{"id":41842,"date":"2011-11-22T12:40:52","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T17:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=41842"},"modified":"2015-09-19T23:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T04:26:26","slug":"stretch-marks-are-beautiful-like-exotic-foreign-ladies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/11\/22\/stretch-marks-are-beautiful-like-exotic-foreign-ladies\/","title":{"rendered":"Stretch Marks are Beautiful… Like Exotic Foreign Ladies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0her\u00a0August 13 column<\/a> in the Washington Times Communities section, Rebekah Kuschmider declares proudly, “So here’s the thing: I am not embarrassed about my stretch marks.” It’s a great message. Women should love their aging skin and reject the impossible Photoshop beauty standards that make us hate ourselves. Kuschmider describers herself as, not a Barbie Doll, but a “Velveteen Rabbit, so worn and loved that I\u2019ve become real.”<\/p>\n

Two curious images, however, accompany this story about a (presumably) wealthy white woman’s stretch marks. The two women pictured with Kuschmider’s column are actually\u00a0a Thai woman<\/a> from a village near Burma and\u00a0an Indian laborer<\/a> from the city of Diu (according to the Flickr pages from which the photos were captured). The old Thai woman’s face is a shrunken apple; \u00a0tattoos cover the younger Indian woman’s neck, and the whites of her eyes are yellowed from exposure to the sun. Both women are beautiful.<\/p>\n

But why don’t we see, not to get too invasive here, the stretch marks of which Ms. Kuschmider\u00a0is justifiably proud? Why do we instead see haunting portraits that seem to come straight off the pages of National Geographic? The underlying message from whoever chose these photos (the author? an online editor?) is that wrinkles look\u00a0exotic<\/em> on poor women whom privileged Americans love to gawk at. We don’t\u00a0expect<\/em> them to be attractive by our standards \u2013 they’re so lovely in their way, so tragic. But wealthier white women?<\/p>\n

Maybe the conservative readership of the Washington Times<\/em> doesn’t\u00a0want to see white women looking old or wrinkled, no matter what Rebekah\u00a0Kuschmider claims about aging. \u00a0Is that kind of woman is too\u00a0dignified to be seen looking so “unattractive”? Is aging easier to\u00a0accept when it’s exotified and Othered — as if it can’t (and\u00a0shouldn’t) happen to those of us who are more privileged?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Kushlani de Soyza is a reporter and producer for APA Compass, an\u00a0Asian-Pacific-American public affairs radio program on Portland’s\u00a0KBOO-FM<\/a>. She teaches Women’s Studies at Clark College in Vancouver,\u00a0WA, and English\/Journalism at Oregon State University.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0her\u00a0August 13 column in the Washington Times Communities section, Rebekah Kuschmider declares proudly, “So here’s the thing: I am not embarrassed about my stretch marks.” It’s a great message. Women should love their aging skin and reject the impossible Photoshop beauty standards that make us hate ourselves. Kuschmider describers herself as, not a Barbie Doll, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,218,55,2103,129],"class_list":["post-41842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41842"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67915,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41842\/revisions\/67915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}