The Rhetoric Of The “Real” Woman
So, let’s talk about “real women.” We hear this phrase a lot, often in the sense that “real women have curves” and that, by extension, skinny women are somehow not “real.” And this article from the Sydney Morning Herald articulates the problem:
Women have been caught in a pointless feedback loop as we debate what does and doesn’t constitute ”real women”. That the bulk of it is a marketing strategy – Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty, which sold a lot of fake-tanner, is a case in point – appears to have flown over most people’s heads….
In the majority of cases, ”real” is code for ”average” or ”normal”, but perhaps more insidiously, ”anything but skinny”. As Dye’s response has demonstrated, women who – whether by luck or long hours in the gym – more closely resemble media ideals of beauty are not considered ”real”. Slim women such as [model Jennifer] Hawkins are not allowed to be positive body image role models because their bodies don’t look like most women’s.
Thin women are often in a position of privilege, particularly thin white women, and we can’t ignore that. However, the whole “eat a sandwich, I’m a real woman!” dialogue is damaging in its own way. It keeps women running after and policing each other in a little circle of body obsession, while men get to go off and run the world. And that’s why it has to stop.
Thanks to Jenfu for the link!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advertising, Celebrities, Fashion, Feminism, International, Race & Ethnicity
Email us
The Herald’s article is a great one, actually. While it’s absolutely accurate that thinner women have and are in a position of privelege, it’s also ridiculous that slim women are condesended to as somehow less than their heavier counterparts. A woman who tries to maintain a body ideal through a diet and/or exercise regimen is no less real than a woman who doesn’t try to be slim. It’s simply a matter of what’s important to the people in question. However, this element of the argument is rarely discussed. Instead of looking for constructive ways to truly celebrate all shapes and sizes of women, slender women are generally considered less valid than fuller-figured ladies, particularly by full-figured counterparts. Basically, the “real” argument is a form of reversed prejudice.
Thanks for this post. I think this is a distraction which sets up women into opposing camps for a pointless debate and draws attention away from the real issue, which should be about promoting respect for all body types.
I used to throw around that “real woman” crap too. I think the only place it applies is to the women in fashion magazines (not the actual women who model, but their impossibly photoshopped simulacra).
Yesterday had a guest post from the author of a site called Fuck Yeah Skinny Chicks because there is a segment of the population that is naturally thin (as opposed to actively dieting or battling an eating disorder). Naturally thin women hear the “real woman” crap all the time and it is no less hurtful to them than some of the stuff hurled at fat women.
Peace,
Shannon
We need resources for fat people that need to get away from well-meaning family members that insist upon them going on a diet. I’m feeling pressure from my family to go on a diet. Even though I know diets don’t work, I’m going on one to keep the peace in the house. (I live with my parents, unfortunately.) As a 300 pound lb. size 24 woman, am I wrong in my assumptions? Advice would be much appreciated!
Uggghhh! I hate the “real women” phrase. My BFF is a naturally thin and tall woman who gets dirty looks all the time from bigger women. I don’t get it.
Yeah, I’m envious that she can pretty much eat whatever she wants and not gain an ounce. But the fact that my friend is beautiful doesn’t make me any less so. I know I’m wishing for the moon, but I wish we could stop with the crazy comparisons. Everyone has something that makes them beautiful.
Thank you! I have always, always felt uncomfortable and embarrassed in the company of my peers (other heavy women) when they’ve pulled the “real woman” card in reference to thin women.
Shaming, ridiculing or judging a woman for being thin makes us no different than pulling a fat joke or making rude comments. Body bias is body bias, and the double standard bugs me.
Gonna be linking to this one for a long time. So many people not familiar with SA or FA or whateverA believe that it’s us as a whole who perpetuate this flawed concept of the “real woman,” and not something the media has picked up and parroted with their usual wild abandon.
Why, no, many of us DON’T believe in the concept of a “fake woman,” or a “fake person,” for that matter. So no, you may not use that to discredit us as a whole. Thank you.
Er, not YOU, BFD. I’m addressing the invisible people who argue with me.
OH LOOK, IT’S TIME FOR MY 11:25 SHOCK THERAPY SESSION! AAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-HAAAAAA!
I am an obese woman who quite a number of years ago maintained a very thin body for 1.5 years. A few more pounds lost and I would have been technically underweight.
Yes, there were comments here and there about how I should eat more, about being ‘skin and bones’ and a few dirty looks (from small women as well as big women). However, generally I found I was treated much, much, MUCH better by everyone, thin and fat, male and female, than when I was obese. People smiled more at me (yes even fat women), people extended more courtesies to me, it was easier to return things to stores without a receipt, I got a highly competitive job I might not have gotten when fat. And even the few bad comments lacked the sheer viciousness and near 100% society support that anti-fat comments have (and they occurred at less than 10% the rate that fat comments did).
As I regained the weight, one the worst parts was losing this thin privilege again.
I absolutely agree thin bashing is horrible and should be eliminated, but the social experience and social support for such bashing is not the same as that for fat bashing in our society. One is backed by power and the other not. It makes a difference.
