FIGUREatively Speaking

Why I'll Keep Fighting For The Merida I Created

thegrimmreality — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:17:00 -0400

Why I'll Keep Fighting For The Merida I Created:

The message Disney sends to the public in changing Merida is that she is not good enough the way she is. In doing that, they are making the same statement to all the young girls out there.

Brenda Chapman, writer and director of Disney’s Brave, speaks out against Disney’s outlandish redesign of the film’s teenage main character, Merida.

Image from https://www.change.org/keepmeridabrave

The figure on the left is Merida as she appeared in the film. The figure on the right is Disney’s bizarre, thoroughly-out-of-character redesign.

Disney’s attempt to make the teenage heronie more ‘traditionally sexy’ has sparked outrage. While the company has backed down a little, Disney has yet to definitvely state that all merchandise will use Merida’s original image.

Brenda Chapman asserts: “Let’s collectively work to stop sending messages, explicit or implied to our boys, that girls are here just to be eye and arm candy and should only be valued based on their looks. Let’s stop sending messages to our girls that they are the sum of what they look like as opposed to respecting them for their intelligence, their abilities, their skills and their strength. This is how we can help lead girls to achieve positions of leadership, in school, in society, in the workplace. And while this battle may seem insignificant, over a cartoon girl and her appearance, in reality it’s about so much more. And the conversations taking place as a result of this campaign can potentially have a HUGE ripple effect.”

albinwonderland: rosalarian: I’ve been wearing more makeup...

thegrimmreality — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:03:31 -0400

albinwonderland:

rosalarian:

I’ve been wearing more makeup lately than I used to, and inevitably, I more often get to hear:

“Oh, you don’t need makeup. You’re beautiful without it!”

And I talk a lot of beauty and loving myself just how I am. Some people feel these two things are hypocritical, to love yourself and wear makeup. And okay, yes, let’s acknowledge that there are women who feel pressured to wear it despite not wanting to. This happens. But a lot of the time, women wear makeup for themselves. It’s fun! It’s expressive. It’s artistic. It’s not “necessary,” but neither is pizza.

I’m not trying to cover anything up the same way an artist isn’t putting paint on a canvas for the sake of covering the canvas.

I love this woman!

I'm Chronically Ill And I Still Believe In Body Acceptance

thegrimmreality — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:58:59 -0400

I'm Chronically Ill And I Still Believe In Body Acceptance:

My body will never run marathons or win beauty pageants, and it might always be sick, but do you know what it does every day, quite effectively? It lives. I live.

Photo

thegrimmreality — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:14:44 -0400

Jes Baker Responds to Abercrombie CEO

thegrimmreality — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:36:45 -0400

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries recently spoke out about his “exclusionary” brand, and his refusal to cater to plus-size customers. The store does not offer XL or XXL women’s clothing sizes in an effort to alienate women who aren’t “thin and beautiful.” Jes Baker wrote an articulate response to Jeffries’ sizeism, including pictures of herself wearing Abercrombie clothing. As an addendum to her letter, she writes: “P.P.S. You should know your Large t-shirt comfortably fits a size 22. You might want to work on that.”

Read the letter and see more pictures here.

"If You Must Think About Your Weight, Here are Ten Things to Think"

thegrimmreality — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:07:57 -0400

"If You Must Think About Your Weight, Here are Ten Things to Think":

http://jezebel.com/if-you-must-think-about-your-weight-here-are-10-things-508925649

Jezebel writer Tracy Moore points out the “idle thinking” that can trap women into a cycle of body shame - and offers sage, straightforward advice on how to combat it.

Woman with terminal cancer a model of beauty in Paris photo...

thegrimmreality — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:42:23 -0500

Woman with terminal cancer a model of beauty in Paris photo shoot

“I just want women and men all around the world just to feel confident with their body even if they don’t have cancer. I just want to get the message out to women that if you’re diagnosed tomorrow, if you already were diagnosed, just to feel confident and beautiful. Accept your body and embrace it.”

- Jill Brzezinski-Conley

http://on.today.com/1223Mam

What does 'curvy' really mean?

thegrimmreality — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:34:17 -0500

Celebrities of all shapes and sizes are being called curvy, so what does that word actually mean? According to Lauren Bans of New York Magazine, the definition has been diluted and the point - celebrating the beauty of diverse body types - has been missed:

“If curvy can mean anything we want it to — on a scale of size 2 to size 22 — then our reductive thinking on the subject of bodies and beauty standards hasn’t actually changed. The ubiquity of “curvy” is just a gloss of body acceptance, not actual body acceptance. Once you start looking for it, for every positive article about celebrating bodies of all shapes and sizes, there’s an equally negative one; though we’re celebrating new shapes and sizes, it all adds up to zero.”

