A Sea of Troubles
I found a new blog the other day (not really new, just new to me), called Majikthise. I was looking through her posts on Gender Issues, and I came across something that had slipped by me a few weeks ago…do any of you watch America’s Next Top Model? I have never seen it, and never plan to, especially after reading about an episode a few weeks ago, in which the models were all posed in photographs as though they had been murdered. WTF? Majikthise linked to an article at Women in Media and News about this episode.
If you want to see the pictures, and read the truly creepy comments from the judges, you can find them here. I’m so disgusted by this whole thing, I don’t really even know what to say. People who find beauty in the violent deaths of scrawny women make no sense to me. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the detachment that we feel toward violence, as expressed so well by Py Korry in his post about the murders in Virginia on Monday. Or perhaps this is symptomatic of the misogyny of our society in general. Perhaps people should be just a bit more disgusted and up in arms about crap like this. Or, perhaps they should just go out and see if they can find snuff films about people in concentration camps. I don’t know. I’m just disgusted.
Then there’s this study from the AP, which I saw first on Broadsheet about women in Mauritania. As twisted as our ideal of stick thin beauty has become in the United States, their ideal of obese beauty is equally sick and twisted. I had never heard of the practice of “gavage” used on people before. Here, from the A/P, via Seattlepi.com:
In Mauritania, to make a girl big and plump, ‘gavage’ – a borrowed French word from the practice of fattening of geese for foie gras – starts early. Obesity has long been the ideal of beauty, signaling a family’s wealth in a land repeatedly wracked by drought.
Mint was 4 when her family began to force her to drink 14 gallons of camel’s milk a day. When she vomited, she was beaten. If she refused to drink, her fingers were bent back until they touched her hand. Her stomach hurt so much she prayed all the animals in the world would die so that there would be no more milk.
To end the brutal feeding practices, the government has launched a TV and radio campaign highlighting the health risks of obesity. Because most Mauritanian love songs describe the ideal woman as fat, the health ministry commissioned catchy odes to thin women.
These efforts, combined with the rising popularity of foreign soap operas featuring model-thin women, has helped reduce the practice, especially among the country’s urban elite.
Only one in 10 women under the age of 19 has been force-fed, compared to a third of women 40 or older, according to a survey conducted by the National Office of Statistics in 2001, the most recent available.
I wonder how long it will be before the government jingles praising thin women, and foreign soap operas of model thin women, will bring anorexia and other eating disorders to the ‘urban elite’ in Mauritania? I wonder if any society will ever relax enough to let naturally skinny women be beautiful and skinny, naturally fat women be beautiful and fat, and naturally average women be beautiful and average? That, to me, would be a fantastic improvement on this kind of madness.
On a much brighter note, (though one that owes itself to more evil/creepy/bad behavior) if you want to read another story that passed under my own personal radar screen, one that impressed me, check out this tale, in which a bartender and a waitress notice some very not-nice behavior on the part of one of their patrons…they noticed him putting some powder into his date’s drink when she went to the bathroom. They claimed the drink before she could get a drink of it, saying that her beer had come from a fermented keg, and they replaced it. Being wise women, they saved the drink for the police, and told the woman what was going on when she went outside to smoke a cigarette. The patron, however, wasn’t giving up so easily, and while she was outside hearing of his nefarious deed, proceeded to drug his date’s next drink as well.
The would-be attacker is currently in prison on narcotics charges related to the incident, but is scheduled to be released in May. I’m not thrilled that all he got was 6 months in jail, I’m not thrilled that he worked for the SF Unified School District, but I am thrilled that these two women saw what was going on, and handled the situation so well. They’re surely heroes in their neighborhood.
19 Comments
Author Mom DogNut
The whole violence thing promoted by movies, television and media is just too gross for words. I’m thinking why aren’t people more outraged by seeing any kind of graphic violence depicted on any show or movie. I want to know who decided that violence, murder, and mayhem are entertaining? Yuk.
Would that there were only more women like those who snatched the drugged drink…
Speaking of Mauritania, there’s an interesting blog titled Planet Nomad of an expat American woman sharing her life there. Reads like National Geographic.
Ml
Sickening! Where does all this morbid crap come from? How do people think this stuff up? UGH!
