Media Flash: Women Laughing Alone With Salad

http://thehairpin.com/2011/01/women-laughing-alone-with-salad

Media enterprises in conjunction with advertisers, product manufacturers, fashion moguls, and political agents inform the public on the proper roles in which genders should function.  This imagery serves to form many wires of a bird cage that continue to encourage a bi-gendered society with clear distinctions between women’s and men’s roles. These wires are based in historical lifestyles and body image views as well as the encouragement for women to spend ample amounts of time and energy excelling in each of her designated tasks, thereby creating a superwoman ideal. In terms of women’s size and shape standards, past body image ideals as well as current focuses on femininity, pre-set body sizes, and health enhance the wired web containing women in their inferior roles in our patriarchal system. The media’s portrayal of women as needing to remain young, slim, fit, feminine and beautiful limits the paths in which women can consume sustenance and feel positively about their bodies; an obsession with “healthfulness” which, with respect to women, more often refers to thinness and limited food options must leave women satisfied, hence the collection of pictures in the website “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” [1].

The Hairpin is a women’s blog, edited by women, about women, with most content being written by women for women. It contains witty content, flashy articles and picture collections, and generally seems to make fun of common portrayals of women, male idiocy, and humorous interactions between women.  The editor, Edith Zimmerman, compiled a collection of photos of young, slender women with beautifully whitened teeth, all relaxing alone in a kitchen or outdoor setting, with a full bowl of salad. Each woman seems to have a look of pure ecstasy on her face, often times laughing as if the salad just told a hilarious joke. The photos are aiming to represent the everyday woman, as most of them show women in gym clothes or fun and casual wear, and appeal to the average female reader.  As a marketing technique, the advertisers making these photos understand women’s yearning for a more realistic representation of themselves, an attainable goal, and it appears as if these photos demonstrate a sense of normalcy. Surprisingly, the collection represents a racially diverse group of actresses, but they are all under 40 with tight, wrinkle-free skin, sculpted bodies, and fabulously bleached teeth. The modern American woman is so often bombarded with images of skinny, busty, leggy models that a picture of a slightly more average-looking scenario is celebrated as representing “normalcy.”

The readers of Hairpin are a slightly more analytical and enlightened group than those traditionally viewing these images in purchased magazines. Some of their comments are:

Making healthy choices. Taking care of me. Feeling good. Living good. Healthy and clean. I like that. For me. Because I matter. Loving myself because someone has to, right? Who? Oh right, me. Loving me for living good and eating good. Loving myself. Must. Or at least should. Possibly could if I eat salad. But only salad.

People tell me. Instead of living. The life I could live. I eat salads. So I'm healthy. Therefore I must be happy. Because people say so. But deep inside. Somehow I'm not. Must eat more salad.

You know what goes really well with salad and laughter? Water. It's just so light. And refreshing. And guilt-free. Just ask pix 3, 14, 15. And pay no attention to that pig with the glass of juice in 13. [1]

These commenters touch on points that the average viewer most likely misses. These pictures are intended to make one feel that eating salad is very fulfilling; women should be satisfied and feel satiated after eating salad; being slim and “healthy,” which must go hand and hand, are the keys to happiness.

            Although the 20^th century has been called the “century of svelte,” the arrival of the 1990s marked an increase in the intensity of dieting as well as an obsession with exercise and toning. The age when girls began these body modifications and internal restrictions shifted from about fifteen to nine and ten.  “Middle-class white girls [now] define perfection as five feet seven inches tall and 100 pounds, and many long hours at exercise and body sculpting in order to achieve the body of their dreams” [2]. Dieting is no longer a game played amongst teens, with general disapproval from parents and guardians, but a widespread socially acceptable and even encouraged practice.  Restrictive eating, as a response to a fear of fat, has led to a culture of limited food options for women, with the most dedicated only consuming vegetables and fruits for the most part; popularized food fads and diets such as Atkin’s put the fear of carbohydrates and fats in our minds, despite the fact that these eating styles have been proven to be harmful to the body in the long run. We are a fast-paced culture and demand immediate results; thus a long-term consideration of nutrition is set aside for the more immediate weight-loss option.  Salad, being a somewhat voluminous food, is deceptive to the eye and hopefully the stomach as well, providing a perfect food alternative with few calories but just enough to maintain basic human functions.

