"What can I say? I'm relatable."
Kate Upton, the model above, created herself using social media. She was able to package and market herself from the comfort of her home. Teenagers have the tools to advertise. She put up a sign and the property sold. She’s beautiful, she’s young (nineteen), she’s more naked than not… the airbrushed girl above, is a show-stopper on our beauty ideal continuum (btw, the buzz on Kate Upton is that she’s too fat ?!). She is still a teenager — how do we adults reconcile sexualization of teenagers with our purported devotion to the safety of our children?
There is no population better suited to do the bidding/ brainwashing of the beauty industry than the very girls the industry targets. Read here about girls writing about and teaching each other how to ignore hunger, lose weight and fit into smaller and smaller jeans.
What if they used all their “Thinspiration” energy for something else? Something that encouraged them to look beyond the mirror…
(Image: GoogleImages)
Attorney At Large
February 17, 2012
My four-year-old saw this at a Rite Aid while we were waiting for a prescription. (I’m no prude, but I would prefer for my kid not to see hypersexualized teenage girls on magazine covers.) She looked up at me and said, “Her hair looks like a horse’s mane.”
Whew.
Miriam Novogrodsky
February 17, 2012
That’s great – her hair does look like a horses mane! I had looked long and hard at Kate Upton but i’d missed that analogy! Thank you for the four-year-old eyes!
Hayley Krischer
February 17, 2012
She actually looks healthy in this picture because the bikini is so small! A model with breasts is so unusual. To think that she was thought of as fat?? Oh, and glad to see she thinks she’s “relatable.”
Jane
February 17, 2012
Is it just me, or is there the slightest suggestion (photoshopped, probably) of pubic hair stubble at the top of her (teeny) bikini?
Meanwhile, I’m appalled and saddened by the ‘Thinspiration’ site. I’m having flashbacks to high school when I worked so hard and got so high off of being skinny. It took me years to get to a healthy relationship with food.
Hayley Krischer
February 17, 2012
Jane, I had the same reaction to the Thinspiration sites as well. I charged through a revolving door of bulimia, diet pills, crash diets, starving, water pills and calorie counting in high school and a little bit in college. If these sites were around when I was 17? Forget it. They would have had to have hospitalized me. Absolutely terrifying.
Miriam Novogrodsky
February 17, 2012
i was a lousy bulemic, an uncommited anorexic (starvation freaked me out and calorie counting was too much math) and i had a sporadic relationship with uber-willpower. a sense of community with the same goal? that mighta been all i needed to fall down the rabbit hole. that said, i’ve always worked on either side of fifteen pounds. one side i like, the other i’m uncomfortable with. one side means i’m in control, the other side means i’m slacking. i’ve got all the judgement and self-loathing — just don’t like self-deprivation.
I thought the part (in the huff post piece by Gregorie),about the thinspiration girls using ‘feminist language’ and characterizing their hunger as a “choice” and their desire to be thin “a lifestyle” was really, really interesting… anyone?
Andrea Chisholm
March 10, 2012
Really,really interesting,yes! But what is unfortunate is that for these girls it isn’t a choice it is a desire to meet an ideal projected on them by others i.e. Hollywood and the fashion industry!