bodies

TLC’s new reality program, Big Sexy, features five self-identified plus-size women who work in the fashion industry as models, stylists, and makeup artists. Their mission is to challenge contemporary bodily aesthetics that privilege the thin body and demonstrate that fat can be sexy.

In an interview for the Huffington Post, one of the featured women, Heather, explains, “You can be whatever size you want to be and work in the fashion industry.” However, as we see in this clip of Tiffany’s meeting with her modeling agent, that is not entirely the case. In the exchange, the agent informs Tiffany that a client wants her to lose weight and that “it’s a waste of time and money if the numbers are not right.” At her present size, Tiffany was dangerously close to exceeding the boundaries of plus-size required of models.

In modeling, an inch here or there does matter. In my research of plus-size modeling, I have witnessed other plus-size models, like Tiffany, face pressures from their agents to alter their bodies. These women, in order to work in fashion, must utilize their bodies as capital and embark on a variety of body projects. If their measurements are not in perfect proportion, some stick padding onto their hips, “chicken cutlets” onto their breasts, and squeeze themselves into a pair of Spanx. If a model loses weight, clients tell her to do whatever it takes to gain the weight back, even if that means binging on fat-laden foods that can wreak havoc on any individual’s body. Failure to do so would mean the end of her career.

Beauty is a social construction, but these women are not the ones in charge of its construction. Plus-size models must conform to an image created by fashion’s tastemakers, i.e., agents and designers. Ultimately, they must mold their bodies to fit an image, instead of being empowered in a way that allows them mold the image to fit their bodies. In this sense, they face the same pressures as thin models to be within a fraction of an inch of a shape predetermined by others to be acceptable.

Amanda M. Czerniawski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She specializes in bodies and culture, gender and sexuality, and medical sociology.  Her past research projects involved the development of height and weight tables and the role of plus-size models in constructions of beauty.  Her current research focuses on the contested role of the body in contemporary feminist discourse.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Click here to see a flickr slide show of dozens of people, starting with those below, with their BMI label (“underweight,” “normal,” “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese”). There’s something about seeing all these nice looking people with these judgmental labels applied to them that reveals that the BMI is a social construction. Also it’s a good illustration of the Foucauldian idea that knowledge (discourse, or even “science”) is used to label and control people, especially when it is internalized.

Erin Nieto’s project, How Much Do You Weigh, also puts the body front-and-center, challenging us re-think what numbers mean.  She counterposes photographs of volunteers with the number on the scale.  These women model a refusal to be embarrassed by their weight and show us the imprecision of the number itself.

See more images at Nieto’s tumblr.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I like this post. And it’s the two-year anniversary of Bruce Snowdon’s death. So, here’s my toast to the last sideshow fat man.

He’s so big and so fat it takes four girls to hug him and a box car to lug him.  When he dances you’ll swear he must be full of jelly, cause jam don’t shake that way.  And you know girls!  He is single and lookin’ for a wife, he’ll make some lucky girl a fine husband, why he’s so big and fat, he’ll provide you with a lot of shade in the summertime, keep you nice and warm in the winter time and give you lots of good heavy lovin’ all of the time!

— Carnival Spiel by Ward Hall

On Nov. 9th 2009, Harold Huge, a man billed as the very last sideshow fat man, died.  He weighed 607 pounds or so.

Harold’s real name was Bruce Snowdon.  He had degrees in paleontology, anthropology and chemistry. In 1977, he found himself bored with his work and stumbled across the idea of being a Fat Man:

I had put on a lot of weight between the time I was 20 and 25. I was up to about 450 in those days. I went to the local library, and I was poking through some old circus books and I see this one picture about a sideshow, maybe circa 1905, and I’m looking at this fat man and I’m saying to myself, “He can’t weigh more than 350 pounds.”

Now, I ask myself, how the hell would I go about getting into a sideshow? I’d never even seen a sideshow in my lifetime. In the late ’70s the industry was a very pale ghost of its former self. Instead of thousands, there were maybe dozens left then. So I figured, logically, there’s got to be some sort of trade journal for the carnival industry. It’s Amusement Business. And I’m looking through the AB. Taking a lucky stab, I wrote the editor, Tom Powell. And Tom Powell happens to be a very good friend of Ward Hall. Bingo. I had the job.

