Disney sexies up Merida from Brave, parents upset about body image iss

[StrangeSox]

Stop objectifying women and judging them based on their looks in virtually every context. Don't sexualize everything feminine or female.

 

Seriously?

 

Everything vs. anything. Important distinction.

 

"Do not sexualize everything" is substantially different from "Do not sexualize anything"

[StrangeSox]

And that wouldn't have anything to do with men being more sexual by nature, would it?

I'm gonna need a cite for that. Gender norms and gender essentialism is also pretty much just another offshoot of a given culture.

[illinilaw08]

Illini,

 

To the best of my knowledge Disney isnt portraying an princess with an eating issue. I dont know if there is an actual correlation between Disney princesses and the eating disorders.

 

What I can say is that if you are going to argue that the media can impact children negatively and cause disorders, that we should be honest and admit that it likely affects boys and girls equally.

 

Unless of course we are arguing that girls are somehow different than boys and therefore are more susceptible to the media.

 

But I dont believe that, I think boys and girls are equal.

 

No, the princesses don't have eating disorders. But they do have a body type that isn't an attainable body type.

 

From the Wikipedia article on Bulimia, "The media projects a thin-ideal rather than a healthy-ideal, and this causes women and young girls to work toward having a thin body even if it means purging.[13]"

 

From an article in Runner's World with Jessica Clark from True Blood, "The physical requirements of modeling are very specific: They need you to be extremely thin. I got into a lot of unhealthy habits, which I think is very common for a lot of us, especially at that young age and dealing with that kind of pressure. I wasn't feeling very good, either mentally or physically, for a long time. It got to a point where I consciously needed to and wanted to get healthy. I was tired of feeling so weak and frail and exhausted all the time, and I thought there had to be a different way to do this and so I started running."

 

The "ideal" female body image portrayed by the media is an unhealthy one that leads women to have specific eating disorders at a rate 9x that of men. The "ideal" male body image is a much healthier image, even if it (arguably) leads males to take shortcuts (steroids) to get there.

[iamshack]

leave my over-played analogy alone, bro. (I don't think a lame Olympic medal joke is the mark of intellectual elitism!)

 

 

 

See, I think you and I pretty much agree here. Women are sexualized and judged more and it impedes them more because men have power. It's a self-reinforcing cycle.

 

This plays out in so much of femininity being sexualized and held to an unrealistic standard of beauty.

I agree with you on a lot of things, I just don't agree with your response to them much of the time. I think sometimes we've got to pick our battles. If we try to save the entire world at once, we're most likely not going to win any of them.

[caulfield12]

I'll give another movie example.

 

Seth Rogen is far from cute/handsome in a typical sense. Yet his stoner/internet porn impresario character can pick up a woman like Katherine Hiegl in KNOCKED UP.

 

Show me ANY Hollywood movie where an ugly or even average looking girl is with the handsomest/cutest guy and it's not a joke or punchline of the movie...

 

Yet I could probably cite 100 movies in the last twenty years where the geeky but later successful/discovering himself boy/young man gets the "hottie" girl (the appropriately named, "She's Out of My League"....with Eve Angel and Jay Baruchel being one of many in that genre.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

StrangeSoxClaufield

[iamshack]

No, the princesses don't have eating disorders. But they do have a body type that isn't an attainable body type.

 

From the Wikipedia article on Bulimia, "The media projects a thin-ideal rather than a healthy-ideal, and this causes women and young girls to work toward having a thin body even if it means purging.[13]"

 

From an article in Runner's World with Jessica Clark from True Blood, "The physical requirements of modeling are very specific: They need you to be extremely thin. I got into a lot of unhealthy habits, which I think is very common for a lot of us, especially at that young age and dealing with that kind of pressure. I wasn't feeling very good, either mentally or physically, for a long time. It got to a point where I consciously needed to and wanted to get healthy. I was tired of feeling so weak and frail and exhausted all the time, and I thought there had to be a different way to do this and so I started running."

 

The "ideal" female body image portrayed by the media is an unhealthy one that leads women to have specific eating disorders at a rate 9x that of men. The "ideal" male body image is a much healthier image, even if it (arguably) leads males to take shortcuts (steroids) to get there.

I'd argue that the image portrayed by many male leads is not particularly attainable either. Just like women starve themselves and take a regimen of diet pills and fat burners, the men are taking syringes in their asses. Neither are healthy and neither are easily attainable. Should I taking testosterone supplements because my body has naturally slowed down its production? Something tells me that long term that would not be healthy.

