bodies

If you’re designing a cover for a book by a Chinese or Japanese writer, or with a Chinese or Japanese setting, it seems that there are some compulsory elements which must be included. For variety’s sake, there are four elements, but you MUST use at least one of them. Advanced designers, of course, may use two or more.

Element 1: Blossoms (preferably cherry, but anything red or pink will do)

Element 2: Fans (preferably held so as to partly obscure a woman’s face (or genitals), and if you can get blossoms on the fan, you get bonus points)

Element 3: Dragons (for use only on crime novels, or other exciting tales)

Element 4: Female Necks (preferably that of a geisha, but any female neck will do in a pinch)

For more on this trend, see this article from Hyphen Magazine, which features a brief interview with ace designer Henry Sene Yee. It was that article which also drew my attention to two covers featured above, those for On a Bed of Rice and The Street of a Thousand Blossoms.

(To be fair, I ought to note that several of these covers are actually very nice–it’s just that they lose rather a lot of their impact because of the familiarity of the elements used.)

James Morrison (jrsmorrison@yahoo.com.au) is a writer, editor and graphic designer who lives in Adelaide, Australia. He writes about book covers and book design at causticcovercritic.blogspot.com, and used to write about novellas at Book Slut.  He blogs at Caustic Cover Critic. Thanks to Lisabee for the hat tip.

Z at It’s The Thought That Counts asked us to submit for commentary a product called the BeBand on sale at Target.  The Band is designed for pregnant women and women who’ve recently given birth:

(Note the carefully placed rings!  This model is no unwed mother!)

The box says that it will “cover unbuttoned pre-pregnancy jeans,” “hold up too-big maternity pants,” and allow you to “fit into pre-pregnancy pants sooner after giving birth”:

But it’s interesting that that’s the fine print.  The large print emphasizes beauty (“Be Belly Beautiful”) and the product is also sold under the name BellaBand.

Questions:

I’ve never been pregnant, is this a new product?  If so, is it a useful product or an invented need?

Even if this is a useful product, what do you think of the emphasis on beauty on the part of the marketers?

Is this not just another part of a demand for women to be freakin’ gorgeous at every part of their lifecycle?

NEW! (Mar. ’10): Along the same lines, R. Walker told us about a product called Shrinkx Hips:

For the low price of $54.99, “Shrinkx Hips provides constant, even pressure to gently guide hips back to their pre-pregnancy position” (if you wear it for 8 weeks). R.W. said it seems like a torture device, and I rather agree. But hey, apparently it makes you look like that model afterward, so what’s a little pain?

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.

The uproar in the blogosphere pales only in comparison to the uproar in our email inbox about My New Pink Button.

Penny R., Eden H., Alicia T., Shannon H., Nils G., Shiquanda S., Mickey C., and Bob C. have all sent in links to a new product designed to bring back the “fresh” to your lady parts. For 30 bucks you can get 3 days of pretty-in-pink. That’s right, genital dye to pinkify your private parts. In case you weren’t worried about this particular repulsivity, now you know. (It apparently works on men as well as women, and nipples too).

As they say at Jezebel: “Anti-aging mania and marketing: Not just for your face anymore!”

Shiquanda and Mickey brought our attention to this particular Q&A in the FAQ section:

Q. “Help! I’ve noticed I am turning a more brown color down there on my inside lips, is this normal”?

A. Yes, it’s perfectly normal and there are many factors that can contribute to this.  Ethnicity is a big factor, also age, hormone change, surgeries, childbirth, sickness, health, diet and medications can all contribute to a change from “Pink” to “Brown” in a woman’s genital area.

So this is kind of fascinating: browner coloring is “normal,” but you should change it anyway.  The message is that normal is not ideal.  We are normal (or at least white people are), and we still need fixing.

The FAQ makes plain the two ways in which marketing tries to convince us to change our bodies: both by telling us that our bodies are abnormal and by telling us that they are normal.  Normal bodies are icky, we’re told, your body should appear, as much as possible, as if it is not a body at all.  I mean, isn’t that part of what shaving our legs, chests, and genitals (both male and female) are about?

I think the ubiquitousness of breast implants in the media also sends the message that beautiful breasts have the look of breast implants (in terms of shape, size, and the position of the nipple).  I recently saw mannequins in a store window who were built to look as if they had breast implants.  Do you get how crazy that is?  If a mannequin is supposed to represent the ideal body, then the ideal body isn’t one with naturally large breasts, it’s one with fake breasts!  Nuts.  This world is nuts. (Kristi reminds me that this is insensitive to those with mental illness… and she’s right.)   Weird!  This world is weird!

