December 15, 2004
Jesus Christ, again with the stems?
A girl sitting in front of me on the BART was reading Marie Claire magazine this evening and I found myself casting frequent surreptitious glances at it over her shoulder. I haven't subscribed to any beauty magazines since I was in high school, so they hold the combined fascination of the unseen and the generally insipid. I can't not look.
One page which caught my attention contained a woman in a colored box labeled "Size 8". Yeah, and? I thought, trying to get a better look. She was pretty cute, with long dark hair and dramatic smoky eyes. I craned my neck to see the rest of the article and noticed that, in fact, it was a piece on the emerging recognition of plus-size beauty. Ah. Oh? I suppose so. The woman in the picture was dressed in the classic plus-size-model outfit: the long-sleeved knee-length dress with a plunging neckline, paired with some nice tall stilettos. You have to cover up those flabby arms and elongate those chunky legs, after all, and you may as well call as much attention to the saving-grace cleavage as you can. It wasn't a terribly flattering look on this particular woman, but in her size she should just be glad she didn't look worse. Right? Of course. It's nice to see such large women pictured in beauty magazines at all.
In that spirit, here are some pictures of a fat and sassy size 8 woman showing off her social-norm-defying body. Shake that chunk, sistah!
Suddenly I no longer have the Power Rangers' theme song stuck in my head (how in the hell did that get there?); upon viewing your pictures (especially the upper right and lower left) it was promptly replaced by "Vogue."
Posted by: Chris at December 15, 2004 10:33 PM@$@*$#*@&#*@*$*%*#&@*&@#$*&!!!!!!
SIZE 8?!?!?!
i hate beauty magazines. and also bridget jones.
(but i like your stems, so that's ok)
Posted by: michele at December 15, 2004 11:06 PMYeah. The other women in their plus-size extravaganza were size 12 (average for an American woman) and size 16 (uh, nowhere near the high end of the size scale). Every single one of them was wearing the uniform: long sleeves, plunging neckline, knee-length hemline, tall shoes. It was really pretty creepy.
"Vogue"? That's a song?
Posted by: Dianna at December 16, 2004 07:54 AMmadonna. a GOOD song. i used to do skits to it in middle school at slumber parties.
16 is better though. better than effing 8.
Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 09:10 AM16, being officially above average, might have been a good place to start the "plus-size" parade. Not a good place to end it, really, I think.
I hang my head and admit that I don't know this good Madonna song. Also, since it was Chris who brought up the song in the first place, when I first glanced at this comment I thought he was the one saying he used to do skits to it. I was going to demand to know why I didn't get invited to those slumber parties.
Posted by: Dianna at December 16, 2004 09:17 AMthat is soooo depressing. an 8?!?! am i the only person who notices that all these size 0 people look malnourished???
Posted by: adrienne at December 16, 2004 09:33 AMyou are not the only one! because there's me! and dianna!
it's ok, dianna. you don't need to know the song to strike a pose. i mean, there's nothing to it. come on, let your body move to the music.
Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 09:51 AMNo, Adrienne, you're not. It's disturbing. It's nothing new to note that an industry has been built out of the business of promoting unreasonable standards; after all, humans have been giving each other unreasonable standards for millennia. But the overwhelming exaltation of a female ideal that's skating right on the edge of severe health complications is, frankly, fucked.
I did strike a pose. Four of them! Just look!
Posted by: Dianna at December 16, 2004 10:01 AMone of my favorite lines of vogue: "rita hayworth gave great face."
which is to say nothing of her stems.
Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 10:26 AMThat's gave GOOD face. And I can't believe anyone of our generation has never heard that song.
Posted by: djsmall at December 16, 2004 12:01 PMyeah, come on Dianna where were you circa 1990?..."fellas that were in the mood" was always my favorite line.
Posted by: adrienne at December 16, 2004 12:05 PMOh, and I used to perform little skits to that song too, in Katie Vigil's bedroom...
Posted by: djsmall at December 16, 2004 12:05 PMi did mine with amanda, terri, kristen, kim, ktv...others? i think we used to videotape them too. huh. i wonder if someone still has tapes of that. oh, man, i hope not.
Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 01:30 PMfascinatingly, CH tells me it's even terri's birthday today. how wacky is that?
Posted by: michele at December 16, 2004 03:00 PMThis one time in college I sang and danced to Material Girl.
And by "this one time," I mean many many times.
I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep now.
Posted by: Chris at December 17, 2004 12:31 AMPoor Chris, pathologically incapable of pretending he's not humiliated when he does stupid things in front of a crowd. With all the practice you had in college, I would have thought you could adapt. Alas, alack.
Oh right, we're talking about plus-size women.
http://www.youdamnkid.com/d/20011005.html
Posted by: poot at December 17, 2004 06:58 AMhttp://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20050108
Posted by: Andrew at January 9, 2005 01:03 AM