What disappoints me about 'feminists'

When you start a new blog, you start thinking about in what frame it fits in. In the beginning I felt like it fits in the feminist frame and than I realised that the reason I feel disappointed in ‘feminism’, is that blogs like mine call themselves feminist blogs.

Back in the days when I wore pink skirts because I was proud of being a girl, I thought that being a feminist would mean that you cared about women’s rights. As I grew older, I started to get the feeling that feminists were women that had an opinion on how women should act.

One ‘feminist’ would talk about how women should act more like men and then another ‘feminist’ would talk on how women should act less like men. Another one would talk about how women should be sexier, because it would be empowering and than another one would talk about how women should avoid being sex objects.

I feel like they are all wrong. It are all just women telling women how to behave and it’s just as wrong as men telling women what to do. Women that feel like they are so morally superior that they can judge other women’s actions should realise that what they are doing is not a form of feminism. It’s a form of gossip.

‘Feminists’ that go on and on about whether or not women should be pretty and sexy or not are in my opinion the worst. Do they realise they think of women the same way as sexist men? Sexist men also only care about how beautiful or sexy a woman is.

Lastly I feel like these days, people that defend women’s rights are called human right activists instead of feminists. And I guess that means progress. It means women’s rights are seen as people’s rights.

Are there too little coloured women in magazines or too many white women?

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

The fashion industry often is criticized for not using enough coloured models. This lack of coloured models in the high-end fashion industry is merely a reflection of the racism in our society. And a reflection of how the fashion world is merely interested in capturing the time spirit and that it does not have any vision of their own on how the future will or should be.

However, I feel like black people are in a better way presented than white women in fashion magazines, because ...

Only smart and eloquent black models are featured

At first, one of the reasons the fashion industry does not like using black models is because black people are associated with poverty, violence and hip hop. Luxury brands and fashion magazines don’t want to become associated with these things in any kind of way.

So when a fashion magazine does feature a coloured model for a major fashion spread, usually the fashion spread is accompanied with an interview of the black model to explain that she do is rich, not violent and not into dancing like a **. 

Often the articles are written in such a manner that it looks like these black models are one of the few signs of intelligent life in the fashion industry. 

Only succesfull and responsible black women are used as a spokesperson

(Racist) people see black people as poor, lazy, aggressive and stupid. If a black person does something that only slightly does not confirm to the stereotype, (racist) people won’t notice it. Only when a black person does something completely the opposite of what (s)he would be expected to do according to their stereotype, (racist) people will see that black person as not poor, aggressive or stupid. 

So if a brand chooses for a black woman to represent their brand, they usually choose for a famous successful hardworking woman that would also be a perfect daughter-in-law, because otherwise she’ll be assumed to be poor, lazy and aggressive. White women that are chosen as spokespeople don’t have to be that much. Just being the daughter or girlfriend of someone famous or rich is already more than enough.

So for a black woman to be featured in a magazine they need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent, successful, hardworking and beautiful too. A white woman just needs to be 15 and beautiful or the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich.

This makes black women feel that you need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent and beautiful to get what you want or you would need to be white, while it makes white woman feel that only beauty matters and that beauty can give you anything you want, unless you're the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich. In that case you don't need to be or do anything at all.

Note: what does affect coloured people’s self image is how these coloured people that do are featured often have ‘a white face’ with another skin: black women with a more narrow nose and Asians with almond shaped eyes. What also affects them in a negative way is how these models often are more fair-skinned than other people from their race.


Note 2: Is the tide turning? Walter Van Beirendock used exclusively black models for his Autumn/Winter 2011 fashion show. He's not the most known fashion designer and might not be the first one to do is, but he do is  the head of the fashion department of the Royal Antwerp Academy of Arts, an academy that is educating the latest generation of fashion designers.  

Be pretty, happy

Why do luxury brands claim they want to appeal to successful, intelligent and self-confident women and at the same time seem to address their advertising to the dumbest and most insecure women? I don’t believe that successful, intelligent and self-confident women can be persuaded into buying something by an ad of a 15-year old model looking at them as if someone just farted.

If all other industries wouldn’t constantly promote that beauty is important to be happy, I don’t think the beauty or the fashion industry would sell much.

How do other industries promote this message?

Well, advertisers believe that when they put pretty and happy people in their ads that you will after a while associate their brand with pretty people and with happy people.

What they seem to forget, is that their ads are always accompanied by other ads. In one commercial break you see a lot of pretty and happy people, all of them with other brands and products. So it's more likely that you will associate beauty and happiness together, instead of associating beauty and happiness with all these different brands and products.

And even though I have never done a survey on this, I do believe that people indeed are more convinced that beautiful people are happier, than that for example drinking coca cola will make you happy and pretty.

But is it true? Do you really need to be pretty to be happy?

 You often see psychological studies claiming that beautiful people are more successful and happier than ugly people. However it often are studies that only compare (extremely) beautiful people to (extremely) ugly people. Studies that compare ugly to average looking to beautiful people, usually find that average looking and beautiful people are more successful and happy than ugly people and that there aren’t any significant differences between beautiful and average looking people. So it aren't only beautiful people that feel happy, but average looking people feel just as happy. Ugly people unfortunately do globally are less happy.82T3PCQCAM

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