And we wonder why women don't feel pretty

Over the weekend I got together with the Circle of Truth (made complete by one of Sakhmet's much-too-rare visits to Utah). It was a fabulous time, of course, hosted by Daltongirl & Family. We stayed up much too late and talked and laughed and got about as smashed as practicing Mormons can (three words: Kahlua chocolate fondue). Also we use lots of Jane Austen quotes without thinking about it, which I'm sure is not pretentious or off-putting at all.

I mentioned the Dove Real Women ad campaign, and the video they've produced, which Miss Hass so kindly brought to my attention.



I mean, it's not news to us that professional images get worked over. But it's really interesting to watch the process and to see how very far you get from the original. Murray spoke up here, and said that you can pretty much assume that whatever you're looking at has been doctored in some way. And he would know, because part of his job is to do the doctoring. In fact, he has had to spend time smoothing out the excess body hair of anorexic models. I didn't even realize this was a thing. It's called lanugo, which I always thought meant the body hair that babies are born with. But it turns out that anorexic women get it too, and it's their bodies' way of trying to insulate themselves because they don't have enough fat.

Of course we wanted to know why they're hiring anorexic models in the first place, and Murray said that's just the look that the photographers and art directors are going for. And if one company started hiring bigger models then people wouldn't think they looked right. (Murray, btw, is not the one doing the hiring. And he neither supports nor encourages eating disorders.)

But let's see what we've got, here. The women in our advertisements are so thin that they're actually growing full beards and chest hair. They are so unhealthy that people have to go in and digitally erase the evidence of how sick they are. And yet they won't get hired if they put on weight. And then the rest of us women look at them and feel bad about how fat we are.

Sometimes I think the world kind of deserves to just go up in flames.

Posted in: on my crap list