-http://nym.ag/W6DKBi

Tennis Player Caroline Wozniacki Stuffs Top and Skirt to Impersonate Serena Williams

thegrimmreality — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:08:17 -0500

“Serena Williams’ body is not a costume for another tennis player, especially a white tennis player, to put on and use for laughs when they feel like it.

If Wozniacki had chosen instead to paint her face black in order to impersonate Williams, would we be questioning if this type of display is racist?”

-By Jessica Luther, Racialicious, 12/12/12, http://bit.ly/128xuNA

Body Language Workshop: Laugh, Learn & Love With NOW-NYC Love Your Body Day...

thegrimmreality — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:10:00 -0400

Body Language Workshop: Laugh,

Learn & Love With NOW-NYC

Love Your Body Day Celebration

Thursday, October 18, 2012, 6:30 - 9:00 pm

Transform your body image in one night of comedy and fun! Join NOW-NYC for a transformational workshop and banish your inner critic for good. Melissa Hanna, founder of LoveThatBody.tv, hosts, ‘Body Language: How to Transform Your Relationship to Your Body, Right Now’ in celebration of NOW’s annual Love Your Body Day. Refreshments and great raffle prizes including a pair of tickets to see Emotional Creature, a new play by Tony Award winner Eve Ensler which brings the bold voice of a new generation center stage with a cast of six outrageous and talented young actors.

All proceeds benefit NOW-NYC Service Fund to advocate for the women and girls of New York. Get your ticket NOW!

Location: NOW-NYC, 150 W. 28th St, #304 @ 7th Avenue, NYC
RSVP: Reserve your seat NOW! | contact@nownyc.org | 212-627-9895

‘Body Language: How to Transform Your Relationship to Your Body, Right Now’ is an interactive live comedy workshop addressing all the drama we go through just to be happy with the way we look. It’s a laugh-out-loud experience that will transform your relationship
with your body and banish your inner critic for good. See the video here.

Since 1998, the NOW Foundation’s annual Love Your Body event takes place each fall to promote positive body image and self-esteem. This campaign was created as a response to media portrayals of women, particularly in advertising, that promote narrow and unhealthy ideals of beauty. NOW chapters across the country host events to create awareness.

What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?

thegrimmreality — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:22:00 -0400

What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?:

A new approach to parenting gender-fluid children:

“Many parents and clinicians now reject corrective therapy, making this the first generation to allow boys to openly play and dress (to varying degrees) in ways previously restricted to girls — to exist in what one psychologist called ‘that middle space’ between traditional boyhood and traditional girlhood.”

Photo by Lindsay Morris, NY Times

Clinic Escorting: Defending Choice in Our Communities

thegrimmreality — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:16:21 -0400

It’s 7 am on a Saturday morning in Jamaica, Queens. While other kids in the neighborhood are still asleep, two young boys stand together on a quiet sidewalk. At no more than 9 or 10 years old, their small frames are mostly hidden behind an oversized poster board propped up in front of them. In bold letters, the words “Abortion is a Savage Act of Violence” appear above enlarged pictures of tiny, bloody bodies. The gory images - false representations of aborted fetuses - intentionally juxtapose the wide-eyed, naïve faces behind them. The boys are accompanied by a group of adults strategically positioned near the entrance of CHOICES Women’s Medical Center. As passersby and women entering the clinic look on, the group spews egregious commentary: “We cannot allow them to murder innocent children…Men, we need to stop powering behind women. We need to stand up for our voices.”

Public displays such as this have been weekly fixtures outside of women’s clinics in New York City for decades. Conservative and religious groups, such as Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, camp out with the singular goal of stymieing women’s access to abortions and other medical services. Their tactics include holding prayer vigils, sidewalk counseling to make last minute “saves”, and pushing false data (e.g. 60% of aborted babies are Black). Unfortunately, their efforts to intimidate women occasionally prove successful.

In an effort to counterbalance anti-choice protests, women’s rights groups practice clinic escorting. On one or more early mornings per week, volunteers from local groups like Brooklyn Pro-Choice Network and the National Organization for Women-New York City Chapter (NOW-NYC), venture out to act as protective buffers for patients entering clinics. Before protestors can attempt their fear tactics, volunteers try to intercede and inform approaching women that they do not have to take any materials offered to them, nor must they stop to speak with anyone. It’s a simple but daunting task. On a recent morning outside of CHOICES, volunteers were outnumbered 5 to 1 by protesters who swarmed around patients trying to enter. Since police intervention is usually non-existent, volunteers try to document harassment on camera and accompany patients to clinic entrances.

