{"id":19721,"date":"2015-02-24T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=19721"},"modified":"2015-02-23T17:54:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T21:54:34","slug":"speakbeautiful-reinforcing-a-dangerous-metric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2015\/02\/24\/speakbeautiful-reinforcing-a-dangerous-metric\/","title":{"rendered":"#SpeakBeautiful: Reinforcing a dangerous metric"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_cncxoJPwBw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Twitter and Dove have teamed up in a new campaign to combat criticisms of women\u2019s bodies on social media. The #SpeakBeautiful campaign, which kicked off with a short video (shown above) during the pre-show of this year\u2019s Academy Awards, cites the staggering statistic that women produced\u00a0over 5 million negative body image Tweets last year. The campaign implores women to stop this, to focus on what is beautiful about each of us, and bring our collective beauty to the fore. Set to musical crescendo and the image of falling dominos, this message is both powerful and persuasive.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Sadly, it gets feminism and women\u2019s empowerment fundamentally wrong. Women\u2019s bodies have historically been sites of objectification and critique. They still are. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/2012\/10\/hubba-hubba-gop-women-better-looking\/\">politicians<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/jezebel.com\/5349241\/women-in-sports-sex-objects-mothers-or-too-manly-to-count\">athletes<\/a>, women are continually required to account for their bodies. I have yet to receive end of semester student evaluations that didn\u2019t comment on my attire and appearance (did you know leggings aren\u2019t pants!?) The work of feminism is to do away with such objectification; to reject the equation of beauty with human value. #SpeakBeautiful not only fails in this endeavor, but actively reaffirms women\u2019s positions as\u2014first and foremost\u2014beautiful objects.<\/p>\n<p>In its very name, #SpeakBeautiful centers physical attractiveness as the proper metric with which to measure women\u2019s value. Rather than decenter or reject this metric, it asks women to give one another high scores. Broadening the standards of beauty does nothing to abolish the requirement that women be\u00a0beautiful. I repeat: broadening the standards of beauty does nothing to abolish the requirement that women be\u00a0beautiful (I\u2019m talking to you, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/StrongIsTheNewSkinny\">Strong is the New Skinny<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it is in Dove\u2019s interest to maintain the requirement to be beautiful. They sell beauty products, after all. It is not, however, in women\u2019s interests. Yet it is women who Dove recruits to give voice to their campaign. Indeed, this campaign of objectification only works if women\u2014lots of women\u2014actively participate.<\/p>\n<p>I realize it may seem unfair to throw such strong critiques upon a well-meaning campaign, with well-meaning supporters. It\u2019s true that most advertising campaigns offer no feminist agenda. It\u2019s true that many advertising campaigns unapologetically render women mere tools of male sexual pleasure. But these campaigns don\u2019t masquerade as progress.<\/p>\n<p>Cultural products that claim social justice are the very objects we must examine most closely, and call out\u2014loudly\u2014when they get it wrong. #SpeakBeautiful is insidious in its feminist cloak. Its bold rejection of negative body-talk can easily lull us into not only compliance, but active participation in the very structures and logics that make negative body-talk such a painful and effective weapon against women.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter and Dove have teamed up in a new campaign to combat criticisms of women\u2019s bodies on social media. The #SpeakBeautiful campaign, which kicked off with a short video (shown above) during the pre-show of this year\u2019s Academy Awards, cites the staggering statistic that women produced\u00a0over 5 million negative body image Tweets last year. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[33078,245,55,33079,184],"class_list":["post-19721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","tag-dove","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-speakbeautiful","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19721"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19731,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19721\/revisions\/19731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}