Jezebel 
Enter your username and password.
-
posts about #thinprospects more → 
Daily Mail Writer Says Drive To Be Thin Holds Women Back
New York, 2:21 AM
Wed Dec 16
67 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
| Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
| Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan
| Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
| Twitter
Sadie Stein
| Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
| Twitter
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
| Twitter
Contributors:
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Latoya Peterson
Email
Jenna Sauers
Lizzie Skurnick
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Weekends/Commenter Moderator:
Hortense
| Twitter
| posts about #thinprospects more → |
Daily Mail Writer Says Drive To Be Thin Holds Women Back |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
04/27/09
Cheers!
04/29/09
04/27/09
There is much more of a culture of beauty as worth, but that doesn't mean you have to play along in the self-hatred Olympics. Not every woman does.
04/27/09
04/27/09
I am pretty depressed to learn that some Jezzies were looking to Deadspinners for validation on their looks. :(
04/27/09
(Military rape, anyone?)
I'm hoping (praying really) that they are able to learn -- and give themselves enough time away from obsessively counting calories to learn; I did a lot of complicated calculus myself to get the circuit training to the point where I could build muscle and do aerobic training simultaneously, because the brain needs oxygen too, and you can't get to meetings if your quads won't support your knees -- differently under this administration. People learn how to act from the people at the top of the food chain.
04/27/09
Also, I think this whole shit storm is a result of the last sentence of the original comment. I don't think many would argue with the preceding.
Screw you guys, I'm outta here (work)!
04/27/09
In third grade, were you the kid that goaded the other two kids to start the fight that eventually got them in trouble, while you sat grinning in the back of the room and watched it all go down?
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
1. Men control resources and therefore are in a position to influence cultural thinking patterns in the way that is easiest for them.
2. Men's brains think more easily in binary. (It has something to do with the corpus callosum.)
3. Women collude with the more influential cultural standard to the degree that they believe it's easier for them to do that, and collect more resources under it, than it would be for them to fight to alter that standard.
4. Americans are getting stupider, in part as a result of poor education and poor nutrition -- the former predicated in part on the cultural assumption in the 50s that our educational systems were, in fact, superior, and those systems haven't been updated since. In fact, under the Reagan through Bush administrations, manipulation of regulations has ensured that they declined.
Did you have other questions?
04/27/09
04/27/09
(I am a stupid optimist.)
Our President has put forth a proposition to have longer school hours for the kids. I've seen the man break down a complex statute to a room full of regular old contributors, so that they get it, in about 30 seconds flat. So I have faith in his brain and his policies. We'll have to see what the country thinks. I'm sure there will be plenty of grumbling and ranting.
The First Lady is giving us a new image of "femininity", compared to, say, Laura or Nancy. If you argue nothing else, just this thread and the article that sparked it speak to the power of imagery. So it will be interesting to see whether the shifts in imagery are sufficient to warrant the shifts in psychology necessary for equity and survival.
I think we have a better shot than when Bush was in office. There were days when I could feel the country sinking under his Administration. My mama always says "When a fish begins to stink, it starts at the head."
So I'm hoping for the converse under new leadership.
We'll see.
04/27/09
04/27/09
Geez. Way to try and make a point girl, by typing like 4 martinis have been consumed. Sorry.
04/27/09
04/27/09
After all, men get to keep all the resources that way, but for the ones they "permit" "conventionally attractive" women to have, which is why so many women fall all over themselves and push other women out of the way to get/stay "conventionally attractive" -- AND why the standards for what constitutes "conventionally attractive" keep getting -- literally -- narrower and narrower.
(Did you hear upthread - size 8 is fat now?)
What -- did you think this equal rights thing was going to be a short, clean fight or something?
04/27/09
04/27/09
So you're getting better.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
Last night reading the posters on the open threads on Deadspin and Jezebel it really struck me how often the Jezzie posters wanted to hear what men found attractive and reassurance that they were attractive. Not that there weren't posts like that from Deadspinners, they were so so many more from Jezzies. Several Deadspinners also used the cross posting to poke fun at women/Jezzies or stir up trouble but I don't remember any Jezzies doing the same.
