The fashion industry and its designers influence the way girls think about themselves which is a scary predicament really. This industry sends poor messages regarding body image and beauty to our culture, girls and women especially.
There has been some recent controversy surrounding Designer Stella McCartney’s comments regarding her latest collection.
“Strong women are abrasive and not terribly attractive.”- Stella McCartney, Fashion Designer, Paris Fashion Week, 2014
She went on to say her Spring/Summer 2015 Collection “was celebrating the softness of a women and her fragility. Strength on it’s own in a woman is quite abrasive and not terribly attractive at times. This collection is really about the softer side.”
Well, this comment pretty much sums up some of the main problems with the high fashion industry:
1) It promotes extremely unhealthy images of the female body, based solely upon looks and often anorexic features.
2) It promotes weakness and fragility in women as appealing and desirable attributes.
3) That unless you have these features the industry deems appealing you are unattractive.
To say “strength in women is unattractive” is a very ignorant and detrimental remark.
Is she is trying to say, a women who is just strong and hard and doesn’t allow for her softer side to show can be too masculine and denying her femininity? She didn't really choose her words carefully enough if that's what she meant. But, she really puts her foot in it by saying her collection is showing off women’s “softness and fragility”.
Why do we want to show off women’s fragility?
Why do we need to show off and glorify a quality that has been instilled over thousands of years in women to keep them repressed, dominated and subjugated?
To be strong means being abrasive?
Some women may be like that, but to make that a general statement about women and being strong is wrong. It’s these extreme negative stereotypes that continue to play into the inequality women face and dis-empowerment of women in general in our society.
And then it makes you ask the question, well, what is female strength? And if a women has strength why is that deemed inappropriate or unappealing? Why don’t we want women to be strong whether physically or in their character/personality or inner selves? What is wrong with strength in women?
Genuine strength in women = Power, that is what’s wrong with it.
We live in a time where the powers that be have consciously chosen to sell to women through our mainstream fashion, advertising and media culture “The look of sickness, the look of poverty, and the look of nervous exhaustion.” Haunting, scary words by the fashion historian Ann Hollander here, but really it sums up perfectly the beauty ideal women are so sadly striving for on mass today.
Making the look of sickness desirable then insures with it over time a mind set of fragility, of fear, anxiety, nervousness and paranoia in women. That any strength, power and passion will eventually wither away with body mass and fat and women will continue to be dominated and not strong enough to stand up and make change in ourselves and the world.
“ A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”-Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.
This may sound like an extreme view to some people but I believe there is indeed truth to this tactic of keeping women desperate to be thin, young, beautiful and obsessed with their outer appearance so they have little time, energy and resources to be able to focus or care about much else, let alone be strong! Heaven forbid if they are strong! It’s just not desirable, right? Guys won’t like you. You will be ugly.
I believe this because I know myself in my times of complete obsession with my weight and food in take I really had no passion, time or desire to really do or think about anything else other than my weight, what would be my next meal, would I get fat from it and how much exercise I needed to do that day to keep from gaining any weight.
Yes, of course, I did think about other things…but the main point is that this body obsession takes over your thought process and way of being in a very subtle and pervasive way. It’s kind of always there in the periphery when it’s not the main thing you are thinking about.
It is there when you look in the mirror. It is there when you get dressed in the morning, when you shower, when you rub your hands over your too fat thighs, when you do your hair, when you put make up on, when you see that other girl walk by you with longer thinner legs, when you feel your thighs rub together when you get in the car, when you are waiting to buy your groceries at the check out and right in front of you at every aisle there is a magazine stand, “Look at Brittney Spears piling on the pounds!” the cover reads, subliminal message subtitle, “What a fat pig. She is ugly. Gross”.
It is there every meal when you choose to eat a dry, boring, unsatisfying salad instead of a hearty, grounding, energizing meal of chicken and pasta. It’s there when your partner wants to be intimate with you, what angles do you look best naked, does he see my cellulite, etc...
Some of you girls reading this may be able to relate to what I am saying to varying degrees.
I can absolutely see how a mind fixated on unhealthy body obsession has little time for thoughts of much else essentially. How a body starved of the necessary calorie intake has little energy for anything other than that days work out and just getting by.
I know in my experience that at this time of my life I was somewhat brainwashed, controlled and driven by something that wasn’t me, that wasn’t healthy, that in no way allowed for the experience of true strength, power and wisdom as a woman to come forth and express.
The demonisation of female fat promoted by the fashion industry and media has driven women to want to eradicate something from their bodies that makes them uniquely feminine and powerful!
Female fat in itself is not unhealthy, unless you are truly obese. It is in fact the medium and regulator of female sexual characteristics. We need it. Healhty fat tissue makes us healthier, happier, more fertile, more energized, more sexual and ultimately more powerful in who we are.
But try telling that to girl or women who spends all day looking at images of thin, fragile looking women with none or very little fat and constantly compares themselves to that ideal.
It is proven that a high majority of women are on diets in an attempt to achieve what is deemed the beautiful body. That calorie restriction placed on the body by dieting can result in distinctive personality traits of passivity, anxiety, and emotionality.
“It is in those traits, and not the thinness for it own sake, that the dominant culture wants to create in the private sense of self a recently liberated women in order to cancel out the dangers of their liberation.”- Naomi Wolf- The Beauty Myth.
So, the fashion industry wanting to show off women’s softer side and fragility and not their ugly strength is more detrimental on a greater scale than one might first think.
It is all part of very bad, unhealthy, negative message our culture is sending to our girls:
These points may sound extreme to some but the essence of what is being talked about here runs deep through our culture, through our media, through our girls minds and perceptions of themselves and it is creating a epidemic of female sickness, female self hatred and lack of self acceptance in mass proportions.
But Stella McCartney is such a doll, I just love her clothes and the way she shows women’s ‘soft’, ‘fragile’ side. What a genius collection! It’s just clothes. It’s just fashion. It's just her constitutional right to freedom of expression and artistic creativity! It isn’t harming anyone…right?
I beg to differ.
If I was at that show and heard Stella talk that nonsense I would walk out, or maybe stay to throw my iphone or my designer heal at her. Sorry but I have a strong arm Stella! I like to use it when the need arises. I’m not an advocate of violence to make a stand. I'm just trying to make a joke here, but the real point is, if we don’t make a statement about his kind of behavior it is just allowed to continue.
Our culture doesn't want women to be truly strong and empowered in who they are as women because things might change in the world. It is threatening to the status quo.
Stayed tuned…next blog is about, what it means to be strong as a women and what is an empowered women?
There has been some recent controversy surrounding Designer Stella McCartney’s comments regarding her latest collection.
“Strong women are abrasive and not terribly attractive.”- Stella McCartney, Fashion Designer, Paris Fashion Week, 2014
She went on to say her Spring/Summer 2015 Collection “was celebrating the softness of a women and her fragility. Strength on it’s own in a woman is quite abrasive and not terribly attractive at times. This collection is really about the softer side.”
Well, this comment pretty much sums up some of the main problems with the high fashion industry:
1) It promotes extremely unhealthy images of the female body, based solely upon looks and often anorexic features.
2) It promotes weakness and fragility in women as appealing and desirable attributes.
3) That unless you have these features the industry deems appealing you are unattractive.
To say “strength in women is unattractive” is a very ignorant and detrimental remark.
Is she is trying to say, a women who is just strong and hard and doesn’t allow for her softer side to show can be too masculine and denying her femininity? She didn't really choose her words carefully enough if that's what she meant. But, she really puts her foot in it by saying her collection is showing off women’s “softness and fragility”.
Why do we want to show off women’s fragility?
Why do we need to show off and glorify a quality that has been instilled over thousands of years in women to keep them repressed, dominated and subjugated?
To be strong means being abrasive?
Some women may be like that, but to make that a general statement about women and being strong is wrong. It’s these extreme negative stereotypes that continue to play into the inequality women face and dis-empowerment of women in general in our society.
And then it makes you ask the question, well, what is female strength? And if a women has strength why is that deemed inappropriate or unappealing? Why don’t we want women to be strong whether physically or in their character/personality or inner selves? What is wrong with strength in women?
Genuine strength in women = Power, that is what’s wrong with it.
We live in a time where the powers that be have consciously chosen to sell to women through our mainstream fashion, advertising and media culture “The look of sickness, the look of poverty, and the look of nervous exhaustion.” Haunting, scary words by the fashion historian Ann Hollander here, but really it sums up perfectly the beauty ideal women are so sadly striving for on mass today.
Making the look of sickness desirable then insures with it over time a mind set of fragility, of fear, anxiety, nervousness and paranoia in women. That any strength, power and passion will eventually wither away with body mass and fat and women will continue to be dominated and not strong enough to stand up and make change in ourselves and the world.
“ A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”-Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.
