viz. - body image

New Girl's New Man

Aubri Plourde — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 02:15:46 +0000

Fox’s New Girl could never have avoided the question of gender. The very title isolates gender issues by framing protagonist Jessica Day within the male-dominated apartment she joins. The sexual politics of New Girl are mostly wrapped up in Zooey Deschanel’s character. My friend Mike, for example, has written about Jess as a postfeminist figure here, and the show creator herself has more than once addressed the gender politics of the Nick-and-Jess coupledom. I’d like to acknowledge that the “adorkable” appeal of Deschanel’s character positions her strangely between feminist and postfeminist positions, but, for the purpose of considering the visual appeal of the show, I’m more drawn to the way the show represents the masculinity of lovable douchebag, Schmit.

Most of Schmidt’s best and worst qualities are verbal, not visual. For example, entire reels of one-liners, like this one and this one show off the snappy writing of New Girl’s staff. Still, the character’s arch depends heavily on the transition between the days when he was obese and the fit version we see weekly.

Schmidt's story begins like this:

Image Credit: E!online

So, Schmidt’s role becomes something of a dramatized before-and-after shot. Most of these flashbacks are meant to assure us that while Nick and Schmidt’s friendship was founded during this time period, Schmidt himself was desperately unhappy. His smiles are generally self-deprecating, or at the very least unaware that others are mocking him.

After having lost a whole bunch of weight, Schmidt looks more like the fit and handsome Max Greenfield:

Image Credit: Us Weekly

On the show, though, Schmidt’s body is still the site of spectacle. He’s the character we’re most likely to see in a costume, and his body has started to function like a paper doll for the writers’ various getups:

Image Credit: UnderScoopFire

Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly

Image Credit: Hollywood.com

What strikes me is that this outlandish behavior is so often associated with Schmidt’s trying-too-hard enthusiasm for his new body. In other words, thinness has corrupted him into the cartoon we (I, at least) love to laugh at. So, this brings up interesting questions for masculinity. Are we viewers in for a more nuanced and sensitive treatment of male body image issues? Also, how does “metrosexuality” get figured in visual terms?

I’m interested in the way the show positions Schmidt’s morality. Nick describes him as a sweet boy in college, yelling, “What happened to you?…You didn’t used to be like this, Schmidt!” when Schmidt insists on wearing this kimono:

Image Credit: Lifehack

The costume, then, dramatizes Schmidt’s deteriorated morality and his self-image. Similarly, the Douchebag Jar hints that Schmidt lost weight and sensitivity at the same time. This, too, is a sort of strange system of morality. Does the Douchebag jar make us think that his casually racist-misogynist-classist behavior is acceptable, because he can afford the “toll”? Or is this behavior excused by the show (and by Jess, the show’s moral compass) because of his previously-fat past? In a cultural backdrop all too aware of fat shaming, body image issues, and materialism, how are we meant to deal with Schmidt’s transition? We don’t quite love to hate him, since most fans find him endearing. Still, we can’t deny that the lines he spouts to earn himself more Douchebag Jar deposits have more than earned some censure. "I just found a Groupon for hypnosis lessons!” he says to Jess. "Think about what you could do with that...sex stuff!” (s01e10). Or, upon Winston’s failure at a trivia night: "Don't worry about it, man, it's your public school education - you'll catch up!” (s01e17). The show suggests that a fat Schmidt would never say such terrible things. What is it about thinness that has corrupted him? How are we meant to view Schmidt’s excessive performance of masculinity?

I have no answer to this kind of question, so I’ll just leave this here:

Image Credit: Walk in Beauty

"Your caveman ideas about manhood are so over. Manhood today is about exfoliation, cheese courses, emotional honesty, and Paxil. And yes, cutting peppers in teh classic style de Julienne. You may have bested me in a competition of pre-Clinton manhood, but I am Schmidt, a refined and enlightened pescatarian, 90% of the time." (s02e08).

Tags:

masculinity

television

Visual Rhetoric

costume

body image

Veggie Tales Tackles Body Diversity

Aubri Plourde — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:38:31 +0000

For those of you who did not grow up with the unparalleled glory that is VeggieTales, I give you Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber.