While escorting is not a perfect science, having a pro-choice presence on the ground protects women’s entry to clinics - not only for abortions but a full range of services. For over 40 years, CHOICES has been dedicated to providing comprehensive health care to women including STD testing, prenatal care, and counseling. Often provided with financial and travel assistance, these are vital services for women in working class communities such as Jamaica, where over 20% of residents are Black and nearly 40% are Hispanic. By protecting access to clinics, volunteers engage in an essential part of feminist activism - helping women make independent reproductive choices.

Clinic escorting also demonstrates that it’s possible to defend a message without being coercive. Anti-choice groups may have power in numbers, but they rely on shock value and manipulation in order to instill fear and shame. Real power is empowering, and is rooted in respect and compassion. As a NOW-NYC volunteer recently said, “I hope that my presence serves as a supporting hand for women braving the protesters to exercise their rights”. Indeed, women are not only powerful when they can make their own decisions about their bodies, but when they stand up for the right of others to do the same.

To learn more about clinic escorting and how you can take part in defending women’s reproductive rights, reach out to contact@nownyc.org or call 212-627-9895.

STRONG! A New Film

thegrimmreality — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:03:00 -0400

STRONG! is a film by Julie Wyman that tells the story of U.S. Olympian Cheryl Haworth. Cheryl Haworth defies categories. A visual artist with a personality that has earned the nickname “Fun,” she is also America’s top Olympic weightlifter, ranked well above all men and women on Team USA. But at a weight of 300 pounds, she doesn’t easily fit into standard chairs, clothing sizes, or preconceptions. The film explores the contradiction of a body that is at once celebrated within the confines of her sport and shunned by mainstream culture. Through Haworth’s journey, we learn not only about the sport of lifting weight, but also the state of being weighty: the material, psychological, and social consequences and possibilities of a having a body that doesn’t fit.

The film will be shown at AMC Village 7, 66 3rd Ave at 11th st on Monday, July 23rd, 7:30 pm and will be followed by a Q&A with U.S. Olympian Cheryl Haworth & filmmaker Julie Wyman

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS NOW & SPREAD THE WORD:

www.tugg.com/strong

Keep It Real Campaign

thegrimmreality — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:37:28 -0400

Remember brave 14-year old SPARK activist Julia Bluhm? She started a change.org petition asking Seventeen magazine to publish real images of girls and women in a magazine that is supposed to be for girls like her. The request was small - just one unphotoshopped picture of a model per issue, but Seventeen magazine refused.

Inspired by her initiative, SPARK Summit, LoveSocial, I am that girl, Bodies Endangered, and Miss Representation banned together to create the three-day Keep It Real challenge to encourage magazines to pledge to Julia’s request.

On the first day of the challenge, June 27, people are encouraged to Tweet about the campaign to raise awareness of the issue so that magazines know how limiting their photoshopped standards of beauty really are. The Keep It Real official toolkit published the Twitter tags of prominent magazines and their editors, with sample tweets such as, “Hey @Vogue we’d love you to #KeepItReal by celebrating women’s natural beauty - including pores and freckles!” included for inspiration.

On the second day, Keep It Real challenges people to blog about why they want to see real images of beauty in magazines. And on the third day, people are encouraged to “Capture it” by using the hashtag #KeepItRealChallenge to share photos on Instagram of what they consider to be REAL beauty. The winner will even get the chance to be on a NYC billboard!

So take up the challenge! And demand that magazines depict realistic and healthy images of models in their magazines. There’s too much at stake not to.

You're Not Perfect, And That's Okay

thegrimmreality — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:27:13 -0400

You're Not Perfect, And That's Okay:

Clink on the link to view before and after (photoshopped) photos of male and female celebrities and models. They are not as flawless as the media portrays them.

By Denise Salceda

A Real Girl, 14, Takes a Stand Against the Flawless Faces in Magazines

thegrimmreality — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:35:33 -0400

In Julia Bluhm’s ballet class, girls arrived and often declared that they were having a fat day. Or that their skin was pimply or blemished. Or that they looked disgusting. When she hears complaints in her middle school, where she is in the eighth grade, Julia said, she has one answer: “Are you crazy?”