Py Korry
Talk about cruelty! My God, those are some really disturbing examples of how distorted and sick people can get when it comes to standards of beauty. But the last story you highlighted give me hope that people are watching out for another.
J
Don’t worry Py, tomorrow is a meme. 🙂 Time to lighten up!
Chrissy
Urgh…I actually saw bits and pieces of that episode of America’s Next Top Model. I think the TV was left on while I was in the office and it just happened to be on at that time. I was horrified to think that death would be used as the theme for a photo shoot. It takes some really morbid people to come up with stuff like that…and trying to get the models to look beautiful in death.
Chrissy
PS. Thanks for sharing that last story 🙂 It’s really nice to see that people do look out for each other. How sick is it to even think of putting drugs into someone else’s drinks? I guess I don’t really understand how people could take advantage of others like that. I know there are a lot of psychological reasonings behind that, but even people who aren’t considered ‘ill’ are capable of slipping things into someone’s drink. It’s scary to think of what people are capable of doing to others if they have their minds set on it. I’m glad the bartender and the waitress were proactive and ended up saving that woman. Thanks for the great read, J.
Beenzzz
America’s Top Model went over the edge with that photo shoot. Talk about glorifying violence! The Mauritania story is awful too. You know, it’s always women who are expected to hold up the social ideal, isn’t it? We are expected to be thin, fat, subserviant, have our feet bound, burn ourselves at our husbands funeral pyre, etc. I wonder too when anorexia will become the new fad in Mauritania….
Jenny
I watch the show, and when I heard what the shoot was going to be I though, WHY? WTF? And none of it was good. The models were like HUH, why are they having us do this?
Starshine
“I wonder if any society will ever relax enough to let naturally skinny women be beautiful and skinny, naturally fat women be beautiful and fat, and naturally average women be beautiful and average? That, to me, would be a fantastic improvement on this kind of madness.”
Well said, J! I totally agree! After all, our differences are something to celebrate. How boring would it be if we all were “perfect” size sixes?
Heidi
Haute Couture has always been edgy and this could have been inspired by The Black Dahlia, perhaps. Sickening, for sure. At this point I believe the only thing we can do is turn the TV off. That in itself goes down as a tablespoon of Liquid Plumber, I know. I think it’s the only practical choice. We are not united enough as a country to buck anything. Those poor Mauritanian girls. Excellent post, J.
ally bean
Amazing to me what any society can force on women as a standard of beauty. Thin. Fat. You’re just never right the way you are.
CuriosityKiller
I love your story about the women bartenders protected the date from getting drugged. They are heroes. I would so visit that bar just for the company. Great post, J.
CuriosityKiller
And I also love the Picasso.
V-Grrrl
I love the Picasso too…Guernica? I can’t remember the name…
rashenbo
I rarely watch America’s top model… but as fate would have it, it’s playing on the television right now while I’m blogging. I glance over and just raise my eyebrow at the insanity.
Sophisticated Writer Linked you as one of her favorites, so I just had to stop by and say hello. Nice blog you have over here. I’ll have to stop by again!
Michelle
I’d be curious to see Planet Nomad’s reaction to this quote–she’s living in Mauritania (her blog is fabulous) and she makes amazing observations about the culture and people. From what she says they seem much more reactionary and traditional/conservative than most Arab nations but that’s of course just a generalization. I’d never heard her mention anything of this issue though.
lalunas
Scarey what is out there…
Black Belt Mama
So much to say on this one. I did a paper in college on the way women are depicted in the media and there are some scary ads out there, like the one for a watch that shows the guy choking a woman’s throat. Messed up. These are in a lot of popular magazines even now!
Secondly, I had my drink drugged once, and I THANK GOD I was with friends and my boyfriend who took care of me and made sure I got home safely. I am a phanatic about always watching my drinks when out.
hellomelissa
i’ve seen waaaaaay worse “art” photographs than those taken on america’s next top model. i also see waaaaay worse depictions of grisly murder scenes every time i turn on the tv and it’s csi or law & order. think maybe all this stuff contributes to what happened at virginia tech?
the skinny and fat debate drives me insane, but until more places like madrid are willing to put their necks out and specify a minimum bmi for their models, i’m sure the trend will continue. as to mauritania, i have no answer… i suppose it’s much like fgm and other cultural norms. they do it because everybody does it, and no one’s willing to rock the boat.