In an interview with James Taylor (from which the above quote is also taken), Snowden explained:

I don’t mind being enormously fat… I come from a long line of fat people. My old man tortured himself for 40 years going from 200 to 300 [pounds] and back again. He eventually lost the weight, but he also lost his mind.

Snowdon played Harold Huge for 26 years.  The year of his retirement, in 2003, he played himself in the movie, Big Fish:

So the sociological question I would like to pose is: Why is Snowdon the last fat man?

Marc Hartzman suggests that fat men and woman became less of a curiosity because “waistlines expanded and obesity became less of a laughing matter.  As the years went by, spotting a man who weighed more than quarter of a ton was not that unusual…”  So there’s two  hypotheses: (1) we see fat people everywhere and so it’s no longer a curiosity and (2) obesity has become a very serious matter, not to be played with at sideshows or elsewhere.

Another hypothesis might involve (3) a growing distaste for objectifying and dehumanizing those who are unusual.   As the human rights era evolves, we increasingly embrace difference and promote tolerance.

(4) Perhaps sideshows themselves are simply out-of-fashion, a drab alternative to Avatar in 3D or a Wii.  Or, (5) maybe the internet has made all curiosity easier to quench.  With a click of the button, we can see DD breasts, thalidomide babies, and cats playing the piano… who needs a sideshow?

I can think of reasons to endorse and reject all of these hypotheses.

So, in honor of Snowdon’s 26 years of service and delightful sense of humor (“If there’s a bitchy type of human being, it’s somebody on a diet”), let’s speculate.

Sources: Sideshow World, AOL News, Shocked and Amazed, Randall Levenson photography, and Shapely Prose.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at The Social Complex.

From the people who brought you greasy chicken wings, overpriced beer, and casual sexism while you wait…

Do these ads really require commentary?

The first video is able to squeeze heightism, sexism, and homophobia into one commercial spot.  And the second video is so blatantly playing off of the societal notion that short men have very little social worth (and zero sexual worth) that they even have a line in it that refers to height specifically: “why do you have to be so tall?”

These ads are especially good for those who believe that women have a monopoly on heightism.  Hooters’ target consumer base is nearly exclusively male and so their ads are designed to appeal to that base.  So here we have ads targeted at a male audience which attempt to humiliate short men through comedic effect for the purpose of highlighting their low grade frozen seafood and sophomoric titillation – and you still think shallow women are to blame for heightism?

Pay special attention to the dialogue.  Every word is designed to legitimize the widely held belief that short men are socially inferior.  In one section, an African American male diner looks over to the short man who is getting attention from the “Hooter’s Girls” and says “I don’t get it”, followed by a close up of an out-of-place female diner; her mouth agape with disbelief from what she is witnessing.

Of course, the gag is supposed to be that short men are generally “losers” but this particular short man is a “winner” at Hooters because “Shrimp Is In This Summer”.

I would have loved to be in the pitch meeting at the advertising firm that came up with these ads:

“Get it?  Shrimp = Short Men!  Because “shrimp” is a common slur used against short men.  Get it?  Funny, right?  And it’s O.K. because they had a professionally dressed, diverse group of people commenting on the strangeness of the whole scenario.  And the short guy was laughing…he was having a blast.  It’s all in good fun.”

Hilarious, right?