I 100% agree that there’s a lot of really damaging rhetoric that is hurled at thin bodies. It’s SO problematic to tell thin women to “go eat a sandwich” because, damnit, no one gets to tell other people what to do with their bodies. And, as someone recently pointed out on Feministe (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/06/21/on-language-and-body-and-fear/#comments) lack of suffering and privileged are not the same thing. There’s a disgustingly narrow margin of “acceptable” female bodies, which only serves to keep women “in our place.”
However, I think we also need to be cautious when discussing these problems. I think there’s a tendency to try to equate the oppression of thin women with the oppression of fat women, and they’re just not, especially once you get out of inbetweenie territory, and ESPECIALLY once you get into super size territory.
You should see the dirty looks I get from thin women when I wear above the knee skirts in public – and frankly, they look good on me. I don’t get it. I guess I didn’t earn the right to wear them by starving myself (’cause you can tell by looking at my legs that I’m not inactive).
Again, we need to stop comparing our bodies.
The Fat Nutritionist has an excellent post
about this issue on her blog. I agree that this (manufactured?) debate over which body type is more ‘real’ is pointless and damaging. If we’re going to argue that it’s unfair to judge fat women for looking the way our genes intended, you can’t turn around and shame slim women for the same thing.
Apologies in advance if I didn’t embed the link to Michelle’s blog properly, I completely suck at commenting HTML.
Here’s the full link, because I’m pretty sure I did screw it up…http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/all-women-are-real/
Personally I love the (obviously very flawed) assertion that “REAL women have curves”, etc. Hearing that runway models or super-thin women “look like boys” is likewise delightful to me, though I don’t admit it.
I love it because this kind of notion keeps me cemented in my eating disorder — I’m genderqueer and don’t identify as female, so it’s very important for me to be ultra-thin and somehow “less of a woman” that way. Of course this certainly doesn’t apply to the way I regard other people (I have female friends of many differing body types and they are all, obviously, women) but it’s true for me in the way I view myself, and how I want to be seen.
I can remember the first time I heard Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign with their slogan being “Real women have curves.” This was before I was introduced to FA or SA and before any public backlash of the slogan began that I was aware of. Luckily, I was already in a place of my own size acceptance and level of confidence in which no comment could really get under my skin, but I couldn’t help but suspect that it’s aim was to put skinny women in a fat woman’s place, for a change. When addressed the the issue, they stood up ad claimed there was a movement for larger than supermodel sized women to accept their bodies, but the rest was full of skinny hate and nothing but. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long for them to realize the messages that they were actually sending were much different than they messages they claimed they were trying to send.
As a naturally thin woman myself, much of my life was spent being placed in that “Oh you are skinny because you only eat salad and are obsessed with working out” category, even though I was the exact opposite. I thought it was funny and crazy how the idea of being thin naturally was seen as such a rare commodity. “It’s not real! It’s just a fantasy.” Yes, I was called an “it” before, like I was a hologram from a magazine ad. Being naturally thin may not be extremely common, but we are out there. And many women actually look like airbrushed Gucci ads all dresses down with no makeup on. It’s not a complete fairy tale.
When I first heard the term, I understood it as a commentary against the fake women we’re bombarded with through media images; woman that have been airbrushed to the point of looking plastic (there’s even make up being marketed now, to help us get that airbrushed, no pores, look. Ew! Real women have pores! *L*), photoshopped to manipulate the body, rather than fixing things like zits or bad lighting, or even cosmetic surgery that hacks away at a person’s natural body to turn it into something they weren’t born to be. To me, the term meant a woman looking like herself, not some bizarre caricature. It’s unfortunate that the term is being used as thin bashing.
This “real women” thing burns my bacon. After having heard it far too many times within a short time span, I flipped out and updated my Facebook status to “ATTENTION EVERYONE I KNOW. You are all REAL WOMEN or REAL MEN, regardless of your size, shirt color preferences, or current physical state of being! You ACTUALLY EXIST. Therefore you are REAL. Congrats!”
(Then half of my friends commented that they were actually androids, time lords, and slime monsters from another dimension….)
Back to being serious again, I’ve had to work hard to rid myself of those spiteful “grr not real women skinny bitches suck” thoughts. Body Acceptance isn’t just for one kind of body. Every body deserves to be accepted. And those folk in the supposedly acceptable bodies have to operate in the same cruel, effed up world that the rest of us do. Redistributing the hate doesn’t do squat to make the world a better place.
What a great post! I’ve always found fault with the rhetoric used to discuss women’s bodies. The use of ‘real’ women as an implication of there being ‘fake’ women has already been mentioned as problematic. The term ‘curves’ then implies that anyone who is thin is made up of 180 degree angles, and anyone bigger than that had better be shaped the right way, or else they are just fat. There is nothing wrong with just being fat in any case. Anyway, top heavy, bottom heavy, straight-figured and hourglass-shaped women come in every size, so to imply that being a certain size means one is shaped a certain way, and everyone fits that mold is nonsense.
