year, feature a mix of prominent women and regular readers in photo spreads for everything from beauty to fashion to fitness.  Lebert said the move is in response to readers saying that they are tired of seeing “protruding bones” from models who weigh the same as a prepubescent girl.

But unlike Glamour, which has committed to featuring plus-size models, Brigitte isn’t “going to become a magazine for plus-sizes,” said Lebert.   Because, “real women,” apparently, only come in sizes 4-12.  Read an English translation of the magazine’s call for models here.

You know who else uses “real people” in its ads?  Wal-Mart.  I hate to give any kudos to the union-busting retail bully who sells both women and the community it robs jobs from short, but I do have to admire the diverse everyday kinds of people it features in its print and television ads.  There was a print ad not too long ago for bras that featured a group of women a’ la Dove-style, but also included women who were old and wrinkled and actually plus-size.  The Nivea spot Wal-Mart is currently running on television shows a plus-size black woman and (who I assume to be) her husband sitting on the couch watching TV and eating popcorn.  The woman wears probably a U.S. size 20 at the least, and her husband can’t take his hands off of her.

The owner of one German modeling agency told The Associated Press that she believed Brigitte’s ban on models was simply a marketing gag that wouldn’t last once readers began clamoring again for “beautiful, aesthetically pleasing” people.  Yet Wal-Mart, with its regular people marketing blitz, trails only Exxon in annual revenues.  Sure, the demographics are different for Wal-Mart and Brigitte and people would continue shopping at Wal-Mart even if it did no advertising at all, but the fact remains that the super center dynamo knows both its clientele and how to best reach out to them — it doesn’t throw a half-billion-dollars a year at its advertising strategy for nothing — and it does this by thumbing its nose at the “advertising is aspirational” mantra with direct appeals to the Regular Joes and Janes who shop at its stores.  It’s this same appeal to consumers that motivated Glamour to diversify the models it features and that has now pushed Brigitte to move in the same direction.

What with Vogue’s public condemnation of fashion designers, the backlash received by SELF for digitally slimming Kelly Clarkson, the British Parliament debating regulation of airbrushed images, Glamour’s new commitment to body diversity and now Brigitte seeking out “real people” for its ads… it certainly seems like the dominoes have been set in motion. Here’s hoping they tumble rapidly.

My googlefu has failed to produce Anthem’s new bit of video propaganda for all to see, but luckily my good friend Ryan and one of his Facebook friends sum it up beautifully (this came up in a discussion on Miracle Whip’s cheesy new “Don’t Be So Mayo” hipster-appeal ads).

Greg: OMG. have you seen the best one ever? it’s the anthem insurance commercial about your “health footprint.” there are people in a grocery checkout line, and this lady is buying a ton of lettuce. then this fat queen squeaks up behind her with ice cream and a six pack. after surveying her purchases, he decides he’s gonna throw in the fitness (aka muscle porn) magazine. supposedly, she’s influencing him to begin working out, but you and i know what’s really going on: breyer’s, sam adams, and self-abuse. thanks anthem.

Ryan: Christ, I HAVE seen that. That queen is going to suck down that Breyer’s as fast as any hipster can scoff at an organic cotton Miracle Whip tee from American Apparel… discussing all the while which torch song by Dusty Springfield best describes their personality.

BTW… I calculated my Health Footprint on Anthem’s website and averaged nearly 10,000 and the accolade of “Fantastic.  You are an inspiration to others.”

I recently added a few advertisements to my ever-growing vintage ad collection and was struck by the bipolarity of these two ads in particular.  The first, published in 1940, is one of countless ads produced by Lysol (and other companies) suggesting that if women don’t keep their “dainty feminine allure” by squirting caustic poison into their vaginas, their husbands will leave them.* The second ad, published in 1942 shortly after the start of World War II in the U.S., features flying instructor Peggy Lennox, described as one of few “girls” qualified for the “man-sized” job of “training men to fly for Uncle Sam,” endorsing Camel cigarettes.  While we would no doubt consider the ad sexist today, it was actually quite empowering for women at the time.

Click on the ads for a larger-res version.  I’ve also included a close-up of the two women in the ads.  What differences do you notice between the messages of the ads and the relative body sizes of the women they feature?

* Lysol then was considered a caustic poison and in more concentrated forms, required the skull and crossbones sign on its labeling.  That didn’t stop the company from marketing it as a feminine hygiene product to women.  Women also used Lysol as a birth-control device, douching with it to kill sperm (it didn’t). In Devices & Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (2001, Hill & Wang), Andrea Tone writes of the vaginas that the liquid burned and the accidental — and, in some cases, intentional — deaths caused by women who douched with Lysol.

I saw a commercial for the new film “The Ugly Truth” yesterday.  Starring Katherine Heigl and the dreamy Gerard Butler,” the film seems to be of of the “Men are bumbling idiots who think only with the head in their pants” genre — just check out the poster for it.

Yeah, yeah, I know… men have up to 20 times more testosterone than women which leads to differences in sex drives, yadda, yadda, but unbelievably, there are men who do have healthy levels of testosterone and yet have still managed to avoid devolving into cousin-humping rabbits.  It’s important to remember that sexism, in all its forms, hurts us all, men included.

I’m furiously trying to finish my final graduate paper after wasting an inordinate amount of time playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook this past week, so posting will be light the next couple of days. Instead, I point you to this trademark image of Skinny Cow, a Nestle-owned brand of low-cal ice cream products, to discuss amongst yourselves.  I’ve tried Skinny Cow’s vanilla and mint dipper bars; they’re pretty tasty, but the sexualized bovine with a measuring tape encircling her abnormally shrunken waist leaves a lot to be desired.  For reasons I have yet to comprehend, there are even Skinny Cow scrapbooking events.  Not only is this image creepy for what it says about and promotes as goals for women, but also because it’s yet another example of women presented as meat objects — as well as a roundabout example of Suicide Food (sadly, aging dairy cows are not herded into dairy retirement homes).  Your thoughts?