Glamor 'n Judgement and Photoshop Misdirection

There is a substantial reading prerequisite for you, dear readers, in order to fully understand this post.

1 - please read this essay from the NY Times Magazine first.
2 - I think that he's wearing his suit from H&M here (I told you to read the essay first!)
3 - please don't stop reading just because I am admitting that I am not a fan of the movie versions of Sex in the City and yes, I know that there must be something very, very wrong with me because of that fact.
4 - please read the article that I link to in the last line of this post.

When he referenced the ubiquitous-to-all-middle eastern-movie-sets belly dancers, I was reminded of my mom's take on "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", which she enjoyed some of....but was concerned that the party scenes reinforced the stereotypes of ouzo drinking, weird-meat-cooking-on-a-spit-in-the-front yard Greeks.  (Mom isn't Greek, but she played one in her marriage to a Greek.)

Personally, the pre-wedding scene with the girls bleaching their moustaches had me internally screaming "Oh my god, that's my mom, me and my sister!!!!"

Moustafa's observation that perhaps his participation in SATC2 had possibly reinforced the stereotypes that he seeks to diminish.

He's right, but he had to control over the director and art director's concept of what is middle eastern....and this isn't 60 Minutes or Charlie Rose.....this is SJP-I-grew-up-listening-to-NPR-my-kids-will-too.....so cultured!

He comes clean and says it was the glamor that drew him in.  Manufactured glamor - photoshopped glamor (have you seen the weird versions of the SATC2 girls on the movie poster??)  I think that the government needs to set some standards on photoshopping because it's out of control in many ways - not just whacking down size 0 models to never-seen-before torso proportions.  I've talked about this before.

It was really the "they go to the grocery store just like us" kind of glamor that US Magazine provides in its front section - yeah I read it in the checkout line.    It's the only way our brain can connect the seemingly fabulous lives the stars live and how we live.

But Adobe Photoshop changed the game.

What you see is not what you get.

This is what Moustafa and all of us are up against.
 

Show and Tell - Part 2

This post, at Gawker, communicated important thoughts in a most eloquent way:

Is Size Zero Sizing Falling Out of Fashion?

Vanity Sizing vs. PC Sizing

By Maureen O'Connor - Gawker

Instead of casting size 0-2 runway models this fall, Calvin Klein's using comparatively obese size 2-4's. Is this like the time they shifted sizes down so vain average people would feel skinny, and skinny girls would be nothing at all?

Is size zero finally falling out of vogue? And if it is, are we talking about the actual size, in inches (30-22-32 and 33-25-35 inches, Wikipedia tells me) or just the designation of "zero," which is a relatively new concept, anyway (fashion adjudicator of all things mainstream, the Gap, introduced its 0 in the '90s) and coincides with an upward creep in the numbers on the tags of women's clothes in general. (One fashion industry organization estimates that today's size 10 would have worn a 16 in her grandmother's day.)

Calvin Klein was, of course, at the heart of the invention of size zero, which happened some time after their heroin-chic Kate Moss campaigns taught us that the words "lovely" and "bones" go together. If the company's sizing up this week catches on, Calvin Klein will confirm that it's America's most talented inventor of female body trends. If it doesn't, it will just add to the general anxiety over body size. On an individual level, women worry they are too fat. And lately, on a social and industry-wide level, fashion has been worried that its women are too thin. And we all know the easiest way to soothe the anxieties of others: lying.

Besides, maybe size zeros don't want to be zeros. Maybe size zero ladies will stage a revolution of their own? Points out my colleague Brian Moylan, "I always thought 'size 0' was degrading... like these girls are so skinny, they don't even count." Heidi Klum has a similar stance: "A size zero? I've never heard of that. That didn't exist when I was growing up. When did that start? What does it mean? It means a person is not there, no? It makes no sense." [Fashionologie]

(text by Maureen O'Connor - Gawker)

 

By the way, Bill Cunningham's Eggwear images in the April 18, 2010 issue of the NY Times captured the behind of a woman that would look exactly like mine if I wore a midriff shirt with my low-rise jeans.  Major Muffinage!  

Body Image Ahoy!!

Show and Tell

One of the valuable services that gossip blogs provide is to shine a bright light on how Photoshop has affected girls'/women's body image. Real and retouched images side-by-side (so to speak) like this one and this one provide a chance to have an important discussion with The Girl about what is real and what is NOT.

