How The Media Controls "Real" Women

A recent Marie Claire Australia photo shoot of model Jennifer Hawkins posing nude and un-airbrushed has created a media storm about the definition of "real" beauty. Marie Claire and The Butterfly Foundation, an eating disorders support group which will receive the proceeds from an auction of the photos, claim the images show the model's flaws and demonstrate that she's a "real woman."

Many women have lashed out at Marie Claire, scoffing that Hawkins isn't a "real" woman. Sigh. Really? Is she plastic? Bionic? Inflatable?She seems real enough to me. Maybe what we should say is that Hawkins -- or any model, or any woman -- shouldn't be used as a symbol of the mythical "real woman."

The mainstream media love to exploit this definition of the "real woman."  In their view, the real woman is  "flawed" (whatever that means -- in this context, apparently, it's thigh dimples; maybe next week, it'll be a big ass, and the following, thick eyelashes) and she's not "a stick figure." (A term I personally detest -- models aren't stick figures! They are women). The "real" woman stands in direct opposition to 99% of what women's magazines tell us we should be in their ads, articles, and images.  She's also just as much of a fiction as the women in those ads, articles, and images: she is flawed, they are perfect, in a stark dichotomy.

Keeping "real" associated with "flawed" ensures that women will constantly get caught up in the debate of what women are real and flawed enough instead of encouraging women to question, say, whether we should be looking at models and magazine covers to represent us, whether one woman can ever represent all women, and why "real" is so often used in relation to a woman's body and not her distinct personality or her mind.

This definition of real as flawed also ends up reinforcing women's awareness of their "flaws" (just see this ridiculous video in which bystanders on the street are asked to pick out Jennifer Hawkin's flaws! Are you kidding me, Australian news?) and therefore encouraging women's magazines to market more ways to diminish these "flaws."

We get caught up in the same debate over and over again -- is she real?  Is she fake?  -- while women's magazines keep on selling the same improvements on the "real" again and again.  "Real" isn't about flaws.  It certainly isn't about a dimple in an un-airbrushed image of a model. It isn't about bodies. It's about escaping the cycle of defining ourselves according to the whims and standards of women's magazines.

Photo: Petteri Sulonen's Photostream