policing the body

[hermionesviolin]

Yesterday morning at the gym, I saw GMA's segment on Marianne Kirby and Gabrielle Gregg.

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Seen today via Dave Chen: Abercrombie and Fitch banishes girl with prosthetic arm to storeroom because she doesn't fit the "look policy"

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Yesterday, I was reading a rant about the way Zoe Saldana's skin gets described in fanfic, and in reading something about Zoe Saldana getting described as "light-skinned," I read something (though I can't find it now) that commented that up until recently, being a light-skinned black person meant being the product of a white man raping/coercing a black woman.

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Marianne Kirby takes issue with Purex's “As things get simpler, they get thinner. They get better.” ad campaign.

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I read Marianne Kirby's complaint about Bravo's Fashion Show (and an even better blogpost from mo pie on Big Fat Deal) and I remembered something I had seen from Virgina Postrel.

As it turns out, Shapely Prose had already seen Postrel's article.

Sarah: My most charitable read is that she’s distinguishing the average weight from the mean weight.  Her argument, as I see it, is that it’s in the economic interests of the clothing companies to make clothes near the mean (rather than the average simply because that’s how they can maximize the number of people who can wear their clothes while minimizing what they spend on developing different sizes.

IOW, even though the “average” size may be a 14, that doesn’t mean that’s the single size (or range of a few sizes) that the greatest number of women can wear.  There’s a big range of sizes above a 14, obviously — and those all affect the average size, but that doesn’t mean that any *one* (or two or three) of those plus sizes is common enough to pull in lots and lots of customers, at least to a brick-and-mortar store.  So the sizes promising the greatest numbers of customers wouldn’t be the *average* size (or range of sizes), but the *mean* size, which (she claims) brick-and-mortar stores already do try and cater to.

Yes, Sarah, that was my read of it as well (and I wasn't actually going out of my way to be charitable).  Shapely Prose links to Jezebel's response to the article, which makes some really good points.

Speaking of fashions for fat ladies, Gabrielle Gregg's YoungFatAndFabulous has lots of pretty pictures (interestingly, I read "Beth Ditto, fashion's Magical Fatty" and then saw Gabi's "Beth for Evans" and "Ditto" posts).  Also, I love that the cover model for "Full-Figured Fashion Week" is a hott woman of color.

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Medical-related readings from today:

Problematizing the obesity=>diabetes stats.

A depressing story from "First, Do No Harm: Real Stories of Fat Prejudice in Health Care."

WLS may increase bone fractures

A small study by the Mayo clinic as reported on Forbes.com showed that one in five people they reviewed after weight loss surgery suffered a bone fracture within 7 years, on average, after having the surgery. The group showed nearly double the fracture rate in post-WLS patients as in other patients.

"We knew there was a dramatic and extensive bone turnover and loss of bone density after bariatric surgery," study senior author Dr. Jackie Clowes, a Mayo rheumatologist, said in a Mayo news release. "But we didn't know what that meant in terms of fractures."

You mean they really didn't realize that an extensive loss of bone density would lead to more fractures? Isn't that, you know, why osteoperosis is a concern in the first place, because the loss of bone density leads to increased fractures? They didn't realize that by putting people through radical surgery that reduced their ability to get proper nutrition might, you know, also prevent them from getting proper nutrition? Like Calcium and vitamin D? That makes for the strong bones? really? Never occurred to them?

Comments

[carlyinrome.livejournal.com]

Dude. Classy, Abercrombie. Classy.

being a light-skinned black person meant being the product of a white man raping/coercing a white woman.

I'm pretty sure you mean one of those whites to be "black." Here's my thing with this. Though it's embarrassing, and a damn shame, I don't think it's a secret that many fic writers are completely ignorant in their characterization of COC. That said. I'm kind of confused by how often the authors writing asinine descriptions of skin color thing comes into play; just from a purely writerly POV, why can't you mention a character without going on about their "heavily creamed coffee" skin, or what have you? Is this a fetishization thing -- because how often do you read on about a male character's skin tone, or whatever, as opposed to a female's? -- or is there a real artistic aim here that's going over my head?

I didn't know that bariatric surgery caused vitamin deficiencies; I guess I never really thought about it. I mean, that's awful that people are being hurt, but thank you for sharing that.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you mean one of those whites to be "black."

*facepalm* Thank you for catching that.

[carlyinrome.livejournal.com]

Just another service I provide. :)

[escritoireazul.livejournal.com]

is this a fetishization thing

I think it frequently is just that, even if on a subconscious level. It is frequently female characters of color who are described as food, but also female characters in general - milk white skin, cherry nipples, etc. I think this can sometimes be on purpose; I mean, I've definitely wanted to write characters (frequently male characters, for some reason) as delicious and so using food terms to describe a character another character basically wants to devour (sometimes quite literally when writing vampires and werewolves) might make sense, but there are so many problematic uses of it that I shy away from it.