Category Archives: body image
The Breast Fetish Is Natural? Afraid Not.
Got milk?
Science has shown that human females develop breasts as a secondary sexual characteristic that signals a woman is of age to reproduce. Breasts in other mammals only enlarge with pregnancy. And, female nipple stimulation lights up the same area of the brain as clitoral stimulation.
Comments like that come in response to this post: Men Aren’t Hard Wired To Find Breasts Attractive.
There, I argue that the breast fetish is socially constructed, and not biologically-based. Some readers tell me I’m wrong.
Here are their thoughts, and mine: Read the rest of this entry
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Shifting My Body Hatred To You
Girls bully girls for a variety of reasons.
Some are angry that other girls are more attractive than them, and seek to extinguish the threat.
Others want to lift themselves up by putting someone else down.
And some project their body hatred onto other women. And then attack. Read the rest of this entry
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Men & Women React to Male & Female Nudity
Women and men showing skin
By Lisa Wade @ Sociological Images
We’ve all heard the truism “sex sells.”
But whose sex is sold? And to who?
If it was simply that sex sold,
…we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture. Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men. So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”?
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Lose Weight, Stop Dieting
That’s what Kjerstin Gruys, a UCLA sociology grad student, wondered.
The question haunts me. I’m a feminist, a recovered anorexic and, yes, I’m on a diet.
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Yo, Mama—These Jugs Make Milk!
By Elizabeth Hall Magill @ Yo, Mama
Breasts are fun.
They’re so fun that we’ve named them funbags, squeezeboxes, jugs, hooters, racks, boobs, and tits.
They’re fun to look at, fun to touch and squeeze. They bounce. Men like them, and that is a good thing.
Breasts can be fun to own.
They give a woman pleasure, and that is a good thing. They are an important part of a woman’s body—emblematic of her femininity, her sexuality. When a girl begins to develop breasts, it is her body’s way of saying she will one day be a woman, and a girl listens to that. She listens as the growing pains shoot through her chest, she listens as her mother and grandmother talk about finding a bra. Breasts are such an important part of the transition from girlhood to womanhood that we sometimes call them girls. Read the rest of this entry
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Libido Killer: My Man Ogling Her
Years ago I briefly dated a guy who ogled other women.
Ogle: To look at amorously, flirtatiously, or impertinently; to eye; look or stare at.
I “get” noticing and appreciating an attractive gal. But he dissolved into her. The many hers. While I faded away.
He thought I was weird: “Most girlfriends wouldn’t mind!”
But it was a huge turnoff. Read the rest of this entry
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Variety Is The Spice Of Life
Variety is the spice of life
“Find fits for every body type,” the ad says.
Hmmm, I see tall and skinny in the first frame. Tall and skinny in the second frame. Tall and skinny in the third frame. And tall and skinny in the last frame. Read the rest of this entry
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How to Deal with Repression
Repression is not what you might think it is. I recently wrote:
A lot of us think it’s about working to suppress sexual desire. And while the early stages can be at least partly conscious, after a while you’re not actively blocking anything. You’ve simply lost sexual feelings and energy. Plus, plenty of punishing messages targeted at women’s desire get internalized. And sex is too often used as a weapon. Read the rest of this entry
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The Little Mermaid says, “You’ve come a long way, baby”
Disney’s Little Mermaid will celebrate her 25th birthday in a few days.
Ariel was the first Disney Princess to be touched by feminism. And she is plenty different from her predecessors — good girls who never rocked the boat, and who all needed saving by their Prince Charmings.
In Ariel we find a young woman with a strong sense of self who seeks independence and empowerment.
But she reflects the early tensions of our feminist beginnings. Read the rest of this entry
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Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
Della Calfee. Ass Like That
Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
That’s what art critic John Berger famously observed.
But some feminist artists have turned the tables in the exhibit, Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze:
With a gallery filled with men stripped naked this body of work exposes women’s cheeky, provocative and sometimes shocking commentaries on the opposite sex (which) may make the viewer squirm a little. But that is precisely the point.
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