 

My guess is the reason you're saying the female ideal is unhealthy while the male ideal is healthy is because the habits to achieve the former have been covered by the media a LOT more than those to achieve the latter.

[caulfield12]

StrangeSoxClaufield

 

Is that like Blofeld in the James Bond series? Just joking. This is why I stay out of this forum 98% of the time, lol.

 

http://www.google.com/search?q=Blofeld+Jam...093&bih=521

[Jenksismyhero]

Seriously?

 

Everything vs. anything. Important distinction.

 

"Do not sexualize everything" is substantially different from "Do not sexualize anything"

 

But you can't have it both ways and that's your backtrack. Either we enjoy the hot models on the magazine covers or the hot chicks in movies and consider it acceptable to sexualize women in certain situations (and accept the influence on girls as a result of that) or we don't. Putting up an equal amount of "shrek girls" isn't going to do anything to solve this issue with young girls because men are still going to want/talk about/look at hot women. They have plus models and plus magazines and plus clothing stores and yadda yadda. Is that changing the pressure on women? Nope. They still see what men are attracted to and what they want.

 

This is why the entire argument is dumb IMO. Because your answer has to be to de-sexualize EVERYTHING, not just SOME things.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

I agree with you on a lot of things, I just don't agree with your response to them much of the time. I think sometimes we've got to pick our battles. If we try to save the entire world at once, we're most likely not going to win any of them.

You should see all the stuff I choose not to post!

 

More seriously, I agree that you can't and shouldn't get worked up into an outrage over everything. I didn't care for the comments about that woman in the NBA thread, but I saw no reason to go start making a bunch of posts in there about it. My initial reaction to this story was "wow that's dumb, why is Disney doing that?" and then I dropped a post about women being sexualized and why this is seen as a problem. I got worked up over a series of responses that weren't critical of my comments but that completely misunderstood them while being dismissive of the entire concept as well. That's when I can get into sarcastic-ass mode instead of WoT response mode (these are my only two options).

[Jenksismyhero]

I'll give another movie example.

 

Seth Rogen is far from cute/handsome in a typical sense. Yet his stoner/internet porn impresario character can pick up a woman like Katherine Hiegl in KNOCKED UP.

 

Show me ANY Hollywood movie where an ugly or even average looking girl is with the handsomest/cutest guy and it's not a joke or punchline of the movie...

 

Yet I could probably cite 100 movies in the last twenty years where the geeky but later successful/discovering himself boy/young man gets the "hottie" girl (the appropriately named, "She's Out of My League"....with Eve Angel and Jay Baruchel being one of many in that genre.

 

Any movie with Renee Zellweger.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243155/

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317198/

Edited May 14, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[caulfield12]

I'd argue that the image portrayed by many male leads is not particularly attainable either. Just like women starve themselves and take a regimen of diet pills and fat burners, the men are taking syringes in their asses. Neither are healthy and neither are easily attainable. Should I taking testosterone supplements because my body has naturally slowed down its production? Something tells me that long term that would not be healthy.

 

My guess is the reason you're saying the female ideal is unhealthy while the male ideal is healthy is because the habits to achieve the former have been covered by the media a LOT more than those to achieve the latter.

 

 

Well, to me, the main difference is "normal" people don't have 2-3 hours per day (or, mostly importantly, the energy to do so), OR personal trainers to push them like a typical Hollywood actor.

[caulfield12]

Any movie with Renee Zellweger.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243155/

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317198/

 

That's my point. Everyone knows she is Renee Zellweger, deliberately gaining weight or trying to look unattractive. (She was Jennifer Lawrence before Jennifer Lawrence was...haha....there's another girl who was knocked by the media for not being a size 0 or even 2)

 

It's not the same thing.

 

Beneath her appearance, everyone knows she is quite pretty, or, at the very least, cute.

 

 

I can't access IMDB here in China, but I assume it's Bridget Jones and Jerry Maguire.

[iamshack]

Well, to me, the main difference is "normal" people don't have 2-3 hours per day (or, mostly importantly, the energy to do so), OR personal trainers to push them like a typical Hollywood actor.

And even that isn't sustainable over the long-term...I remember the main model for Men's Health said he had to work out 3-4 hours a day to be in that kind of shape.