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Geoffrey Arnold is an associate with a mid-sized corporate law firm’s Business Litigation Practice Group.  When Geoffrey isn’t chasing Billable Hours in the defense of white-collar criminals, he is most likely writing about social justice with a special emphasis on height discrimination at his blog: The Social Complex.  See also Geoffrey’s guest post introducing the concept of heightism as a gendered prejudice.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

I am a huge fan of the television series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but I want to problematize some of the humor we often take for granted in the show. In a recent interview with Conan O’Brien, Charlie Day discusses some of the changes introduced into the upcoming season of the show. Specifically, about 1:30 in, they discuss the weight gain that Rob McElhenney (“Fat Mac”) accomplished in pursuit of a “funnier” character (image via):

Notice how Charlie Day and Conan laugh—freely and unapologetically—at the prospect of Mac contracting diabetes (especially Conan’s mocking “Go America!” response to the image of “Fat Mac”):

Continue watching the interview to the 4:45 mark; Conan broaches the topic of mental retardation contained in an earlier episode (Season 3 Episode 9: “Sweet Dee’s Dating a Retarded Person”). You will notice that Charlie Day seems more hesitant and calculated in discussing the topic of mental disability. For one, he uses the word “mental disability” rather than the more pejorative “retarded.” You will also notice less of an audience response, a less raucous reaction to the prospect of someone being mentally disabled than to them being fat.

Mental disability, as a largely ascribed status, serves as a less-viable source of humor. That is, laughing at someone who is born a particular way, or gains that status for reasons beyond their control, violates our precepts of political correctness. However, being overweight is often interpreted as caused by a personal character flaw (laziness, gluttony, etc.) and therefore an achieved status. Laughing at fat people, then, is not only socially acceptable, but often encouraged in American comedy.

This highlights the centrality of individualism and personal responsibility in American society. We hold the obese and the overweight accountable for their corporeal deviations. We tend to believe that those who are overweight (and those who contract Type 2 Diabetes) are responsible for their conditions. It then becomes socially acceptable to mock them. On the flipside, mental disability, as an ascribed status, is more likely to be defined as “off limits” as a source of humor. When it becomes a source of humor, as in this case, comedians must save face by saying things like “Nothing against the mentally disabled, but…” as Charlie does at the 5:25 mark—a form of hedging he didn’t feel obliged to include when laughing at someone’s weight.

Who we can laugh at, and whether we have to apologize for doing so, reveals larger cultural discourses, and analyzing humor allows us to understand some of the prevailing moral assumptions we take for granted.

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David Paul Strohecker (@dpsFTW) is getting his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He studies issues of intersectionality, consumption, and popular culture. He is currently doing work on the popularization of tattooing, a project on the revolutionary pedagogy of public sociology, and more theoretical work on zombie films as a vehicle for expressing social and cultural anxieties. He previously wrote for the blog Racism Review and currently blogs at Cyborgology.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Cross-posted at The Social Complex.

Take a look at these two images.  The people in Image A and Image B are identical, save for their relative heights and the way that their heads are tilted in order to maintain eye contact.  Now how do you think each of these images would be independently perceived by the average person?  How do you perceive the events depicted in these images?

(see full sized image here)

Do one of these men seem “assertive” while the other seems “submissive” or “pushy”?  What would you imagine the woman is thinking in each of these images?  How would you rate the social esteem of each of these men?  Which one seems to have the most business acumen?  The most leadership potential?  Which man would you rate as more attractive?  What do you think these two people are talking about in each image?  Does your perception of what is happening in the conversation change from image to image?

If you are being honest with yourself here, you probably are imagining many differences in the social interactions depicted in these two images that don’t actually exist outside of our cultural framework. From the age that we become aware of our environment we are bombarded with cultural images, traditions, behaviors, and ideals (both expressly and implicitly conveyed) which foster heightist concepts within our psyche.

These heightist concepts come into play along with our perceptions of gender.  Masculinity is culturally tied to “Tall” and femininity is culturally tied to “Short.” Therefore, the negative cultural perceptions that apply to “feminine males” also apply to “short males” and the positive cultural perceptions that apply to “masculine males” also apply to “tall males.”  That is why we perceive Image A and Image B differently, even though there is no story behind the images beyond what we imagine.

Perhaps (to some extent) the negative cultural perceptions that apply to “masculine women” also apply to “tall females” and the positive cultural perceptions that apply to “feminine females” also apply to “short females”?  I do not know.  However, I have my doubts that it works this way for females.