Despite being thin, I have never found solidarity with the women in those fashion magazines. It has never been a comfort to me that popular media prefers thin body types. I’d much rather start seeing women who do look ‘real’ in the media, who are varying proportions and sizes, who haven’t had their pores maquillaged and photoshopped away. Maybe that’s a new phrase we can start using: real women have pores.
Thanks for posting this. So, so much. It’s all so awful, damaging and pointless.
Amen! the diction “real woman” always irks me. i wrote about it a bit here, if anyone is interested: http://www.feedmeimcranky.com/2009/08/24/what-is-a-real-woma/
Pingback: Big Fat Deal » REAL Links: The BFD Weekly Round-Up
I gotta say, it doesn’t bother me. It seems anytime the ‘dominant’ or ‘privileged’ group gets made fun of, suddenly it’s all ‘Oh, well that’s not nice, they get their feelings hurt too’ and it’s all BS. Yeah, thin females may get comments, but they can go outside, go anywhere, and have their bodies, themselves, re-affirmed as beautiful, as more desireable, as superior, and other nonsense.
Pingback: Back To The Fature! »
C, I don’t know of anyone who’s trying to say that being criticized for being thin is as bad as or the same as being ridiculed for being overweight. It’s definitely not. But just because thin people may be able to go outside and find validation while a fat person may not, doesn’t make an excuse for language like, “Real women have curves.”
Thankyou for this. As a naturally thin lady who also goes to the gym (As a personal health choice) the idea that I am not a real woman drives me insane. I get told I should “eat more” “you dont need to go to the gym” “Real women have curves” etc etc etc all the time! By well or not so well intentioned people.
The flip side of the movement to make the media more (ideally completely) accepting of different body shapes/sizes is that it turns thin women into the enemy sometimes and turns being my body into a target for “Your the problem” and “real woman have curves” type statements which is frustrating!
Thanks for summing up so succinctly why I hate the “eat a sandwich” and “real women have curves” junk. Great post.
I agree with this but I wanted to point out one part of the wording that I took issue with in this part of the article: “It keeps women running after and policing each other in a little circle of body obsession, while men get to go off and run the world. And that’s why it has to stop.” I completely agree that the circle of body obsession has to stop but I think it is silly and simplistic to say that this is why men get to go off and run the world. It also ignores that men also have a hand in these body shaming comments, in fact most of the “real women” and “eat a sandwich” comments I have personally heard have been from men (who are upset that someone dared to be thinner than what they personally feel is attractive) and the same applies for fat shaming comments, which in my experience have been said by men I know (obviously not all men do this, but its important to recognize that its not all women). Yet somehow, despite any body shaming comments they may make they still earn more money than me.
I hope that didn’t ramble on too much but I just wanted to point out that I think the focus should be on how this ‘real’ women dialogue is unhelpful to body acceptance rather than on suggesting, even a little, that it is the reason why women have less power in the world than men do.
Pingback: Irrsinn.net - Quasi-daily linkage
When I read this post, I was instantly reminded of something else I read recently. Something that describes exactly what I mean when I use the words “real woman”:
“Models and actresses and all the woman we keep being told to look like are NOT real. I mean, they do exist (in most cases, right?) but they do not actually look like what we see in the magazines and TV shows.
They are “unreal” in many senses: they do not eat, they have about ten people to take care of their exercise and beauty daily routine, they have doctors (skin doctors, blood doctors, hormone therapists) that give them high tech, extremely expensive medicine to help them to look perfect. I’m not making this up here. This is a fact.
My point is: a perfect looking girl is not real. To be perfect it’s not a realistic goal. So my tag “real girl” stands for imperfect, ordinary, possible beauty. “Not daily crafted and manufactured” if you prefer. But I like to keep it simple. So I say “real girl”. Like me. And like you. Get it?!”
Can you imagine if women didn’t come in different shapes. Boring. Diversity is beauty. What the media throws in our face everyday isn’t real. Thin/fat, whatever. It’s marketing and we are the suckers who buy it and think we have to live up to it, ruining our self image along the way and taring others down with us. It’s the whole I don’t feel good so you shouldn’t feel good either shit. That skinny girl probably feels just as shitty about herself as the fat girl. Hey now we are equal! We can thank the media for that. Nice try Dove.
According to dove a real woman is a woman who has plenty of curves, a birthmark, a tatoo e.t.c and judging from the advertisment, not skinny. I don’t know about dove but I know plenty of women who are very succesful in life however they are slim therefore not “real women”. The statement grab a sandwiche is a silly line because to me they are saying woman who are slim dont eat and that they need to have a sandwiche and again creating an even more opinianated topic about how skinny people are all anorexic and bad role models blah blah blah. Wow, dove certainly knows how to boost our self esteem.Well nobody is a real woman. Infact there is no such thing as an idolised real woman because a large porportian of the world are slim. An example, Paula radcliffe. A loving mother and one of the best female long distance runners in england, running uo to 23 miles in the olyimpic marathon.GIRL POWER! Well if she isnt a real woman, I don’t know who is.