Dr. Sara DiazWGST 280: Gender, Sex, & Popular CultureGonzaga University

ASIDE: Health, Wealth, Beauty

Health, Wealth, Beauty

• In addition to infusing subordination into our standards of beauty, we have also infused wealth.• This is long standing and can be seen by

comparing the standards of beauty across time.• In addition, health has become a major

marker of both wealth and beauty

Health, Wealth, Beauty

• Long hair (good nutrition)• Long nails (no need to work)• Soft skin (no need to work)• White teeth (access to dental care)• Skin Color• For non-white women: Fair skin (no need to work in the sun)• For white women: Tan skin (leisure time)

• Fat • old: access to lots of food; • new: access only to industrial food, too busy working to exercise

• Thin • old: no access to food; • new: access to whole food, time to exercise

Women’s Bodies Pathologized

• Body types that can perform the gendered ritual of subordination are preferred. Other body types are shamed and some are even pathologized.• Some bodies that cannot conform are considered “sick”

bodies in need of medical intervention.• Too Fat• Too Short• Physically impaired• Differently formed

• Fat is relatively new to this list. In the past it was considered a healthy body type because it signified wealth.

Naomi Wolf - The Beauty Myth

• The Beauty Myth is this:• A woman’s worth comes from her

beauty. She may make meaningful contributions to society. She may have all manner of interesting opinions. She maybe extremely intelligent. But none of that matters, none of it is really valuable, unless she conforms to white, upper-class heterosexual norms of beauty and sexuality.

Post-Feminist Beauty

• The development of the modern version of the beauty myth is a direct response to the feminist movement.• Wolf argues we have traded “liberation” for a

new form oppression:• Internalized impulse to find our worth not in our

external achievements or in our internal beauty but only in our external appearance.

• Under post-feminism, women may achieve any number of successes in our lives, but we don’t feel “successful” unless we are “beautiful.”

The dystopic future is now!• Women are increasingly encouraged to make radical bodily

interventions to attain “beauty.”• Radical Weight loss (Diet/Surgery)• Plastic Surgery

• Interventions are described as “for our health” (mental or physical) but often negatively affect health.

• Reality TV creates an ideological narrative that transposes health and beauty and shames fat bodies.• Extreme Makeover• Biggest Looser

• Eating disorders are on the rise amongst younger and younger children.

Fat is ugly?

• This is a relatively new idea, but it is stubbornly entrenched.• However, body shaming affects women of all

sizes (though not to the same degree or in the same ways).• Thin women live under the threat loss of worth

IF they gain weight.• Thin women’s worth is also based on their

conformance to gendered and racialized standards of beauty.

Political Economy of Thin Beauty

• Diet Industry: $50 billion/year• BAD NEWS:• Longitudinal Studies show that 95% of dieters regain weight after

2 years, EVEN WHEN THEY STAY ON THE DIET.• Similar studies show that exercise does not lead to long term

weight loss, EVEN WHEN YOU KEEP EXERCISING.

• GOOD NEWS: • Eating well and getting regular exercise DO improve your overall

health with respect to cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, etc. They do not lead to long term weight loss for the vast majority of people.

• Health at Every Size movement

Complex Factors• Obesity is not causally connected to negative health

outcomes.• Negative Health Outcomes have been causally connected to:• Poor Nutrition• Lack of access (time/space) to exercise• Increased stress due to social stigma (race, class, sexuality) –

Elevates stress hormones• Lack of access to adequate health care• Environmental Pollution (interferes with endocrine function)• Household Toxins (endocrine disruptors, obesogens)• Industrialization of Food• Weight Cycling

Correlation/Causation Error

• Many of these factors that have been causally connected to health have been show to cause weight gain.• We MAY have the causality flipped!!

Increasingly, evidence indicates that obesity might be a symptom of poor health and social inequality rather than a cause.

NEWS: Lemons reduce Highway Fatalities!

Be an information connoisseur

• Be careful as you consume information about health to look for correlation causation errors. • This often requires doing a little research on your

own to find original study results that become distorted in the media.

Back to Reality

To reiterate ….• Post-Feminist is the idea that the goals of the feminist

movement have been achieved and are no longer necessary.• Post-Race/Enlightened Racism is the idea that racism is no

longer a barrier for people of color.• Under these two ideologies, group goals for women and

people of color are no longer necessary, thus we can focus on the individual.

• In this way Post-Feminism and Post-Race ideologies are related to neo-liberalism which asks us to shift focus from the collective/community to the individual.

Reality TV & The Body• Focus on the individual rather than the group has led to an

increased focus on our individual bodies.• The post feminist retreat has allowed for the development of

unattainable and harmful beauty standards that are imposed on individual bodies.• Celebrities, especially women and girls, are critiqued for being

too fat AND too thin. For having plastic surgery AND for having wrinkles. NO WIN.

Moments of Resistance• http://youtu.be/6mOQh3evqsI

• Ruptures in the Post-Race, Post-Feminist, neoliberal ideological narrative.

• While critiques of radical body intervention (Tyra, Nip/Tuck) are limited, they do exist and offer us insight into the ideological narratives in which we are immersed.