This is because (in my humble opinion – with no evidence to back this up):

• Being a masculine woman is probably NOT considered as negative in our society as being a feminine man.  In other words, our society values masculinity more than femininity and so it is more important for a male to be masculine, but much less important for a female to be feminine.
• Additional height (or “tallness”) is considered a masculine trait and so more important for a male to have than it would be detrimental for a female.
• Tallness (for some reason) is not considered masculine on a female.  Body mass (weight) is considered more of a “masculine” trait on a female than pure height.

Any comments?  Discussion?

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Geoffrey Arnold is an associate with a mid-sized corporate law firm’s Business Litigation Practice Group.  When Geoffrey isn’t chasing Billable Hours in the defense of white-collar criminals, he is most likely writing about social justice with a special emphasis on height discrimination at his blog: The Social Complex.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

The Hall of Fame

• American Able: Challenging Depictions of People with Disabilities (pictured)
• Resistance to Objectifying Advertising
• Imaging Barbie’s Fantastic Proportions
• Dark Girls: Race, Beauty, and Bias
• Race and the Problem with Measuring Beauty Objectively
• Indian Americans Respond to Skin Whitening
• Kids Thoughts about Skin Color and Beauty
• Glamour Uses “Plus-Sized” Models, and People Love It!
• Men’s and Women’s Ideal Female Bodies
• Men Are Allowed to Grow Up
• Reclaiming the “Before” Body (NSFW)
• How Vulvas Vary (NSFW)
• Normalizing Normal Breasts (NSFW)
• Rebellyon

The Hall of Shame

• (Hairy) Ball Bashing
• 1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines
• Gingerism
• Lightness as Symbolic Capital: Fair Skin in Marital Ads
• Multinational Corporations and the Cultivation of Colorism
• Novels About Non-Thin Women Put Thin Women on their Covers
• Your Hairy Legs Could Be Mass Murderers Even Now
• “Normal” vs “Abnormal” Hair and Skin
• How To Undermine a Body-Acceptance Message
• From K-Fed to K-Fat: Policing the Bodies of Male Celebrities
• The Jennifer Love Hewitt Bikini Controversy
• Keeping “It” Lady-Like: Avoiding Camel Toe
• How Ratings Boards are Driving Genital Cosmetic Surgery
• Zappos: Fits For Every Body Type… or Something
• The Hierarchy of Race and Size in a Dove Ad
• Media Depictions of Trans-People as Bodies Only
• An Entitlement to Female Beauty: Criticism of Female Body Builders
• Apparently We Need to Dye Women’s Genitals Pinker
• How Not to Personify the Opposing Team

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I am re-posting this fun counterfactual in honor of October 19th Love Your Body Day. Crossposted at Jezebel.

I was thinking the other day about fashion advice for women with different body types. The advice is almost always aimed at getting women’s bodies, whatever shape they might be, to conform with one ideal body type: the (skinny) hourglass figure. The advice video below, sent in by Tara C. and aimed at women with “pear-shaped” bodies, does exactly this (excerpts and commentary after the clip):

So, the advice, as I mentioned, is all about trying to hide the shape of her actual body and make it appear to be more hourglass. To “transform it into an hourglass,” they say:

• “slim your hips and thighs”
• “draw attention to the upper part of your body”
• “balance your figure” with shoulder pads
• “a roomy top will de-emphasize your bottom”
• “offset your hips”
• “avoid side pockets, they add bulk where you least need it”

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where the fashion industry encouraged us to “emphasize” our differences from one another, instead of trying to make us all look the same. If you were pear-shaped, for example, the advice would be all about highlighting that awesome booty and tiny waist and shoulders. Work that pear-shape!

If you were broad-shouldered and thin-hipped, the advice could all be aimed at broadening your shoulders (shoulder pads and fancy necklines) and thinning your hips (dark colors and no pockets)! Work that triangle-shape!

If you were apple-shaped, advice would be aimed at looking rounder with even skinner arms and legs. Work that apple-shape!

If you were petite, advice could be aimed at looking smaller; if you were tall, advice could be aimed at looking larger.

If you had short legs, advice would tell you how to elongate your torso; if you had long legs, advice would tell you how to shorten it.

I think this would be a super fun world to live in.

Title slide image from Lemon Drop Clothing.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.