(I looked this up on Snopes, but no word yet as to whether it’s a hoax. I have no idea whether this product is for real or whether it’s a big-enough-seller to get my panties in a bunch over.  Though it appears that you can order it, but it is of questionable efficacy.  Scam-status and efficacy aside, I think it still reveals something interesting about how we are told that our bodies aren’t good enough.)

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.

This is the lead to an article in the Daily Mail, sent in by Chris W., about the small victories accomplished in 2009 by one “fifty-something” Linda Kelsey.  In addition to letting a man see her naked, she lists putting together home-assembly furniture and singing happy birthday in tune:

But back to the stripping.  The message she is trying to send is that she feels happy that she’s become more comfortable with her body.  She writes:

My fifty-something body, I believed, just wasn’t up to naked scrutiny. And if I couldn’t take my clothes off, that meant sex was also off the agenda.

But then she met someone she liked and yadda yadda yadda.

This is all fine and good, but the image they used to illustrate this particular victory is this:

So the image they used to illustrate her comfort with her body and the fact that “sex is about how we connect, not what we look like” suggests just the opposite.  The picture includes two mostly naked models (who are models because they have ideal bodies already); there’s no bodily connection at all and the man’s pose doesn’t suggest emotional connection either.

So women are being told how liberating it is to take their clothes off for men (how convenient for the dudes) and that they should feel comfortable with their bodies, like those young, thin, white, properly-gendered, able-bodied models do.

Now, if good ol’ “fifty-something” Linda Kelsey had posed displaying her newfound body comfort, like she does with her cardboard boxes, it would have sent the message she intended.  Instead, it makes us feel bad for feeling icky about our bodies AND reminds us that they are (probably) icky indeed.

P.S.: I just have to say, do you see that picture of her?!  She looks fine!  What fifty-something woman wouldn’t be pleased with that body?!  What woman of any age shouldn’t be pleased with that body? What kind of message does it send when she trashes herbody.  She must think most of the population is hideous.  We all need to stop trashing our bodies in front of one another, there’s just-about-always someone who ends up feeling worse because they compare their own body to the self-trasher and feel like they don’t measure up even to the body being disparaged.  Enough.

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.

Via Vintage Ads.

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.

The Adipositivity Project is a website featuring photographs by Substantia Jones.  The site features 324 beautiful pictures of fat women’s bodies.  Below are a few safe-for-work selections (click here to see them all [NSFW]).

UPDATE: I just want to note that the commenters on this post are bringing up great questions!

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.

A while back we posted before and after pictures of an eyelid surgery designed to give people of Asian descent an eyelid fold more characteristic of non-Asians (see also this post on eyelid glueing) with the idea that such an eye seemed more “awake.”

I recently came across a website advertising “Asian Rhinoplasty” by Dr. Younai.  The surgeon argues that “there are many fine differences between an Asian nose and that of other ethnicities” and claims expertise in this area.

He makes the following observations about what is “wrong” with “Asian” noses.  Notice how he uses a language of deficiency that is completely contrived (“underdeveloped,” “poor,” “lack”) (all emphases are his):

…most Asians from Korea, China, Philippines, Japan, Hawaii, and Malaysia have underdeveloped nasal bridge. This makes their eyes appear to be far apart.

The nasal tip in Asians is often round, wide, bulbous, and of poor definition. The thickness of Asian nasal skin also contributes to the lack of nasal tip sharpness.

Nostrils in Asians can be flared and wide.

Lack of nasal bridge height can give the appearance of a short nose.

His language is negative, but also inherently comparative to an unspoken norm.  “Underdeveloped” compared to what?  Of “poor definition” compared to what?  “Wide” compared to what?  “Short” compared to what?  Of course, in this context, the implicit ideal is a white ideal.

Here are some of his before and after photos:

The Associated Press, a news service subscribed to by news outlets all over the world, distributed a story about the first Obama Administration State Dinner. In the story, sent in by Elisabeth R., Samantha Critchell describes Michelle Obama’s dress as “flesh-colored.”

[Thanks to Madeline T., Anne Marie, Therese S., and Drugmnky for the screencap!]

Gee, what could possibly be wrong with calling this dress “flesh-colored”?

This is what happens when white people are considered people and black people are considered a special kind of people, black people.  “Flesh-colored” becomes the skin color associated with whites and darker-skinned peoples are left out of the picture altogether.  We see this all the time.  Bandaids, for example, are typically light beige (though they rarely call them “flesh-colored” anymore), as are things like ace bandages.

See our post on “flesh-colored” for these examples and more.  See also this post on lotion for “normal to darker skin.”

For contrast, see this post about how the generic human in Russian cartoons is colored black instead of white.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.