 

Tell me that is more attainable than staying thin.

[StrangeSox]

But you can't have it both ways and that's your backtrack.

 

It's impossible to view women sexually in some contexts (like sex! and dating!) but not in others (like work! or politics!)?

 

Either we enjoy the hot models on the magazine covers or the hot chicks in movies and consider it acceptable to sexualize women in certain situations (and accept the influence on girls as a result of that) or we don't.

 

The way women are portrayed on magazine covers and in movies is part of the problem in that it creates unrealistic beauty standards. Things targeted towards young girls (the 5-10 yo range you state for Brave) probably shouldn't be sexualized at all because they're pre-pubescent children. That doesn't mean nothing else can be sexualized.

 

Putting up an equal amount of "shrek girls" isn't going to do anything to solve this issue with young girls because men are still going to want/talk about/look at hot women. They have plus models and plus magazines and plus clothing stores and yadda yadda. Is that changing the pressure on women? Nope. They still see what men are attracted to and what they want.

 

But what's considered "hot" is influenced by culture. Our modern standards of beauty aren't universal across all cultures and times. What gets put on magazines and in movies and on billboards reinforces this. It's all circular. Put more and more "shrek girls" and gender-norm-breaking women out there and less anorexic airbrushed models and the culture shifts. We're not hard-wired as a species to like one universal standard of beauty.

 

This is why the entire argument is dumb IMO. Because your answer has to be to de-sexualize EVERYTHING, not just SOME things.

No, it doesn't. There's still some ultra-radical anti-sex, "all penetration is rape" feminists out there, but much of the current generation is very sex-positive, even endorsing women choosing to strip or work as call girls(context dependent, usually prostitution is hugely exploitative and not really much of a 'choice,' think more of the Ashley Madison type).

 

The answer can be "don't turn children's cartoons into sex icons, don't primarily celebrate women for their appearance and not for their abilities and accomplishments, don't make a woman's looks a legitimate part of a conversation on them being a CEO or running for office or winning a game, don't create literally impossible beauty standards, embrace a culture that doesn't judge people so damn much in general."

[StrangeSox]

That's my point. Everyone knows she is Renee Zellweger, deliberately gaining weight or trying to look unattractive. (She was Jennifer Lawrence before Jennifer Lawrence was...haha....there's another girl who was knocked by the media for not being a size 0 or even 2)

 

It's not the same thing.

 

Beneath her appearance, everyone knows she is quite pretty, or, at the very least, cute.

 

 

I can't access IMDB here in China, but I assume it's Bridget Jones and Jerry Maguire.

Charlize Theron in Monster

 

[Jenksismyhero]

That's my point. Everyone knows she is Renee Zellweger, deliberately gaining weight or trying to look unattractive. (She was Jennifer Lawrence before Jennifer Lawrence was...haha....there's another girl who was knocked by the media for not being a size 0 or even 2)

 

It's not the same thing.

 

Beneath her appearance, everyone knows she is quite pretty, or, at the very least, cute.

 

 

I can't access IMDB here in China, but I assume it's Bridget Jones and Jerry Maguire.

 

Bridget Jones and the sequel, but Maguire would have been my next cite. And I dunno, I never found her very attractive on the Hollywood Scale. She's certainly not a Kate Upton, who I see you continue to exploit as your avatar despite the fact that women are negatively impacted by her looks.

[StrangeSox]

And even that isn't sustainable over the long-term...I remember the main model for Men's Health said he had to work out 3-4 hours a day to be in that kind of shape.

 

Tell me that is more attainable than staying thin.

 

Depends on the person. I could stay size-0 thin by sitting on my ass all day. If I wanted to weigh 200 lbs, I'd need to eat a ridiculous amount of calories and work out several hours a day. Pretty much picture Brandon McCarthy but a little bit lighter because I'm not a pro-athlete. On the other hand, Adam Dunn could never look like me without developing a series eating disorder. Bo Jackson was pretty much naturally a freak of nature and not a gym rat.

[illinilaw08]

I'd argue that the image portrayed by many male leads is not particularly attainable either. Just like women starve themselves and take a regimen of diet pills and fat burners, the men are taking syringes in their asses. Neither are healthy and neither are easily attainable. Should I taking testosterone supplements because my body has naturally slowed down its production? Something tells me that long term that would not be healthy.

