Save the BOOBIES? Save the woman!

I recently saw another post on tumblr about the phrase "Don't let cancer steal second base!" and decided to make that my next blog topic.
Naturally, someone commented their outrage over women with a deadly disease being belittled to mere body parts and said, "HOW ABOUT DON’T LET CANCER STEAL WOMEN’S LIVES
BECAUSE WOMEN AREN’T JUST BOOBS THEY’RE PEOPLE JESUS CHRIST."

Those are similar to my thoughts exactly. 

My brother, who is 2 years older than me, used to wear a burnt orange Save the Boobies bracelet. I didn't pay much attention to it until I came across several posts that spelled it out for me how problematic this was. They explained how it is mostly men who are advocating for women to save their breasts by checking for lumps. Save their breasts. Not Save their lives. They used catchy slogans such as "Save the Boobies", "Save Second Base", etc. Nothing is mentioned about the woman to whom the breasts are attached to.

This comic came after Angelina Jolie elected to have a double mastectomy.

Another thing was pointed out in this article about how Breast Cancer is the third leading killer of women, behind heart disease and lung cancer, but it receives 15 times more funding than heart disease. The article says, "Breast cancer is marketable because sex sells. Breast cancer is perceived as the absolute worst kind of cancer because of its implications. The possibility that a woman might lose her breasts, which in our society is tied to a woman’s value, naturally garners more attention."

I'm trying to picture the reverse, if women sexualized men and colon cancer or testicular cancer and used catchy sayings that also doubled as innuendo. I don't see it in the media or online or hear about it and I have a hard time picturing it gaining the same popularity as the breast cancer and boobs have.

On social media, women who post pictures of their chests after a mastectomy have their pictures taken down. They have their breast feeding pictures taken down or are ridiculed if they choose to breastfeed in public. It's all about saving the tatas or boobies and paying homage to them until they are used for anything besides sex.

I hope I've instilled in my older brother a number of things regarding gender and feminism and I hope he understands why Save The BOOBIES/ Save the TATAS/etc are problematic, even though they raise money. 





 

"Plus Size women don't go to the beach because they don't like the way they look!"

So Sports Illustrated made "history" by including a plus size swimsuit advertisement in their Swimsuit Edition for the first time ever, as well as featuring their first ever Plus Size model.

It was mentioned in class, when the picture in the magazine was shown, that the model isn't plus sized, she's "normal" sized.
I would agree but I think that it should still be celebrated that they've deviated from their standard size 2/4 swimsuit model.

When you compare Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, or even Victoria's Secret models, to the typical fashion runway models, the one thing that stands out is that, while they are all still relatively thin and the same size, the swimsuit and underwear models are curvier. They have achieved the unattainable and have both a flat stomach and somewhat large breasts.

The average woman in the U.S. does not look like that. The average woman is a size 14 with a cup size of a 34DD, which is a sister size to a 36D and the size women are more likely to find in Walmart.
You'd think that more people would want to see models that look like them rather than the 6' tall, size 2 or 4 models we see everywhere we look.


My minor is Merchandising with an emphasis in Fashion. One of the required classes is Fashion Theory. In that class, we got to talking about size. The professor showed pictures of our favorite Disney Princesses but instead of their usual tiny selves, they were very very very fat. So fat they were actually round in shape. Everyone laughed and  someone said, "Obviously, we don't want our cartoon characters to look like that. That promotes an unhealthy lifestyle." For me personally, it was an awkward moment and I kept my mouth shut but my initial thoughts were that showing someone who is fat is not promoting ANYTHING. It gives representation to a group of people who actually exist.

The next topic was of the different body shapes that were held up as ideal throughout history. During the Middle Ages, women wore clothing and padding that made them look pregnant as that meant they were fertile and healthy, which was important considering most died way early.
In the 1600s, or the Baroque period, there was an artist named Peter Paul Rubens. His paintings of full-figured women, with large hips and thighs and stomachs and smaller breasts, gave way to the term "Rubenesque".