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Julia Bluhm, an eighth grader from Maine, reasoned that many girls had bad body images because of the perfect faces in fashion magazines. She met with an editor from Seventeen to press her case Thursday.

The cover of the May issue of Seventeen.

Then, she said, she came up with another answer, thumbing through one of her favorite magazines, Seventeen.

“I look at the pictures and they just don’t look like girls I see walking down the street and stuff,” said Julia, who turned 14 last month.

A blogger for the last year with Spark, a project that fights the sexualization of girls, Julia had given the subject some thought, and talked it over with the other bloggers. Then she started an online petition drive through change.org asking Seventeen to “commit to printing one unaltered — real — photo spread per month.”

“We brought Seventeen magazine to lunch and showed it to a bunch of kids to see if they agreed with the petition,” she said. “A lot of them signed it.”

Boys too?

“Actually some boys signed it, too,” she said. “I think a lot of them just signed it because they thought it was cool that I was getting so many people to sign.”

No kidding. As of Thursday evening, the petition had been signed by 46,000 people. Julia and her mother, Mary Beiter, came to New York this week from their home in Waterville, Me., for a demonstration organized by Change.org and Spark outside the offices of Seventeen in Midtown. There, Julia and five other girls posed for a mock photo shoot, with no retouching. A crew from ABC’s “Nightline” followed her for the day. And the editor in chief of Seventeen, Ann Shoket, invited Julia and her mother to visit the office.

The people at Seventeen were, it should be said, feeling slightly aggrieved that they had been singled out for picture-doctoring practices that are common in virtually all glossy fashion magazines, and, for that matter, on the Facebook accounts of millions of people who retouch photographs before posting them. At some magazines, the practices are far more extreme than at Seventeen, which, Ms. Shoket says, does not alter the body shapes of the girls in its pages, contrary to a charge in the petition.

An article in the May issue includes pictures of girls with melanoma scars; a regular feature, “Body Peace,” has a picture of a girl who has drawn a peace symbol on a body part that she had been troubled by.

“I think we do a phenomenal job of celebrating the authenticity of real girls, of celebrating them for all of their real authentic beauty, of skin tones, of ethnicity, of body shape and size,” Ms. Shoket said. “These are young girls. They look great.”

On Thursday, as Julia and her mom headed toward the airport, she said she appreciated that the magazine was doing things to include girls with many body types. She also gave an unvarnished description of what she sees in its pages.

“I look at the girls, and a lot of them, like, they don’t have freckles, or moles, anywhere on their bodies,” she said. “You can’t, like, see the pores in their face, they’re perfectly smooth. Their skin is shiny. They don’t have any tan lines or cuts and bruises or anything like that.”

These ordinary features of human flesh, she said, can be disguised with makeup and lights. “At the same time, they can’t cover up everything,” Julia said. That leaves only digital retouching.

Back to Ms. Shoket: So, does the magazine airbrush pictures of the girls in its pages?

“I don’t want to get into the specifics of what we do and don’t do,” Ms. Shoket said.

Julia said the unreal pictures of girls were trouble for boys, as well. “It shows them unrealistic images of girls,” she said. “Also, a lot of the boys in Seventeen magazine have, like, 12-packs, and that’s definitely not very realistic either.”

Both sides said they had agreed to keep in touch, but no promises were made about publishing an unretouched photo spread. “I gave her my e-mail,” Julia said.

Ms. Shoket, reeling from a barrage of unpleasant publicity that she felt did not reflect the reality of her magazine, said she admired Julia. “What power she has to have an idea and to make her mark on the world,” she said.

As Julia returned home to the eighth grade, she said that people from home had kept in touch.

“Facebook and the school are flipping out,” she said.

How does the media you consume affect your life? Check out this...

thegrimmreality — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:23:52 -0400

How does the media you consume affect your life? Check out this video from MissRepresentation:

http://upwr.me/IQGr1d

"I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for..."

thegrimmreality — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:45:23 -0400

““I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment?””

- Ashley Judd via Hairpin

WMC releases media guide for gender neutral coverage of women candidates and politicians

thegrimmreality — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:03:17 -0400

Throughout the years, we’ve written pretty extensively about sexist media coverage and the chilling effect it has on women-identified candidates and politicians. That’s why I’m so thrilled about the Women’s Media Center’s newly released Media Guide for its Name It. Change It. Project. The Guide works to identify, prevent and end sexist media coverage of women candidates and politicians.

Photo

thegrimmreality — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:21:42 -0400