I almost forgot...

[melcreada]

Meant to repost this from ellenore's journal:

Moving essay about how the Western image of beauty is just as debilitating to women as other forms of control throughout the world. The author is eloquent and I can definitely relate.

It was during my unsuccessful attempt to buy a cotton skirt in an American department store that I was told my hips were too large to fit into a size 6. That distressing experience made me realize how the image of beauty in the West can hurt and humiliate a woman as much as the veil does when enforced by the state police in extremist nations such as Iran, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia.

Comments

[dgrequiem.livejournal.com]

I read it... but since when does no one stock above a size 6? Even in designer shops I'm loathe to find anything near that small in stock. She'd have to be what... above a 14 not to find a standard size? It's elegantly written, it just doesn't jibe with my head. Not that I don't think that western feminism doesn't fuck with girls almost as much as other cultures that repress them, I just don't get it from that particular point.

[joseishijin.livejournal.com]

It's funny because when I first read it, my take was, 'They aren't acting that way because of your size, they are acting that way because of where you are from.' A little later on, she seems to debunk my original theory as she explains her conversation with the sales lady.

But her experience, although embarrassing, isn't nearly as bad as some I have heard about from friends. I am no stick figure, but I was fairly thin in my *ahem* youth and the difference in the way I was treated back them and the way I am treated now in some instances irritates me to no end.

[dgrequiem.livejournal.com]

Still. I don't think a sales lady being a bitch or people not being quite as nice to the non-skinny equates to oh... I dunno, being gangraped because some male relative did something wrong, stoned for showing wrist, or what they hey, being bought and sold like an animal. I'd take being a fat ugly unwed minority mom in the south to being me even WITH a nice husband in... well just about anywhere in the middle east except Turkey. Turkey's not so bad. Still bad, but not fat ugly unwed minority mom in deep Georgia bad.

[joseishijin.livejournal.com]

Definitely not the same thing!

I just read it as being a slave to the scale is not much better than being forced to wear a veil. I never read it as starving to be thing is the same thin as being raped.

Still bad, but not fat ugly unwed minority mom in deep Georgia bad.

I completely agree, but must admit this line made me chuckle. *grin*

[(Anonymous)]

Well even if you look at the just being forced to wear the veil part, you have to think 'and what are the results of NOT wearing a veil/being a size 6' in each society there's vast differences there as well. Stoning by extremist vigilante mobs and imprisonment by police vs people not being as nice. Hm.

When I was in college I knew a girl who went on exchange to Turkey for language studies and even there she said it was pretty bad. Guys can pretty much treat you any way you want (and they did, up to actual physical abuse because they could tell she was western just by the way she walked even in the full outfit).