Image Credit: Big Idea, via business wire

These figures were such a staple of my childhood that I sometimes forget that they weren’t as commonly watched as Disney’s Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Big Idea, the company behind Bob and Larry, began producing these videos in 1993, to spread moral tales of Christianity through anthropomorphized vegetables. Until that point, Christian children’s media had simply retold Bible tales on an archaic loop. For whatever reason, the veggie idea worked, and Tales became one of the most successful Christian franchises within only a few years. Now, Big Idea has partnerships with DreamWorks and Netflix, and has produced over fifty videos.

I do not recommend VeggieTales for the voice acting. In fact, the dulcet tones of Junior the Asparagus will probably haunt your dreams. As highly visual children’s media, though, the video vegetables have clearly surpassed themselves. Each episode centers on a theme—consumerism, lying, greed, gossip, and (in the focus of this post) negative body images. The videos open with a letter or a videogram from a child viewer, usually asking a question with moral undertones. Then co-hosts Bob and Larry tell a tale meant to dramatize the moral through costumed vegetables and elaborate scenes.

In Sweetpea Beauty, the veggies take on fairy tale culture, shamelessly adapting Cinderella and Snow White—I would argue, Disney’s versions of the tales in particular—to redirect body image concerns toward a focus on God. The amalgamated animation here is a veritable circus of influences. The veggies are dressed in a sort of pseudo-French style—a nod to Perrault’s versions of the tale?—and the narration is inarguable Dr. Suessian. The parade of produce mimics the look of any piece of princess culture: lots of pink and purple, sparkles, amalgamated “fairy tale” costuming that obscures historicity, tiny waists (where we can see them), gaudy jewelry, and of course, crowns. The visual presentation—with the possible exception of the vegetables—tries to blend in with more mainstream girls’ culture.

Image Credit: Veggie Tales

Big Idea even produced a collection of “Princess Stories,” not unlike Disney’s.

Image Credit: Veggie Tales

In fact, the religious story’s aim in some way aligns with the feminist goals of mitigating the devastation of girls’ body images through different kinds of media. In a rare convergence of goals, this video joins us in wanting to rid adolescent girls of ridiculous and unattainable image goals. In “Snoodlerella,” for example, the squashes and asparagus parody “Cinderella” to emphasize that the mystical change of appearance enacted by a Berry Godmother is actually not essential, because the King (God) loves Snoodlerella for her internal qualities. The episode ends with no romantic reunion, and Snoodlerella continues to look like a gangly teenager.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

The problem with this episode is that it cannot directly address the sexuality of the beauty industry. Prince Charming is converted to the King—a painfully obvious Dumbledorian God-figure, who echoes highly-repeated Bible verses—“You were wonderfully made,” “I knew you before you were born,” and so on—to quite literally dance around the topic of puberty.

Image Credit: Sweet Posh Baby

Anthropomorphizing the vegetables, in this case, has taken the sting out of the satire. Because VeggieTales is committed Christian media, which cannot appropriately address the sexualization of girls that I mentioned in my last post, and because the vegetables themselves can be makeupped and made over but never fully made into young female bodies, these images of “awkward” vegetables who do not fit some kind of standard of beauty get lost in the other colors, shapes, and novel details. What could be a savvy take on princess culture, the Lolita Effect, or on fairy tale adaptations’ presentations of female body image becomes a sanitized but empty lesson for prepubescent girls.

Tags:

Underwear, Public Fitness, and the (Dubious) Progress of #aerieREAL

Aubri Plourde — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 22:06:46 +0000

I’m going to take it as an assumption that in any thorough discussion of fitness, we’re also inevitably going to talk about body image. Lately, when I’m thinking about fitness and body image, I am unsurprisingly (and, perhaps unoriginally) drawn to underwear. I am not the first to write about a connection between underwear advertisement and fitness complexes. There’s even a meme that highlights the absurdity of underwear advertising:

Image Credit: WeKnowMemes

Here, the meme functions as something of a visual critic. Recognizing the gendered disparity in dressing women up as overwrought, overmakeupped angels and men as large grapes allows us to laugh at the ridiculousness of both. Of course, I feel we have to acknowledge the class disparity here, too: there isn’t just a distinction between women’s underwear advertisements and men’s, but between undergarments marketed as luxury items and those sold as a necessary purchase. A men’s Calvin Klein ad, for example, is also a long way from the Fruit of the Loom dudes:

Image Credit: Calvin Klein

This gentleman is still a long way from being trussed up in an angel costume, but there’s certainly more of an association of the CK brand with physical fitness and with luxury—fancy lighting, airbrushed abs, unexplained pose… And, despite the overwhelming majority of body image issues filtered through women’s media, it might be silly to assume that men go unscathed. The Photoshop work done on the Justin Beiber's body suggests as much.

