"Bikini Body": the modern Iron Maiden

Today while browsing my favourite websites I came across this article on the "Bikini Body".  I found the article quite interesting, and wound up reading the linked articles as well from Jezebel and The New York Times.  For those of you too lazy to read the articles, they all discuss the Bikini Body craze, and the anxiety which bathing suit season now induces in women.  As is so often the case, this anxiety conveniently leads to huge (and I do mean huge) amounts of spending on corrective procedures, boot camps, cellulite creams, you name it.

What struck me was how right the articles were.  When I think about it, I realize I can hardly make it through the grocery check-out these days without being faced down by at least five different magazines with some starlet on the cover in an itty-bitty bathing suit promising to tell me how she lost <insert unbelievable number here> pounds.  Each magazine will inevitably have their "Best and Worst" bodies issue(s), where celebrity after celebrity (the majority of whom are women) will have their physiques dissected in obsessive detail.  In these magazines there is no concept of a spectrum of beauty, only one very specific and impossibly unattainable beauty.  Women are either too fat, too thin, not toned enough, too pale, too orange, too flat-chested, too saggy - take your pick.  As if it weren't hard enough reaching our own personal bests, thanks to those magazines we can now see all the ways in which millions of dollars and the best trainers/dieticians/cosmetic surgeons still won't be able to make us - according to the magazines - good enough to sport a swim suit with a little dignity.

While none of us have paparazzi chasing us down at the beach each summer I know we all still feel this pressure to measure up on the sandbar, so to speak.  As a young woman of average height and who fits well within the Body Mass Index, there really is nothing I should be ashamed of.  And yet, each and every spring, right around February or March, that same vague anxiety settles in: time to get ready for bathing suit season.  Much like the articles from Jezebel and NYT describe, I feel a pressure to lose "winter weight" and get toned and svelt.  I'll set goals, make plans, and proceed to drag myself through hot coals whenever I fall short.  I'll confess it, in early spring I avoided hot-tub parties like the plague for shame of paleness and some extra padding I gained during my senior year.  Even now, I prefer sunbathing at home in my backyard because there is so much less stress surrounding judgement.  I would love to know if men experience anything similar to this bathing suit season anxiety.

But really, who is judging all this?  Ourselves, obviously, who are also most likely our worst critics.  But I'm also curious to know how much of our perceived judgement is actual judgement.  The last few times I saw my friends in bikinis I was impressed at what great shape they're all in - granted, a fair few of my friends are internationally ranked athletes, and most of the rest are work-out junkies.  But still, I have a nagging feeling that we're so wrapped up in our own feelings of inadequacy that all we see when we look at others are what they have that we envy.  Am I wrong?

I've been trying to imagine a world where no one was afraid to go to the beach because they didn't look like Megan Fox.  Where everyone was relaxed and happy and loved themselves for their perfections as well as their "imperfections".  If we weren't all feeling so damn inadequate then we wouldn't feel the need to criticize the physiques of others to make ourselves feel better, and so judgement and inadequacy on the beach would be a thing of the past.  Too bad it's so profitable to corporations for us to feel like shit about ourselves.

Rather than wish I had huge amounts of disposable income to spend on personal trainers and dieticians, I think I'd rather wish for greater self-love: it's a lot more permanent than a crash-diet, and I suspect more satisfying as well.

Note: The above photo is of the divine Crystal Renn, an increasingly famous and sought-after "plus-size" model.  Also, if you are only familiar with "Iron Maiden" as a music group, then allow me to enlighten you.  The Iron Maiden was a method of torture.  It was thought to be used in Medieval times but more recently it has come to light that it was not used until significantly later.  It was a human-sized standing box lined with barbs.  Unless you stood perfectly still, these barbs would puncture the skin, and those placed within Iron Maidens were generally left there for long periods of time.

Not-Quite-Facebook Find:

While reading College Fashion this evening I came across two particularly awesome links.  The first is to a video that is SO CUTE that it is the first time a video has made me cry out of sheer adorableness:



The second is to a post that addresses the social challenges faced by women who don't want children.  Keep in mind that the large pictures that break up the text don't actually signify the end of the article - just scroll past them.

http://galadarling.com/article/i-dont-want-children-am-i-a-freak-why-wont-everyone-leave-me-alone

This one struck a particular chord with me as I never intend to have children and have been faced with the "I know better" reaction on more than one occasion.  While I'm not sure I could be quite as understanding toward those who mock my choice, I think that she does an excellent job of explaining our position and the some of the reasons why women might choose not to have kids.  However, her focus seemed to be on personal incompatibility, and I thought that there was another significant factor that needed to be mentioned.

I will admit that the primary reason I don't plan on having children is because it entails a life I don't want for myself and am convinced would make me unhappy.  Having had plenty of time to think about it though, there are a few other significant reasons that deter me from procreating and are worth considering no matter who you are:

For starters, it is no secret that we are burning through resources at an unsustainable rate.  We are already facing a crisis over oil that - depending on your political stance - has been causing terribly destructive wars (is there any other kind?) for several decades now.  While this is bad enough, I cringe to think of what the world will be like later down the line when it is fresh water - another dwindling resource - that is being fought over.  My understanding of humanity's behavior is that we are going to continue doing what we have done since the dawn of our existence: fight pointless fights over territory, resources, religion, power, and race.  Why would I ever want someone I loved so much to be a part of that world?  I barely want to be a part of it myself!  You may call it cynical, I call it rational.

To continue, we currently live in an overpopulated world.  This is a particularly difficult issue to confront due to the huge bias against contraception that is a major part of many religions.  Add to that the inaccessibility of contraceptives and sex-education in many parts of the world (whether it's due to impoverishment or due to religious lobbyists in parts of the USA) and it becomes more and more important to use our own awareness wisely.  If I know that families like the Duggars are doing their best to contribute to both overpopulation and to use up as many resources as humanly possible then it is all the more important that I have no children at all.

Finally, I am repelled by the idea of being conned by biology into doing something so against my beliefs.  I won't lie that I'm a little terrified that as I get older all of a sudden something will change and I'll get what I like to call "baby fever".  As far as I'm concerned this is an outdated scam of Mother Nature's to ensure the survival of our species.  It horrifies me that some renegade hormones may take over my brain and leave me with a decision that I would regret for the next twenty years.  Furthermore (and most inflammatory of all), to me there is something fundamentally narcissistic about having children.  The whole notion of "what would our kids look like?" and of continuing bloodlines are ideas that call to mind the quest for immortality in Homer's Iliad.  As truly rational beings I think there is something to be said for overcoming these more primal instincts and making decisions based upon who we are, not what we are.  To be clear, if that means that after all that you still want children, then by all means go for it!  There is certainly much to say for having kids (as I have been told enthusiastically by my parents): they can teach you so much about yourself and about life and there is such joy to be found in one's family.

I admit (almost) unflinchingly that five years down the road I may be singing an entirely different tune.  In that case I will most likely be cursing my pigheadedness at posting such an article on the internet where it will live indefinitely... but I wont ever deny that each of these points is seriously worth considering before making such a life-altering choice.  Personally I'm a huge advocate of adoption: what could be better than taking a child doomed to a life of impoverishment, abuse and/or neglect and offering it a loving home?  While adoption is for many people inaccessible due to its expense, I hope to see the day where it can be more attainable and widely used.  Anyway, I hope this has at least given you something to think about.

An Ethics Dilemma: Polygamy

After my last post on Chris Brown and women's rights, a friend of mine asked me to dedicate a post to the current legal dispute regarding a polygamist community in Bountiful, an area in British Columbia, Canada.  Long ago I formed an opinion on this, but in the interest of being thorough and at least a little unbiased I looked up some newspaper articles and some research papers (I wasn't expecting to be so grateful that my access to my Uni library hasn't lapsed yet!).

First, I think it's important to be clear about terminology.  Polygamy refers to the practice of having multiple wives or multiple husbands at one time.  Polygyny refers specifically to one man having multiple wives; this is also known in the Mormon community as plural marriage or patriarchal marriage.  Polyamory is the practice of being in love/romantically involved with more than one person at one time.  Bigamy is the actual act of marrying someone while already married to someone else.

The situation in Bountiful is a complex one.  Under Section 293 of Canada's Criminal Code polygamy is illegal.  To be clear, it also outlaws practicing polyamory, as it criminalizes polyamorists who cohabitate (live together in a sexual relationship without being married).  The two men in Bountiful who are currently being prosecuted are members of a fundamentalist Christian sect that supports polygyny (not polygamy) as one of its major tenets.  While this would seem to be a fairly cut-and-dry case - they broke the law, therefore they go to jail - it has gradually become more bizarre and far-reaching.  The community is currently claiming that the law should not interfere with their religious beliefs, and many polyamorists have joined to support them in their quest for sexual and marital freedom.

So what is the right answer here?  Where do we draw the line of government intervention in our private lives?

Well, from what I can tell, polygamy is archaic, prejudiced, and harmful, and it should stay illegal.  The problem is that polygamy occurs almost exclusively in fundamentalist religious communities, the majority of which are patriarchal.  So, they call it polygamy when in fact they are practicing polygyny.  And polygyny is awful.  There really is no way around that.  Polygyny manages to compound and exacerbate the existing inequality in patriarchal cultures exponentially.  For example, some of you may have recently seen ads for or episodes of the new TLC series Sister Wives, a "reality" TV program that follows the day-to-day lives of a man, his four wives, and their children (I can't seem to find out how many kids there are now that he has his latest fourth wife, but it's at the very least thirteen kids).  My morbid curiosity has yet to compel me to watch an episode, but the ads play when I watch Say Yes To The Dress.  During these little promos, the husband tells the invisible interviewer, "Of course they're jealous of my attention..."  Even in this show that attempts to (to a degree) normalize polygyny, it cannot escape the truth that there is a distinct inequality when a husband may have as many wives as he chooses, but the wives may only have one husband.  In another promo he says, "Love should be multiplied, not divided."  While the sentiment is fine, its application is mightily flawed: you may be able to multiply your love, but you cannot multiply your time, and when you have four wives and thirteen kids there is no way you have the time to commit the kind of attention to each of them that they need.

Now you may argue that polygynous households are not the only families that cannot provide enough attention to members of the family.  After all, there are many single-parent families and families in which members have to work long hours often at multiple jobs.  And this is true.  But the reality is that this isn't the only thing wrong with polygyny.  These aren't relationships in which all members are treated as equal partners within a group where everyone has a say.  Because polygyny is most often a product of patriarchal religion, the wives in the marriage are brought up to believe in their inferiority to men and are taught that submission is absolutely necessary.  Husbands in turn feel pressure to be the "ruler of the household", which combined with the conviction that women are a lower being often culminates in abusive situations where domestic violence is committed against both women and children.

To further add to the horror, polygyny in many ways encourages human trafficking, specifically child trafficking.  It's breaks down like this: more wives translates to more property; more wives also means more children, and more children means a greater financial stress upon a household; so, the sooner a father marries off his daughters, the more capable he will be of supporting his remaining family.  There is also a long running precedent where much older men will slowly accumulate child brides.  This is really one of the saddest aspects, because these women are never able to learn and grow out from underneath the oppressive shadow of male domination.  This recent CTV article explains how young girls from Bountiful were transported into the United States to be married: in one case a twelve year old became yet another wife to a forty-eight year old man.  This is the reality of polygyny (and in most cases polygamy, which functions only as a euphemism for the former): not more love, more moms, and a better life, but instead no education, domestic violence, child rape, forced marriage, brainwashing, and human trafficking.  And the law cannot support this.

My stance is that freedom of religious belief stops as soon as it becomes a matter of infringing upon basic human rights of another person.  If it is your religious belief that everyone from Winnipeg is an unrepentant sinner and your doctrine orders you to stone them to death on sight, that doesn't mean you can commit murder with impunity.  Similarly, if you believe that women amount to property that you may do whatever you want with, that doesn't make it okay for you to beat, rape, and traffic those women under your "protection".  Because polygyny so often comes hand-in-hand with these crimes I feel it would be a huge mistake to legalize polygamy.

But what about polyamory, you ask?  Well, polyamory is something I can be a little more supportive of.  Polyamory is traditionally the territory of non-cisgender groups. [Cisgender refers to people who identify with their "conventional" sex role, ie heterosexuals who do not cross-dress, are not transgendered, etcetera].  Polyamory almost always means that all the partners involved may have as many other partners of whatever sexual persuasion they choose.  These relationships are heavily based upon equality, and child-brides and anything of that sort is a non-issue.  It is this sort of relationship that I feel the government has no say in.  Ultimately participants are informed and willing, and crime associated with these groups is to my knowledge non-existent (in contrast to polygynous religious groups).  The problem we run into here is more relegated to legal rights relating to spousal privilege and issues of that sort, which I'm afraid I've run out of patience to address.

In sum, religion cannot be used as an excuse for blatant practices of inequality and violations of Human Rights law.  Polygamy (read polygyny) belongs in the past, never to be revisited.  Polyamory, in contrast, has a future as an alternative lifestyle more in keeping with the fluidity of gender and sexuality that is slowly coming to be accepted in the Western world.

Hopefully this has been clear and informative.  If you would like to do a little reading of your own, the following links are articles regarding Bountiful:
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110225/bc_bountiful_girls_trafficked_110225?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110327/bc_polygamy_trial_110327/20110327?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
I also recommend Joan Iversen's article "Feminist Implications of Mormon Polygyny", and Ken MacQueen's article from The National, "Making Their Bed".

What on Earth are we going to do?

I've been feeling a little remiss in including the feminist element of this site that is so important to me.  To be honest, it's not just that things get busy, it's that sometimes it is just so depressing to read about how far there is to go in securing anything slightly resembling equality.  Consequently it's been several months since I last checked out Feministing and I've been making appallingly slow progress on The Beauty Myth, which is my current feminist reading material.

The reason I am finally getting around to this is actually none other than Chris Brown.  The other day while perusing my TiVo's recommendations I started watching a Saturday Night Live from earlier this year, and the musical guest on the show was none other than the woman beater himself.  I had to check the air date to be sure, because I found it difficult to believe that any show with the semblance of credibility would book a shameless criminal like Chris Brown.  But no, it was from only months ago and there he was, singing and dancing around stage like the narcissistic sociopath I'm sure he is.

For starters I find it incredible that Brown managed to evade any jail time immediately following the assault, but the fact that a mere two years following his very public display of violence towards his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, he would be back on television and singing again hadn't entered my most insulting dreams.  After all, this is the twenty-first century and we live in a Liberal and equality-driven part of the world..... right?  Well, not so much.  The problem isn't just that Chris Brown doesn't deserve to make another cent (and he probably made thousands for his SNL appearance), it's that reintegrating him into pop culture is tantamount to condoning his actions, especially after such a pitiful grace period as two years.  If major networks are prepared to stick him in front of an applauding audience, then they are prepared for him to become a celebrity - and for many an idol - once more.  You'll have to forgive me if I think it's nauseating that a convicted woman beater should be anyone's role model.  Is this really the message we want to send out?  "Oh, it's okay if you beat the shit out of your girlfriend; as long as you make an unconvincing and half-assed apology everything will be right as rain in a year or two.  And hey, here's $100,000 for your trouble."

Things would be bad enough if this was how things currently stood, but to rub some salt in the wound Brown has been doing all he can recently to complain about all the trouble his actions have brought down on him.  Feministing linked to this video (http://www.illdoctrine.com/2011/03/a_history_lesson_for_chris_bro.html) which quite eloquently chastises Brown and contextualizes this issue within the broader scope of celebrity persecution.  If it were only Chris Brown whose violent episode is being whitewashed then this problem might feel more manageable, but the real issue here is that this is happening over and over again with so many celebrities, whether they are in music, sports, or film.  It seems every month there are some new rape allegations or domestic violence charges, but regardless of court outcomes the accused suffer no real consequences and instead go on to continue making millions of dollars.  The bottom line is that this pattern tells our general culture that these offenses are forgivable, forgettable, acceptable.  I can't even begin on how wrong this is, and how harmful it is in the long run for these perspectives to take hold.

And this isn't limited to the world of fame, either.  Also on Feministing was this article, http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/03/19/031911-opinions-column-campus-rape-valenti-1-2/, which discusses misogyny on campus and Universities' repeated inaction regarding student sexual assault.  So, even in some of the most liberal and forward-thinking places in the world, sexism is still alive and well.  It's this kind of information that makes me want to curb stomp people who claim women have achieved equality.  What further brought women's rights to my attention over the last few days was the following photo, taken on my Alma Mater campus:

I have nothing but love for the gentleman in the suit, but if you take a peek in the background you will see the people in the white tent are claiming that "Women do regret abortion".  While in some places this might be everyday fare, my old University is easily one of the most liberal campuses in the world (for example there is a "420 Club", dedicated to none other than marijuana culture), so this comes as something of a shock.  I do my best to respect everyone's right to an opinion, but when it comes to reproductive rights Anti-Choice lobbyists ultimately are working to limit women's rights and their goals materially injure women every day.  I would go on, but as I type I'm becoming increasingly belligerent and I'd prefer to address as important and as inflammatory a topic as this more level-headedly at another time.