            Susan Douglas, in her chapter Lean and Mean, states that the message the media portrays is clear: “your body is your central, critical resource in establishing your net worth as a female, and if it isn’t like Giselle [Bundchen]’s, well, aren’t you kind of worthless? Or at least really deficient?” [3]. The impossible challenge associated with this obsession with beauty, slimness, and fitness, is that at the same time we must also maintain “adherence to this forceful, pointed code of femininity” [3].  What is this code that we must adhere to and why must it be so specific to women? The femininity standard is nothing more than another media construct, an image ideal that women must aspire to and work for, because “femininity isn’t inherent—natural or biological” [4]. Myhre calls this lifestyle “women’s slavery to their appearance” and points out that society’s view of gender and beauty is based in the notion that the difference between femininity and masculinity is very clearly defined. Feminism, as popular culture sees it, and cannot be allowed to resurge; despite our attraction to muscular women, the very fine line between fitness and masculinity must not be crossed. The women eating their salads all seem to represent the pinnacle of femininity, while still maintaining fitness ideals; the three-pronged beauty regime--femininity, beauty, and thinness—must be upheld.

            The media insists that we fit a certain standard of beauty, or as Douglas calls it, “our confinement in Barbie-land” [3]. The evolution of bra manufacturing has greatly contributed to the need for specific body sizes, rather than designing clothes to fit a woman. As opposed to mothers making bras for their daughters, the commercialization of bras and junior figure control demands that all girls purchase these garments, which are often expensive. “With the store-bought clothes, the body had to fit instantaneously into standard sizes that were constructed from patterns representing a norm” [2]. Eating salad does not only keep the body in a specific shape and size so that it can fit into generic standards, it also represents a method of fitting into a behavioral standard that society imposes in a similar way. A widespread weight obsession brings with it a homogenization of female consumption behavior, thus forcing women into labeled spheres such as thin, overweight, and obese.

            The women making those statements above in response to the Hairpin website seem to be expressing Douglas’ form of female solidarity, by “sharing…woes over this aspect of being female, our entrapment by these standards of physical perfection,” (“this aspect” alludes to the semi-emaciated models of fashion magazines) [3]. There is an underlying sense of anger and resentment in their statements, an understanding that despite the modern view of having equal rights, they are still forced to mold to the male ideal and live under a patriarchal view of the body. These discontented feelings have yet to result in an adequate response from the female community, however, and women instead continue to feel this discontent about their own bodies. In order to further torture the female psyche, media campaigns, perhaps in response to the alarming rates of model deaths from starvation, are now persuading women to love their bodies just as they are, supposedly without modification. This new message, however, is completely contradictory to the majority of media campaigns and social pressures encouraging small body sizes. Models in push-up bras and tightly-fitted outfits help sell products and advertise lifestyles that the general public is supposed to crave.  Yet women should love their God-given bodies to prevent bad press and liability issues. The underlying message is that one should openly express acceptance of all body types while covertly taking steps to transform into the societal body ideal--a size two. 

            These images, if placed in health magazines, can be used to encourage healthier lifestyles, which is a positive message for all genders. Healthy living and slimness can be correlated, but this idea does not shine enough light on different body types that, despite exercise and eating habits, will never be able to fit those single digit sizes. On the other side of the spectrum there are some women who will never have significant breasts, despite all of the figure transforming devices available in the market. Rather than placing such emphasis on women (and only women) eating salad and extremely small meals with very low calorie counts, a focus on health living could encourage more wholesome, nutritious meals, and plenty of them throughout the day to keep metabolisms from slowing. Women’s magazines and media outlets are trying to use this healthy living route as a guise for their steadfast message of thinness, which “is the true progressive position for women (because it’s healthy—don’t you love it?)” [3]. The drastic rise in obesity in this country in recent year provides media images of skinny, young, “healthy” women the perfect atmosphere to be accepted and embraced. Obsessing over one’s body until muscularity and thinness are achieved can be encouraged as the perfect way to combat obesity; in a society where fear of fatness and heart disease is so omnipresent, people are wary of attacking the unattainable skinny-woman ideal without risking being labeled as bitter and overweight.

            The cage surrounding women’s diets and body size continues to suppress their ability to engage in health measures that are nutritious but potentially seen as masculine or unfeminine. Women are supposed to be satisfied with their circumstances and limited options, and any discontent felt about their roles are turned inward in the form of depression and self-esteem concerns. There is a great potential for women to respond aggressively to the media’s constricting measures and to empower women to create their own body size, shape, and look. Through collecting the media’s imagery and portraying them in a humorous and ridiculous way, hopefully women ca become more enlightened and wary of media outlets and demand acceptance.

[1] Edith, Zimmerman. "Women Laughing Alone With Salad." The Hairpin. http://thehairpin.com/2011/01/women-laughing-alone-with-salad.

[2] Brumberg, Joan. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. N.p.: Vintage, 1998.

[3] Douglas, Susan. Enlightened Sexism. New York: Times Books, 2010.

[4] Myhre, Jennifer. "One Bad Hair Day Too Many." In Listen Up, Barbara Findlen, Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2001.