His paintings were extremely detailed and showed all the flaws, including the dimples on the thighs and buttocks and the rolls on the stomachs.
Our professor showed the following picture to the class.

The class was fairly large- with about 100-150 students I want to say. It was held in Curry Hall in one of the lecture halls on the first floor if that helps any.

The makeup of the class was mostly female, with about 20 or so males. The sizes of the women ranged from probably a size 0 all the way to a size 20 or 22, but most of the women in the class were between a size 0 and 9.
One girl, who looked like she would wear a size Small, sitting in the middle of the class with about five larger sized women, myself included, around her, saw the picture and said, "EWWW. That's DISGUSTING."

The whole class got silent. I was shocked because she had a plus size women to the left of her, to the right of her, behind her (that'd be me), and diagonal in front of her. She essentially said that, at the very least, all of us looked disgusting, never mind the fact that cellulite, which I assume is what she was referring to, doesn't just appear on larger sized women but also smaller sized women.

The professor said, "That's how you feel. Some people like cellulite. Some people don't care that they have it. I saw a skinny girl walking around earlier wearing short shorts, showing off her cellulite. More power to her. I couldn't do that," and quickly moved on.

In another Merchandising class, Fashion Forecasting, we were talking about fads and trends in clothing. I was one of maybe 4 or 5 people in this class of about 50 or 60 that would be considered fat or plus size. I went up to the professor and asked about fads and trends in plus size fashion because that subset of fashion tends to be late. She said that most plus size fashion brands and stores focus on basics because that's what the customer base wants.
Wrong. I'd love floral print and the cute trends but the only things I can find that fit me are for grandmas or strippers.
We talked about swimwear. Someone brought up plus size swimwear and the lack of it.

"I think there's not a market for it because plus size women don't like going to beach and wearing swimsuits because they don't like their bodies," some thin girl said.


I love the beach. Everyone I know who is plus size also loves the beach. Beach loving is not limited to a size.
I don't however like wearing a swimsuit that my 80 year old grandma would wear, nor do I want to wear a swimsuit that makes me look like I'm in a porno. Sadly, until recently, that has been the case.

Plus size women like the beach and they like their bodies. Companies who sell only senior swimwear for anyone above a size 12 are the ones not listening.

Swimsuitsforall, the company behind the plus size swimsuit ad in Sports Illustrated, featured above, teamed up with Gabi Fresh, the plus size blogger who coined the term "Fatkini" in 2012, to release more fatkinis, or bikinis on fat bodies. The first round of bikinis and other swimwear released in 2013 and the campaign enlisted the help of fellow plus size bloggers, Nadia Aboulhosn and Maxey Greene, and the galaxy print one ended up selling out.

In 2014, Gabi Fresh teamed up with Swimsuitsforall again and designed another bikini.

A swimsuit that wasn't a tankini or a one piece that actually provided support for top heavy women and coverage on the bottom and it came in a cute print.

For 2015, they teamed up again and released another collection with fun, YOUNG, cute prints.

In class, someone pointed out how the men in the video ad are all hot and attractive still. You can also see the same thing in the last picture of Gabi.
I would argue that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Thin women get paired with both attractive and fit men as well as fat and ugly men quite often. It's used quite often in movies and TV shows. When there is a plus size woman on screen, she is often either paired with a thin man, who is deemed average, or a man of the same size or larger. Rarely do we see her with a buff, hot looking man. This leads you to believe that a buff, attractive guy won't ever find a fat woman attractive or that if he does, he has a fat fetish.
This is disheartening to say the least. I think one show that actually doesn't follow this trope is My Mad Fat Diary, which has a normal sized, attractive guy attracted to/ in love with the fat girl.

As someone who is on the lower end of plus size, and has difficulty finding clothes that I like and that fit, and as someone who was insulted and teased for my weight and size, I think that I'll desperately take representation anyway I can.