This may sound like an extreme view to some people but I believe there is indeed truth to this tactic of keeping women desperate to be thin, young, beautiful and obsessed with their outer appearance so they have little time, energy and resources to be able to focus or care about much else, let alone be strong! Heaven forbid if they are strong! It’s just not desirable, right? Guys won’t like you. You will be ugly.
I believe this because I know myself in my times of complete obsession with my weight and food in take I really had no passion, time or desire to really do or think about anything else other than my weight, what would be my next meal, would I get fat from it and how much exercise I needed to do that day to keep from gaining any weight.
Yes, of course, I did think about other things…but the main point is that this body obsession takes over your thought process and way of being in a very subtle and pervasive way. It’s kind of always there in the periphery when it’s not the main thing you are thinking about.
It is there when you look in the mirror. It is there when you get dressed in the morning, when you shower, when you rub your hands over your too fat thighs, when you do your hair, when you put make up on, when you see that other girl walk by you with longer thinner legs, when you feel your thighs rub together when you get in the car, when you are waiting to buy your groceries at the check out and right in front of you at every aisle there is a magazine stand, “Look at Brittney Spears piling on the pounds!” the cover reads, subliminal message subtitle, “What a fat pig. She is ugly. Gross”.
It is there every meal when you choose to eat a dry, boring, unsatisfying salad instead of a hearty, grounding, energizing meal of chicken and pasta. It’s there when your partner wants to be intimate with you, what angles do you look best naked, does he see my cellulite, etc...
Some of you girls reading this may be able to relate to what I am saying to varying degrees.
I can absolutely see how a mind fixated on unhealthy body obsession has little time for thoughts of much else essentially. How a body starved of the necessary calorie intake has little energy for anything other than that days work out and just getting by.
I know in my experience that at this time of my life I was somewhat brainwashed, controlled and driven by something that wasn’t me, that wasn’t healthy, that in no way allowed for the experience of true strength, power and wisdom as a woman to come forth and express.
The demonisation of female fat promoted by the fashion industry and media has driven women to want to eradicate something from their bodies that makes them uniquely feminine and powerful!
Female fat in itself is not unhealthy, unless you are truly obese. It is in fact the medium and regulator of female sexual characteristics. We need it. Healhty fat tissue makes us healthier, happier, more fertile, more energized, more sexual and ultimately more powerful in who we are.
But try telling that to girl or women who spends all day looking at images of thin, fragile looking women with none or very little fat and constantly compares themselves to that ideal.
It is proven that a high majority of women are on diets in an attempt to achieve what is deemed the beautiful body. That calorie restriction placed on the body by dieting can result in distinctive personality traits of passivity, anxiety, and emotionality.
“It is in those traits, and not the thinness for it own sake, that the dominant culture wants to create in the private sense of self a recently liberated women in order to cancel out the dangers of their liberation.”- Naomi Wolf- The Beauty Myth.
So, the fashion industry wanting to show off women’s softer side and fragility and not their ugly strength is more detrimental on a greater scale than one might first think.
It is all part of very bad, unhealthy, negative message our culture is sending to our girls:
- Thinness and fragility = Beauty.
- But to be beautiful = Dieting and watching your weight obsessively (for the majority of women).
- Watching your weight and trying to keep yourself thin = tiredness, lack of mojo, energy and motivation, unhappiness and even depression.
- Lack of motivation and passion as a women = Dis-empowerment, discontentment, dissociation and being controlled by and at the whim of our environment and others constantly.
These points may sound extreme to some but the essence of what is being talked about here runs deep through our culture, through our media, through our girls minds and perceptions of themselves and it is creating a epidemic of female sickness, female self hatred and lack of self acceptance in mass proportions.
But Stella McCartney is such a doll, I just love her clothes and the way she shows women’s ‘soft’, ‘fragile’ side. What a genius collection! It’s just clothes. It’s just fashion. It's just her constitutional right to freedom of expression and artistic creativity! It isn’t harming anyone…right?
I beg to differ.
If I was at that show and heard Stella talk that nonsense I would walk out, or maybe stay to throw my iphone or my designer heal at her. Sorry but I have a strong arm Stella! I like to use it when the need arises. I’m not an advocate of violence to make a stand. I'm just trying to make a joke here, but the real point is, if we don’t make a statement about his kind of behavior it is just allowed to continue.
Our culture doesn't want women to be truly strong and empowered in who they are as women because things might change in the world. It is threatening to the status quo.
Stayed tuned…next blog is about, what it means to be strong as a women and what is an empowered women?