 

My guess is the reason you're saying the female ideal is unhealthy while the male ideal is healthy is because the habits to achieve the former have been covered by the media a LOT more than those to achieve the latter.

 

No, I can show that young women, to acheive the "ideal" level of thin resort to eating disorders that weaken them. But not just that, the "ideal" female body type actually makes those women weaker and unhealthy. While men may decide that they need to bulk up to reach the "ideal" male body type, it's distinguishable for a number of reasons:

 

1) Not every male lead looks like an extra in "300."

 

2) The "ideal" male is strong and healthy. You get there by playing sports and working out.

 

3) The cause of high steroid use in high schoolers does not define steroid use across gender lines. Rather it says 1 in 5 high schoolers use steroids. Why they do that could be because Hollywood and ESPN makes them think strong gets the girls. Or they could be doing that to increase performance in sports. In either event, the "ideal" female form weakens. The "ideal" male form is strong and self confident.

 

4) Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Jason Bateman, Seth Rogen, Toby McGuire, Leo DiCaprio, Kevin James, Adam Sandler. Those guys are regular guys physically. Not muscled up. Not roided up. There are much more positive body images available to men in the media than to women.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

It's impossible to view women sexually in some contexts (like sex! and dating!) but not in others (like work! or politics!)?

 

When women doll themselves up for sex/dating, what are they trying to look like? Those shrek-like characters from Disney? Or the princesses and chicks on magazines? Oh wait, that's because men prefer that?! OMG!

 

 

The way women are portrayed on magazine covers and in movies is part of the problem in that it creates unrealistic beauty standards. Things targeted towards young girls (the 5-10 yo range you state for Brave) probably shouldn't be sexualized at all because they're pre-pubescent children. That doesn't mean nothing else can be sexualized.

 

I don't disagree and I think it's great that a young Victoria Secret model is touring around the country talking to young girls about how her photos are fake and not realistic. That said I don't think making the Disney girl more "attractive" is making her more "sexual." I don't think kids think that way at all, I think feminist parents do.

 

But what's considered "hot" is influenced by culture. Our modern standards of beauty aren't universal across all cultures and times. What gets put on magazines and in movies and on billboards reinforces this. It's all circular. Put more and more "shrek girls" and gender-norm-breaking women out there and less anorexic airbrushed models and the culture shifts. We're not hard-wired as a species to like one universal standard of beauty.

 

Yeah, but we've advanced enough to get to that point. We didn't need "attractive" skinny women in the past because we were more concerned about a healthy woman who could have kids. Now you don't need that. Starlets were born because men were attracted to them. It's not like there is no demand from men that caused what we have now. And I don't think you're ever going to go back.

 

The answer can be "don't turn children's cartoons into sex icons, don't primarily celebrate women for their appearance and not for their abilities and accomplishments, don't make a woman's looks a legitimate part of a conversation on them being a CEO or running for office or winning a game, don't create literally impossible beauty standards, embrace a culture that doesn't judge people so damn much in general."

 

All things that can be said about males and yet those conversations don't happen.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[Jenksismyhero]

No, I can show that young women, to acheive the "ideal" level of thin resort to eating disorders that weaken them. But not just that, the "ideal" female body type actually makes those women weaker and unhealthy. While men may decide that they need to bulk up to reach the "ideal" male body type, it's distinguishable for a number of reasons:

 

1) Not every male lead looks like an extra in "300."

 

2) The "ideal" male is strong and healthy. You get there by playing sports and working out.

 

3) The cause of high steroid use in high schoolers does not define steroid use across gender lines. Rather it says 1 in 5 high schoolers use steroids. Why they do that could be because Hollywood and ESPN makes them think strong gets the girls. Or they could be doing that to increase performance in sports. In either event, the "ideal" female form weakens. The "ideal" male form is strong and self confident.

 

4) Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Jason Bateman, Seth Rogen, Toby McGuire, Leo DiCaprio, Kevin James, Adam Sandler. Those guys are regular guys physically. Not muscled up. Not roided up. There are much more positive body images available to men in the media than to women.

 

Let's be fair though - the woman of Hollywood aren't anorexic. They're healthy women who are probably skinnier than their average counterpart, but not unhealthy looking.

 

 

[illinilaw08]

And even that isn't sustainable over the long-term...I remember the main model for Men's Health said he had to work out 3-4 hours a day to be in that kind of shape.

 

Tell me that is more attainable than staying thin.

