Monday, March 07, 2005

More on Being Beautiful... Only, Less

Well, Kirstie Alley's Fat Actress is gonna be out soon; not that I'm going to see it, cause I don't watch tv, but I've been interested in the tabloid interest in her and the show.. mainly because she's 5'8 and considered an obese balloon at her highest weight of.... drumroll.... 203 lbs.

Um.

203 lbs does not a freakshow make. If she was a guy who was 5'8, 203 no doubt people would be like, "Damn, that's a husky guy! He's kinda chubby!" They would not tell him to cover himself up and hide in his bedroom in shame.

Well, not quite yet anyway. Not in... some circles.

What gets me about Kirstie Alley's look is that she's not ugly. She's not unnattractive just the way she is. Like the women in Carnivale and Kate Winslet in Engima, a size 12 does not a sailboat make.. particularly when you see these women in real life and realize that the reason they look so huge on screen is because their co-stars are all 112 lbs.

I've been thinking a lot recently about my old pet interest: desire. What draws people together, why we obsess so much about our looks and how we look with the sorts of people we're attracted to.

I remember watching Carnivale and being a little weirded out that nearly half of the female main characters weighed more than 120 lbs. As I discussed before, it was a great choice for the show, and the time period, and the more I watched the show, the more I wondered why we don't have that sort of diversity on regular television and movies. Because you know what? Cynthia Ettinger is really beautiful, and has an amazingly powerful sexual prescence on screen... it just took me forever to realize it, because I'd gotten so fooled (me!) into reading "fat" (which, again, in Hollywood means anything above 120 lbs) as "no sex drive/no sex appeal." Seriously.

In fact, the only people allowed to be truly attractive appear to be the beautiful Hollywood types. Funny, how they're the only ones who're having sex, and yet... all these babies in the world. Imagine that!

It's funny, but until I read this article about the Camilla/Charles affair, it didn't really hit me that perhaps one of the reasons why nobody wants the grand wedding and the media isn't terribly interested is because they're not beautiful pepole. Diana was beautiful. Yes, she lived in her own private hell and dealt with bulima and probably had a lot of psychological freak-out image stuff, but she looked really pretty on screen, so during the wedding, when nobody wanted to look at Charles at all, they could just pan to princess-fairytale-pretty Diana.

Now, instead of a pretty farce, they've got a real love story about two not-perfect people who've been madly in love against all odds and despite all the media grotesquerie for thirty-five years... and people just laugh at them. It's like this incredibly fucking big joke that two not-perfect people could actually... love each other.

We'd rather have virginal Diana marrying her prince and pretend that somehow, by sheer virtue of her prettiness, it would make her attractive to Charles, and he to her. For some reason. Because, obviously, everyone should be immediately soul-struck by appropriately beautiful people - that is, people who look the way "beautiful" people are understood to look; thin, blond, women and tall, built men; and that's supposed to be all there is to it. Just look like a walking Abercrombie & Fitch ad, and you'll be the happiest, most loving couple(s) in the whole world.

Right?

Just buy enough plastic surgery, starve yourself, laugh a lot at some loser guy's jokes, and you'll be happy. Happy, happy. I mean, you're pretty, he's pretty. That's all there is to it, right?

Jenn mentioned an article she'd read about the rush of plastic surgeries that porn star women have been undergoing... oh, no, not just for the breasts and the tummy tucks - for the genitals. For the clit and the labia. To form a more "perfect" uniform version of female genitalia, so that they, too, all look the same.

Porn full of the same faces, the same pair of breasts, the same hips and thighs, the same clits and lips. Forming a more perfect female form. A uniform one.

Does that make us less scary? Easier to please? After all, if all women are the same, it certainly makes going to bed with them easier. And getting to know them easier. In fact, if all women were robots, life would be a lot easier for men, in general. At least for the straight ones.

Funny. Science fiction not so far off.

And watch out, boys: the consumer media culture's coming for you, too. And the day when you're expected to conform to body type ain't that far off. In some circles, it's already here.

Welcome.

7 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

That was a great post. And you're right, the physcical conformity police have come for the men as well. The thing is though, at least I think, most people aren't really attracted to the stereotypes...it's the media's fantasy. If you meet a guy too weak minded to escape that sad grasp, then consider his disinterest a nice way to save you the trouble of dealing with him. 

Posted by david

Anonymous said...

That was a great post. And you're right, the physcical conformity police have come for the men as well. The thing is though, at least I think, most people aren't really attracted to the stereotypes...it's the media's fantasy. If you meet a guy too weak minded to escape that sad grasp, then consider his disinterest a nice way to save you the trouble of dealing with him. 

Posted by david

Anonymous said...

That was a great post. And you're right, the physcical conformity police have come for the men as well. The thing is though, at least I think, most people aren't really attracted to the stereotypes...it's the media's fantasy. If you meet a guy too weak minded to escape that sad grasp, then consider his disinterest a nice way to save you the trouble of dealing with him. 

Posted by david

Anonymous said...

You stopped watching television? No wonder there hasn't been a Battlestar Galatica follow-up. Darn it. It's sure is nice knowing I'm not the only person in the world with the hots for Starbuck. 

Posted by Diane

Anonymous said...

Very well put. I have struggled with weight/image issues all my life, and let me tell you, a size 16 or 18 does not a sailboat make, either. But this is what girls have been socialized to believe, as I was, and I think it's only getting worse with dipshits like Britney Spears and Beyonce et al. the predominant role models for our youth. But women perpetuate this "beauty myth" as much as men. We are just as judgemental and hard on each other as the males creating the feminine imagery we are bombarded with each day are. This is because we have internalized centuries of ill-treatment, control, shitty stereotypes, and judgement; we have not internalized self acceptance, self love, and self respect. And when you can't internalize any more, what do you do? You externalize.

Great blog; I'm a regular. 

Posted by wandering coyote

Anonymous said...

The dirty little secret is that men *like* women with curves. I've never been told by a guy that I was overweight, or fat, or unattractive. They call me "comfortable", my tummy roll is "endearing", I'm "Rubenesque", etc...

I even read somewhere that men with thin wives are more likely to cheat on them. But really, women are beautiful because they glow from within when they are happy. If you are happy with yourself, someone will find you beautiful. That is what is attractive about Kirstie- she has the ability to laugh at herself and is happy with herself. Camilla may not be beautiful to everyone's standards, but I find her attractive, especially when she is photographed with Charles. The obvious love between them is far more attractive than Diana's superficial look. The only time I liked seeing pictures of her was with her boys - then she seemed really happy. But with Charles, she never looked beautiful to me, just distraught.
 

Posted by donna

Anonymous said...

Very thought-provoking and good writing too! I read once that most women would give up five years of their lives to lose (was it five pounds?) ...

Hardly anybody in Hollywood looks like a real human being, with the result that if a story is set anywhere but L.A. you can't believe it for a minute. No group of people in real life looks like a bunch of plasticized Hollywood actors. I appreciate a glimpse of somebody who looks genuine on tv the way I'd appreciate a unicorn if it crossed my driveway. 

Posted by Melinama