beauty myths

Study: Too Many Fat Women Don’t Even Know They’re Fat

by Cara November 23, 2010

So there’s a fascinating new study out about how women perceive their weight, with the results being that a significant proportion of women who were deemed “overweight” by the BMI did not view themselves as such. Cue the body-shaming, junk reporting, and photographs of fat1 people with their heads cut off. In the most neutral [...]

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A Quick Note on Misogynistic Body Standards

by Cara May 19, 2009

I know way, way, way better than to waste my time analyzing tabloid magazines.  Which is why I pretty much never do it, and I’m not going to bother saying much very now.  Because of course, we pretty much see the same shit above every fucking year around this time. But I saw this magazine [...]

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Shocking: Playboy Playmates Represent Increasingly Impossible Sexual Ideals

by Cara February 3, 2009

In what comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who pays attention to media representations of women and sexiness, it looks like the overall BMI of women featured as Playboy Playmates has dropped dramatically over time.  Indeed, according to Wired Magazine (who did the analysis), “While real American women have steadily eaten their way [...]

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Berlusconi: Women Are Raped Because They’re Just So Good Looking

by Cara January 26, 2009

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, known for putting his foot in his mouth in really offensive ways, has done it yet again. This time, it’s one hot mess of rape myths and rape apologism, and a revival of the “women are raped because they’re pretty (and therefore rape is a compliment)” meme, once more with [...]

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Message to the Guys: Donating Your Organs is Almost Like Sex

by Cara November 14, 2008

  This ad promoting organ donation appeared in a Belgian men’s magazine. The message at the bottom reads: Becoming a donor is probably your only chance to get inside her. Nice way to objectify women to get across your “altruistic” message, suggest that women are only good for “getting inside of,” imply that women who [...]

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Strip Club Holds Sarah Palin Lookalike Contest

by Cara October 29, 2008

Via Sociological Images — a truly great blog I discovered recently — comes this story about a Sarah Palin lookalike contest held at Vegas strip club (oh, sorry, “gentleman’s club”).  Lots of bikinis, sexualized use of guns and sexism abound.  You can view more photographs of the event here. The saddest thing is that it’s [...]

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Link Round Up

by Cara August 20, 2008

There’s a bunch of stuff hanging around that I’ve finally admitted I won’t get the time to write about. And a few other things I wanted to share. What About Our Daughters has a post on the sexual exploitation and violence committed against young black teenage girls. Via FRIDA comes this excellent Washington Post Op-Ed [...]

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Are they serious?

by Cara August 14, 2008

When I saw an email in my inbox with the subject “BEAUTY SECRET Bust-Firming Bra: 4 Weeks to a Firmer You,” I thought it must be spam with strangely correct spelling. But then I saw that the email from from Victoria’s Secret (whose emails I get virtually daily and delete unless they actually happen to [...]

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HRC: And One Other Thing

by Cara July 24, 2008

I’ll be entirely honest: when I saw Hillary Clinton, one of the first things I thought after “wow, that’s Hillary Clinton” was “wow, she’s so pretty.” Hillary has been attacked for her appearance an awful lot throughout her career. She’s been called ugly, “too” masculine, fat and so on. Allow me to be clear: even [...]

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Do. Not. Want.

by Cara July 4, 2008

You know what would have made me really happy? Finding out that this was photoshopped and just a really fucked up joke. But. No, it seems that it’s not. Oh my. You know how a lot of guys seem to involuntarily tense up and bring their legs together when they see another man get hit [...]

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