It took me a while to train my brain to remember that the beautiful bodies I see in fashion magazines (not the prepubescent waifs - they border on kiddie-porn IMHO) are not real.  They are retouched way beyond covering up the pimple that even school picture companies can do for you (for a fee).

The September Issue, a docu-movie about producing Vogue's biggest issue in its history, reveals to us that the cover photo of Sienna Miller is constructed out of the head of one shot + the neck from another shot + the teeth from another shot + body from another shot.

Voila!  Woman through collage.

It's not that art =  life.

Life = art.

Crossover

There was a big crossover moment in our family last night.

The Girl, 11, is now a young woman.

It's not what you think it is.

It revolves around this Dress.*

I returned this dress to Target last night, after deciding that all the alterations in the world won't make it work on my body. (The only saving grace was that I was trying to make an L a M+)

The Girl is looking for a dress to wear to a teacher's wedding next week.

We picked over the leftover L and XL sundresses (the S's got the goods early).

We skipped the bursting racks of maxi-dresses (ugh - please make it go away!) and resigned ourselves to looking elsewhere for an inexpensive, going to be worn once, dress.

Then we stumbled on a secondary rack of Tracy Feith for Target.

The Dress was there, in an XS.

The only piece in a ragtag assortment that no one in The Heights is going to wear.

I pulled it out and asked The Girl if she wanted to try it on, assuming she'd say "no."

She said "sure."

She tried it on and she looked beautiful.

She said "I love it!"

It was twice what we had budgeted, but it will work for a cousin's fall wedding too.

We bought it.

In the parking lot she marveled, "Mom, this is a designer dress!"

On the way home we laughed at the serendipity of this dress.



*modeled, as she suppresses gas, by Ally from The Hills.

Who's Afraid of the Muffin Man?

I knew that this post would come. The ubiquitous body issue post. However, this one involves physics.

Let me digress a bit.

I have a cookbook called "Off The Beaten Path" by Bob Blumer, aka (his nomenclature) the surreal gourmet. I bought it after having some delicious grilled asparagus that he prepared in his Airstream kitchen which was situated in the Whole Foods parking lot as part of a series of appearances in the area to promote said book.

There is a chapter in the book called Extreme Cuisine and Bob says: "My dinner guests tend to arrive with impossibly high expectations. Instead of trying to compete with their fantasies, I counter with culinary theatrics from my Surreal bag of tricks. The ruse started at a dinner in Vienna where I poached salmon fillets in a dishwasher."

You get the picture.
Lemongrass Shrimp 'grilled' on a car engine after the car had been driven for 20 miles. Foods prepared with your iron.

And this brings me back to physics and the muffin (top).

As I've been doing a lot of driving lately, I'm acutely aware of how much force my stomach exerts on the seatbelt. After the initial disgust about how I need to lose a few pounds ebbs away, I then start to think more about the force (help me, Luke) and how I can harness it and get something positive accomplished with it.

That reminded me of Bob and his salmon in the dishwasher and the shrimp on the car engine.

Maybe a grilled cheese when it's hot enough outside?

Goat cheese pressed panini?

Pull over and sell them roadside and make a little gas money?

I am afraid of the muffin man and what he does to my head.

Pissed @ Purse + Bitchin re: Bag*

I'm having purse problems.

My bags are either too big or too small.

Too much structure, or not enough.

Too casual for work; too serious for My Other Life.

Not in season - I have to wait until spring.

This vexes me. I'm very vexed.**

They fall off my shoulder in the winter-of-bulky-coats and dangle like a knotted-up tether ball.

The slouches pool on the floor in my office and I run over them.

The stiff soldiers topple over in my front passenger seat and deposit their contents between the seat and the door and under the seat, never to be retrieved.

The little guys don't accommodate my current wallet + sunglasses.

The big guys look like Pamela Anderson's chest after the implants are removed. I don't have enough big stuff to stuff in there. I don't carry my make-up drawer around with me in my purse. (see above for the lone lipstick that is lost under the passenger-side seat). My wallet isn't bulging with the kids' last report cards and coupons for the nearest waterpark.

I'm a purse and wallet minimalist. Just the bare essentials. If I had the guts to dress like Fran Lebowitz, problem solved. Man-up.

I'm waiting to break out the baby-blue perfect-size bag.

Spring will have sprung and I won't be pissed anymore.


* Twitterized for the hip ones
** Big points for knowing this worst of the worst quote from a movie