More Body Drama…
January 29, 2008
It is just a body image kinda day…
I wasn’t gonna write another entry today but I sat down in the waiting room at my doctor’s office and there it was staring up at me from the glossy pages of People Magazine of all places…
Penned by ex-Miss America Swimsuit contest winner Nancy Redd, this promises to be a graphic, no holds barred book about the female body that tackles all sorts of ugly topics including body hair, ugly vulvas, stretch marks, acne and more. Apparently Redd wanted girls to get an honest look at “normal” female bodies and thought they should know that all the little tricks that models use to look good are just that– tricks, and nobody, not even a swimsuit model, looks perfect in real life.
Redd solicited real women to model and bare themselves, cellulite and all for this book. I’m probably not the only woman who recognizes that if this book ends up to be as graphic and no bullshit as it promises to be, then halla-freakin’-luia, there is a real need for it. Embarrassing story time… I can remember at the tender age of 9 or so, yanking my dad’s Playboys (I’m sure he read them for the articles!) so I could see, “What I will look like when I grow up.” No lie, that’s what I really thought. Imagine my surprise when the puberty fairy didn’t bring me a pair of perfectly round bouncing D cups. There is an incredible derth of realistic bodies in the media for both young men and women and I’m sure many children got their schooling on anatomy the same way I did, from airbrushed magazines. No wonder why Americans have such a warped sense of their own bodies!
The book isn’t out yet but I’m already eagerly anticipating it, and I’m sure this won’t be the last time it will get a shout out in my blog. if it is everything I anticipate it to be I’ll be getting myself a copy… and I’ll be asking my local library to do the same and leave it in a prominent place in their young adult section. I’m really liking all the backlash against unhealthy stereotypes that I’m finding in the media these days. Hopefully this means that the next generation won’t grow up with the same body hatred so many people my age have…
Entry Filed under: Education, I'm Totally Obsessed With..., Niftiness, State of the Universe, body image, books, feminism, women's health. Tags: body image, books, Events, fat, Feminisim, Politics, women's health.
3 Comments Add your own
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
1.
nancy bruno | January 30, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Please check out the Beautiful Women project and our book of the same name: Beautiful Women. There are no naked women, but there are thirty five women who share their life stories and images with a simple message: it is the sum of a woman’s life experiences that make her beautiful. Thanks!
2.
fever2tell | January 30, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Thanks for this wonderful information! I’m sharing the link to your book with my readers:
http://www.beautifulwomenproject.org/
Also, when researching your project I found a link to another visual arts project about female beauty. In this case the artists has made busts of over 100 women’s torsos to show how varied and unique female beauty can be:
http://bwp.websterwood.com/
The artist is Cheryl-Ann Webster.
Enjoy everyone!
3.
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Loaf « Fever 2 Tell | February 8, 2008 at 12:32 am
[...] pack of fat. I wasn’t phased by it though because I was confident that once I hit puberty and blossomed into a Playboy model I’d be trading in my fanny pack for six-pack abs in no [...]