I'm not trying to call anyone out, its just by the time I read through all of the posts I was really struck by how different they were.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
I'm a victim of the circle of body image issues because guys have said some really nasty things about my body and because of those comments, other guys hate my lack of self-esteem and don't give me the light of day. Men don't want to stick around with a girl who has problems. He'll take a girl who is either happy with herself or someone who's really good at hiding her insecurities. It fucking blows.
04/27/09
If you look at the Deadspin thread, I kind of called guys out on being overly critical of girls who are not their type. What was funny to me is that they all assumed they were causing me self-esteem issues when really I was trying to tell them that they were coming off like douche bags. I adore my enormous rack and am not bothered by guys who prefer small boobs. Reading that most large boobs are ugly doesn't hurt my feelings, I just think the guy is a douche.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
One post that really struck me is a Jezzie post about what makes you horny. No one mentioned any male physical traits. I doubt the Deadspinners would have responded like that.
04/27/09
04/27/09
But a lot of this stems from the insecurities women have about their bodies. We like to be reassured that we're considered "desirable" towards men, like you said, but then it makes us look bad to the guys who aren't favorable to any certain type of body.
04/27/09
There was also a tendency to decry uptight Jezzies that made me a little uncomfortable. Jezebel can get a bit too groupthink for my taste but I specifically visit this site because I don't want to read how Jennifer Love Hewitt is a cow, how fuckable Megan Fox is or how women should all be in the kitchen/joke. I'm sure I'm not the only Jezzie who feels that way but for whatever reason I was the only one who posted that. And when I posted that, the Deadspinners were like "Yeah, I totally get that, which is why I wouldn't pull that on Jez."
04/27/09
But wasn't there a post here on Jezzie the other day about how large boobs were the only boobs to have?
Someone was commenting today about one variant of a feminine trait versus another (it wasn't large v. small, but some other issue) and said you were d*mned if you did and d*mned if you didn't.
I would submit that it's that way for every physical trait a woman possesses because men are encouraged to overvalue "conventionally attractive" physical traits, in women, to the detriment of any other traits the men might value, in an effort to boost their own status -- though they'll fight you to the death if you say it to their faces.
If you are a woman in contemporary American society, you cannot win, you cannot break even, and you can't get out of the game.
04/27/09
If women refused en masse to continue go along with it it would stop in an instant.
But since there's always going to be a woman who's going to "go for hers" and either thinks it won't affect what happens to other women or doesn't give a damn, as long as there's that one woman who is willing to capitulate, it will never stop.
04/27/09
I always advise against having "types" because it's really limiting, and nobody likes being the opposite of a "type." And too often, certain "types" get chosen, and others are ignored.
I am interested with you comment, "maybe you're not good enough for guys you deserve." It sounds like you're calling out men for having "types," but are pretty comfortable being really choosy yourself.
I really think that if a man said, "I think I'm not good enough for women I think I deserve," most people would say, "Yup, you got that right buster!"
Lastly, I really question if men are so impatient with women who have "problems." I really get the impression that men feel a lot of pressure to hide their fears and insecurities. I also think that some men are attracted to insecure women since they probably seem more attainable. If a man really does have a choice between a happy woman and an insecure woman, I honestly can't blame him for taking the happy woman.
04/27/09
It surprises me that Jezzies would actually care about deadspinners liking them, as opposed to the range of things different guys like in general-- I mean, its not likely that there would be an inner group meet up, that they'd be the same age, or that they'd even be itnersted in all the deadspinners responding.
04/27/09
04/27/09
And this is the thread I was talking about.
[deadspin.com]
04/27/09
When I was struggling with disordered eating not eating made me focused. I worked with single minded drive on everything I did because I thought that I had that whole negative body image thing all figured out. Obviously that kind of lifestyle is simply not sustainable forever, and if your "focus" gives way to obsessive psychosis you will end up in treatment for an ED.
It is easy to write eating disorders out the the equation as anomalies, and it's maybe even fair to do so. However, most women (and I don't really want to hear your examples of how you don't, because I just don't care. I am making a generalization here) have some form of disordered eating. Even when it is not at "eating disorder" levels, it effects the way we think. For a while dieting may seem like another way to organize your life a little, you may feel MORE in control of yourself, but that is not necessarily true.
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09
04/27/09