Image Credit: PetaPixel

To be clear, I don’t want to go anywhere near an argument that men’s body images are equally as damaged by underwear advertising as women's are. The Biebs claims that this “before” image isn’t real, negating any argument we might make about the photoshop industry’s effect on his phallus. I don’t care so much whether or not the image is genuine so much as to what degree we invest in the authenticity of underwear images as markers of fitness. Underwear has become somehow integral to body image, despite the fact that it’s hidden. Strangely, there’s this rhetorical move we’re being asked to make in looking at these images, where we imagine the private (underwear) dictating the public perception of our bodies. This is not to suggest that ads for, say, blue jeans, don’t also contribute to body image. Still, it strikes me as strange that photos of other people in their underwear have come to dominate how I see myself in my clothes. Further, they have collapsed the line between lingerie and fitness, as Victoria’s Secret’s obsessive attempts to get me to buy a sports bra attest.

Image Credit: Victoria's Secret

Thinking about Victoria’s Secret lately has led me to consider American Eagle’s campaign @aeriereal. The lingerie and loungewear division of the company, Aerie has recently made a commitment to never photoshop their models.

Image Credit: Buzzfeed

I like that this girl's belly looks like a belly. A healthy one, with clear abdominal shape, and fit. But not plastic. When Aerie first announced this commitment, the company was met with praise and a few tongue-in-cheek sniffs. “They still use models.” And they do still use conventionally beautiful young women. Still, in the spirit of celebrating small successes, they have made a tiny, half, stumbling baby step toward body diversity.

Image Credit: Aerie

In the months since Aerie began this campaign--which, I should acknowledge, is absolutely an advertising campaign and not an altruistic effort to end body negativity--the company has even shifted their rhetoric away from "sexiness" and toward the "real." The girl in this photo may or may not exercise. She appears healthy, happy. Her smile suggests an openness to the “real her.” It seems that investing in authenticity creates beauty. Leaving aside for the moment that in fact, this (beautiful, white, able-bodied) girl is meant to stand in for body diversity and leave us feminists satisfied, I’m interested in Aerie’s divergence from fitness rhetoric. In fact, instead of presenting us with a stunningly photoshopped model and lauding her as “healthy” or “fit,” Aerie goes for the rhetoric of “naturalness.” In fact, this naturalness is figured as under threat by the ad industry. For example, #aeriereal, the brand’s Twitter feed, features actual Aerie employees featuring t-shirts that read, “Love me. Don’t retouch me."

Image Credit: #aeriereal Twitter

These images, more than even the ads themselves, emphasize bodies in various states of physical fitness without completing a link between lingerie, designed for sex appeal, and exercise. Sure, this link isn’t all that hard to make; the diet industry runs on mass obsessions with looking good naked. Still, considering that almost all the people who will ever see me (including almost everyone who will ever gauge my fitness levels) will see me fully clothed, I’m finding myself more drawn to the slogan “Love me. Don’t retouch me” than to the actual images of “normal” girls. Framing retouching as an aggressor to healthy bodies and healthy body images makes this photo do some heavy lifting. A visual image itself, it critiques the ad industry’s violence on young female bodies within its own medium. That is, it turns the gaze of the viewer back onto the myriad of tools and labor that goes into the advertisements.

What does this have to do with fitness? Of course, the assumption that body image issues so latent in any female underwear advertising are tied to the fitness complex is a simplistic one. Still, I think it’s worth dwelling on how the fitness industry runs on this strange metric of private/public concern, wherein the intimacy of the naked or barely-clothed body is made public and publicized.

Tags: