[Miscellany]

I've watched the show on and off for the last few weeks and it's not bad. Basically How to Look Good Naked takes a new woman every episode who hates her own body (with a gut wrenching passion) and shows her how to love it, just as it is - perhaps with a little bit of frosting by way of a better bra/hair do but essentially without an extreme makeover. Pretty good idea, huh?*

There are so many women who hate their bodies. I have never met one woman in my life who is completely at ease with her body. I don't even know OF any women who are completely at ease with their body actually. I do however know size 6 (I think that's size 0 in the US) women who complain they are fat, who live at the gym, who think their legs are fat. It's wrong. Perhaps one might be more accepting of their own body after years of dieting or after the extreme makeover like you see on the those TV shows but as a whole we women are very good at hating our bodies. I think the stats the show talks about is that 4 out of every 5 American women hate their body and people who we see in magazines are skinnier than 98% of us. It's really no wonder we have a problem with normality when what we compare ourselves to is completely unrealistic?

Know anyone with an eating disorder?
Ever had one yourself?

I'm guessing there would be a lot of yes answers to that - it's sad.

I think the biggest problem with all this is that hating your body means that:
1) you don't get out there and live your life.
2) you are more vulnerable to feeling less worthy than a magazine cover that has been airbrushed.
3) you feel like shit.
If 4 out of 5 women feels like that then wow, how easy would it be to keep us girls down? Pretty fucking easy. It's always easier to make people with low self worth feel even worse about themselves.

Easily my favourite part of the show is when the girl in question is asked to slot herself into a line of near naked ladies - in accordance to the size she thinks she is. Every woman's self image so far has been of herself being larger than she is. They slot themselves into the larger side. That says a lot about self perception.



Even if the girls were being modest during this and don't see themselves as large (even though they put themselves down the larger end of the line) it says a lot about how we women represent and view ourselves. If 4 out of every 5 women feel like crap because they're not good enough for some reason or another then 4 out of every 5 women are not big noting themselves, even when they do deserve it. I'm reminded of this:

Research in Linda Babcock’s 2004 book Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, found that 93 per cent of female graduates from a US university simply accepted the starting salaries they were offered in their first job, while more than half of the male graduates tried to negotiate up.

Is it any wonder this happens? 4 out of 5 women can't even look at themselves in the mirror, do you really think these same women are going to ask for a pay rise? Um, no. I'm not saying this is all due to hating our bodies but I do think that yes, it's all tied in with a greater feeling of unworthiness for us. Who knows where it really comes from originally (do we go back to Eve?), and who knows why we willingly adhere to it so readily by buying into the beauty myth time and again but yes, it exists, yes it's very real, yes it affects our everyday lives.

Probably though the biggest question I have coming out of the show How to Look Good Naked though is why it takes a gay man to tell us women to love ourselves? You'd think a woman would be willing to tell us because we should love ourselves, or perhaps the straight men who are supposed to love us for who we are could let us know. No? Not going to happen any time soon huh? Interesting.

In the meanwhile - while we all scramble to get our acts together. Thank you, Carson (and Gok Wan - also openly gay and hosted the original series) <3


* Honestly I've heard some people argue that this kind of show is horrible simply because we shouldn't let people believe that they are beautiful when they so obviously are not (ie: they are too fat and since fat is not beautiful by society's standrads then they shouldn't be allowed to love themselves because if they loved themselves then they wouldn't lose weight). This kind of argument disgusts me to no end.

On to music - Their first album Lesser Matters has been on constant rotation in my car over the last few weeks. I can't tell you how much I am loving this band lately. This song is particular makes me want to run through a valley of golden wild flowers for some reason. I have strange fantasies.

Where Damage Isn't Already Done - The Radio Dept.

Labels: bodies, crap reality tele, dirty femmo, messy women, questions, real women, the price of beauty, TV, women, wonderings

posted by M at 10:09 pm 16 comments

A couple of months ago when I wrote a post about the (lack of) visibility of the penis in contemporary mainstream cinema I never thought that it would be so soon between drinks (so to speak) and I could again be subjected to the same enjoyable spectacle. Yes folks, penis spotting is alive an well in the Sex and the City movie currently doing the rounds at the cinemas.

Funnily enough it wasn't really the penis itself that interested me this time, more that the so called traditional male gaze of the camera had been flipped and twisted for a second into an almost unheard of female gaze. It was a bit of a shock to me that I became so aware of the switch in the first place. I had just assumed that a movie about women and basically made for women would be filmed primarily with a female gaze - god knows the subject matter would probably bore any heterosexual man to a slow and painful death -but I assumed wrong. It seems that the female gaze remains as highly elusive in popular mainstream cinema as it ever was and I don't think this phenomenon is due to any kind of big conspiracy either - it just is that way, god knows why but it just is. The fact is that a female perspective in cinema may exist in so far as subject matter and characterisation is concerned but not in terms of cinematography. Does it even matter? I don't know - does it? Women look at women's bodies all the time - the difference is that while we will, can and do appreciate the female form this is not necessarily a sexually laden gaze - does the male gaze of the camera lens take this concept fully into consideration or is it just all knowing and omnipresent like God? It is all gazes, it is the only gaze, it is supreme and all accommodating? And if this is the case why did I get the shock of my life when I finally recognised the female camera gaze? Hm, why indeed?

The scene in question was the a shower scene where man-crazy Samantha pervs on her neighbour as he takes a naked outdoor shower (as you do in California apparently). The camera moves slowly and lovingly over the man's body, focusing on his heavily defined and muscular back and perfect bum and right down to his strong, tanned and not too hairy legs before it travels back up again to it's final destination - the money shot. If I ever needed a moment to tell me what women see when they are having a good perv that was it. I had become so accustomed to viewing cinema through the filter of the male gaze (camera) that I had to think twice in order to recognise my own. It felt foreign to see something filmed so entirely from the point of view of a woman that I completely disengaged from watching the movie. I remember thinking "oh, now that's interesting" - but it wasn't his body, it was the camera that I found interesting. Also the sudden representation of a female filter by which to watch a movie, one I had naively assumed I had always viewed movies with, was just so strange. The fact that I had just realised then just how strange it was unnerved me - the movie while being female-centric was filmed primarily in classic male gaze form. The point being of course not that this was done in order to exclude women, just the opposite the point is that we, women, are most comfortable in viewing cinema (all art?) in this way. The question of course then is why?

When I have theorised the male gaze of the camera in the past it is always with reference to old movies of the Hitchcockian era (and of course Laura Mulvey) where scopophilia really was a male dominated art form. I'd assumed due to various changes in movie subject matter, the rise of female directors and indeed the societal changes due to the women's movement that cinema had changed too. Ahem - perhaps not.

It's funny that it took *this* particular movie based on a series so obsessed with highlighting the *look we've come so far because now we can have sex like men* cliche, to drum the point home. We women are comfortable seeing ourselves through the point of view of how men see us - and perhaps this is highlighted in many of the female-centric things we partake in
(beauty myth etc) and I don't know that we'd even want to change that if we had the chance anyway. The question for me still is, why? I still can't answer it - it's ingrained there somewhere between why we will willingly pay for the pleasure of ripping the hair out of our most sensitive places and why GW Bush was ever re-elected. Questions I guess that answering will open a can of worms so big it can never be contained. Maybe we need that, I don't know but I do think it's highly fucked up that the so called female camera gaze existed for a grand total of 10 seconds in a movie based on women and made for women. Food for thought.

On another note, almost every (straight) guy I know loathes these women, the series, the whole premise of the show etc. Is it hated because it's subversive or because it's bullshit? I've said it before but when something is hated then it's always because a few buttons are in the process of being well and truly pushed.

What say you? Are there any movies you can recommend that show the female gaze in action? Remember female subject matter/characterisation do not necessarily mean a female gaze..

Sex and the City - do you hate it/them? Why?


And now my musical choice today comes of my female gaze quite happily looking through the filter of the male gaze. Go figure! Here we have the Duck Man performing probably my favourite of all songs I've ever discovered through watching a movie - Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. A scene I love so much I shared it with my university film class as "a favourite" and a song I love so much I rang Gold FM to request it and was sternly told that "we don't play *that*". Hmph! Here are my two favourite things, movies and music combined. Okay, three favourites: Duckie.
...Apparently he has strong lips. Bless!

Try A Little Tenderness - Otis Redding.

Labels: bodies, cinema, dirty femmo, film theory, gaze, men, movies, musical monday, objectification, scopophilia, sex, women

posted by M at 9:36 pm 25 comments

* Conversation: The other day I was eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends. They were discussing getting the flu and how shitty it makes you feel - you know mundane stuff. We've all had that riveting conversation I'm sure.

Then one girl brought up gastro - a painful and horrible affair it is. They started grumbling about that one but both admitted that they'd rather have gastro than the flu.

Why? Well to quote:

At least you loose a bit of weight! one proclaimed.

It's a kick start on the diet - the other readily agreed.

I'm not all that upset when I get gastro. At least it's doing something good for you she said.

I get secretly happy when I have it, even though it hurts the other finished up.

And there you have it. Conclusive evidence that girls are fucked up in the head and you know what? I couldn't in all honesty say that I totally disagreed with them either. I don't think it's a healthy way to think about ones body but it's how we do think about them nonetheless.

* In praise of good men: The other night I found myself in a spot of bother when I'd lost the lens cap of my camera in the middle of a pitch black park. Who forgot her torch I wonder? hmm. I made a comment about having to look for it when one of my fellow classmates gallantly braved the cold night air and boring conversation to stay with me and helped me look until I found it. Who else would do that? No one! This man; I've seen him do quite a few nice things for other people - including walking a woman to her car even though it was late and he must have been tired, and helping someone with instruction when no one else would and engaging in conversation with many different kinds of people - both men and women in a non-arrogant way. He's just a good guy and I'm sorry to say I haven't met a lot of those kinds of guys lately.

Some guys, are really nice sometimes. They're nice to only certain types of women or certain types of people. I don't want anything to do with those people. You can always tell the character of a person not exactly by how they treat only you but by how they treat all people and living creatures. Some people are just in it for themselves - I could say the same about women who are friendly and sweet to men but total bitches to other women. I've said it before but I'm extremely wary of women who don't get along with other women or who say 'I'm a boys girl'. Pfe.

In the same way, I'm wary of men who only treat certain women nicely and other women meanly or even ignore them - because they perceive these women as 'easy' or 'ugly' or 'dumb' or whatever doesn't make the grade. Some men treat women nicely only if they are the kind of women that man would go on a date with, even if they don't actually want to date them. You can smell the fake nice on these guys a mile away and it's not pretty. They will be friendly to someone because they want to impress them but not to another person because they don't care about impressing them. As humans we're all kind of selfish but this kind of behaviour is a bit rotten. We don't have to all be best friends but shouldn't we all be decent to each other?

So this good guy - wow. I had shamefully forgotten that some men are worth their weight in gold. Good men: Big tick!

Labels: bodies, good guys, mean men, men, vicious women, women

posted by M at 3:52 pm 24 comments