 

IT'S MORE HEALTHY THAN STAYING THIN.

 

And it isn't just thin vs. not thin. It's unhealthy thin. Going back to the Wikipedia entry on bulimia, the majority of women with bulimia are a HEALTHY WEIGHT TO BEGIN WITH.

 

More from Jessica Clark from True Blood in Runner's World, http://www.runnersworld.com/celebrity-runn...ark?page=single

 

"The fashion model aesthetic is evolving a little bit, but they still, overall, don't want you to be too defined. I always thought they wanted me to be "skinny fat" and not necessarily have a lot of lean muscle. I don't have the type of physique where I bulk up at all, but I do get extremely lean and you can definitely see the definition of my muscles, which I like and a lot of people like, and I think that's beautiful and powerful and sexy. But I did feel a sort of pressure to stay away from that. For example, generally speaking, they don't want you to have a six-pack; they don't want to see any lower-ab definition."

 

Working out 2-3 hours per day to attain a certain body is very different from a look that is literally unattainable with exercise because exercise yields too much definition.

 

 

[Soxbadger]

Illini,

 

First we need to separate the modeling. Models are abnormal. Most actresses are not model thin. Many people dont even find that thin attractive. It just happens that clothing designers (who strangely arent the macho men that seem to scare people at night) are fascinated with thin girls that look like young boys... Im not sure I need to explain that one further.

 

Part of the problem with self image issues is that they are created by an individual. It doesnt matter if Im in fact thin, it matters what I think. There is just simply no evidence to suggest that what Disney or any media company is doing, is having a dramatic impact on eating disorder rates.

 

here is an old British study:

 

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/186/2/132.full.pdf

 

Youll notice Anorexia stays constant, while bulimia peaks and then falls.

 

I guess my biggest issue is that there really is very little evidence that the media has any actual influence on the rate of these disorders.

 

Mental disorders are about an individual. The most beautiful girl in the world can have an eating disorder. It doesnt matter what the tv tells her, it doesnt matter what people tell her, it matters what she thinks.

 

That is why many very thin girls have anorexia and bulimia, because its not based on reason, its based on a warped mental image.

 

If you want to stop bulimia and anorexia, you are likely to have more success by targeting bullies, etc and trying to prevent children from getting a mental scar early, than you would by yelling about the image Disney portrays.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Soxbadger

[StrangeSox]

When women doll themselves up for sex/dating, what are they trying to look like" Those shrek-like characters from Disney? Or the princesses? Oh wait, that's because men prefer that?! OMG!

 

Yes, but what men prefer is influenced by culture, but also that's not responsive to my question. Because women try to match a cultural sexual ideal at times doesn't mean that it's impossible not to sexualize them always.

 

Also depends on the woman, of course.

 

I don't disagree and I think it's great that a young Victoria Secret model is touring around the country talking to young girls about how her photos are fake and not realistic. That said.

 

Why promote this fake and unrealistic standard of beauty at all? It's damaging to both men and women in that they both are going after some unattainable ideal that literally no one will ever have but our culture tells us over and over again we should.

 

But I don't think making the girl more "attractive" is making her more "sexual." I don't think kids think that way at all, I think feminist parents do.

 

They slimmed her up and gave her a low-cut princess-like dress instead of the frumpy stuff she wore before. Why do that? What other reason would there be to make these changes to this pretty recent character?

 

Yeah, but we've advanced enough to get to that point. We didn't need "attractive" skinny women in the past because we were more concerned about a healthy woman who could have kids. Now you don't need that. Starlets were born because men were attracted to them. It's not like there is no demand from men that caused what we have now. And I don't think you're ever going to go back.

 

You're still looking at this solely from a Western European standard of beauty (for both men and women!) which isn't universal. You're also making a biologically determinitive argument that a very specific type of attractiveness is hard-wired and unchangeable when it clearly historically is not. Again, it's all cyclical. Younger (ok, biological argument there possibly), thin-ish women were made into stars, then even thinner, and thinner and now we've got literally impossibly thin women.

 

All things that can be said about males and yet those conversations don't happen.

 

Sure they do. Feminist writing covers this from both male and female perspectives.

[StrangeSox]

Let's be fair though - the woman of Hollywood aren't anorexic. They're healthy women who are probably skinnier than their average counterpart, but not unhealthy looking.

Recently, maybe, though I'm skeptical. Models? Probably a lot of eating disorders there.