Why I'm Not Happy With Ray Rice's NFL Ban and a Call for an #NFLBoycott

I am not happy with the ban of Ravens player Ray Rice for multiple reasons:


1. This should have happened back in July when Rice admitted to abusing his partner Janay Palmer. 


Full stop. Ray Rice said he made a mistake and had learned from it, admitting to assaulting his fiance. For some reason though, the NFL Commission merely gave him a 2 game suspension and told him to get therapy. Only when the horrific video of him punching his partner came out did they take action. 

On The So-Called "Choice" of Wearing Make Up

To couch the choice of wearing not not wearing make-up in the feminist language of the empowered's woman "choice" does us a disservice. It makes it seem that there are no cultural or societal expectations around appearance and use of make-up - a laughable notion. 

I didn't wake up feeling completely neutral about how my face looks today, and think "hmmm I think I'll have some fun with that new eye shadow of mine today" or, alternatively, "no, I don't really feel like make-up today, I won't wear any." This is not how women are allowed to think. We are bombarded with messages from birth on what we should look like, the appearances we should aspire to, and are systematically taught by ads and movies and TV shows that wearing a good amount of make-up is simply the standard, not a choice the empowered makes on days she wants to "have some fun" with her make-up. (What women on TV or in movies don't wear make-up?)

photo: kiagrafia.com

Is wearing make-up really a choice when everything we see normalizes its use and everyday we are told that little is more important for women than our looks? When we are literally treated better when we have it on? 

No. Of course it's not really a choice. 

What Does It Feel Like To Not Think About Your Body?

Today I read a great essay by a writer named Zaren Healy White called The No Woman's Land Between Fat and Thin Shaming. She muses eloquently on the somewhat radical notion that for the most part, she's pretty ok with her body - sometimes she wishes she could fit into normal pants, or that she hadn't given into a food craving, but not all that much, and she doesn't really share those thoughts with others. It brought up something that I've been thinking a lot about lately: how most men have the luxury of not critically examining themselves on a daily, hourly, or even more frequent basis. 

Although the preposterous and impossible beauty standards that all women are familiar with failing to fit into are starting to exist for men (and that's not a good thing), for the most part, men escape the brunt of mental energy and emotional toll that self loathing for one's own body takes. 

These thoughts usually come while I'm waiting for the train, idle for a few seconds before I pull out a book or my plug my headphones into my phone. I see a guy who is completely average - possible nice-looking, maybe has a little tummy paunch, maybe is rail-thin, but it doesn't matter. I look this average guy and wonder if he ever feels self conscious about his tummy paunch or his flat stomach but lack of abs or his butt or his chin or any of the long menu of body parts that I feel self conscious about on any given day. 

Something tells me he doesn't. Or maybe he does worry about X body part, but most likely he doesn't obsess over it on a daily basis. And if he does, he doesn't share those thoughts with a friend who would half-heartedly deny that his body part is unfavorable and then recite the list of parts he find unacceptable on his own body, setting off a cycle of self loathing and feeble, ineffective "support" for the friend he's conversing with. Men's body issues do exist, but not to the extent that women's do. Women are conditioned to loath their bodies, to obsess over the smallest of our "flaws," to the point where reaching a place where you're mostly ok with your body, as Zaren Healy White writes about, is a state worthy of celebration.

I make no claims that all men find themselves perfect - far from it - but as a whole, I'm comfortable stating that men aren't conditioned to examine their bodies on a daily basis and spend mental energy thinking about the parts they don't like. And I often wonder how that must feel. How does it feel, average-bodied guy on the train platform, to shower and get dressed in the morning without thinking about how your butt doesn't look the way you want it to look, or how you can't wear a certain shirt with certain jeans because it's too tight and will reveal parts of you you find unacceptable, to weigh your clothing choice in terms of how much want to worry about your stomach throughout the day? How does it feel to brush your teeth without thinking about how you wish to god your neck and chin were slimmer? What is it like to go a whole morning without these thoughts? A day? A week, even, before you take the time to unfavorable consider your body? What does it feel like to go for a long period of time not thinking about the appearance of your body at all, but to have the privilege of only thinking about it in terms of your fitness, or being hungry, or bandaging a cut? What does that feel like? 

I hope someday I know. 

Thank You Target, for Helping Me Understand Unrealistic Beauty Standards with Your Bizarre Photoshopping Snafu

You may have seen these photos from Target's website, where a Junior's swimsuit model was bizarrely photoshopped. (Shout out to The Ethical Adman, who first spotted it.) Here's the full ad:

At first glance, it looks kind of normal, minus her incredibly long, thin arm and the fact that the place where most people's arms narrow at the wrist occurs a few inches above her hand. But moving onto the important piece of terrible photoshopping: 

A few inches of her crotch have literally been removed, evidenced by the fact that her swimsuit magically continues to cover a portion of her legs. 

What on earth happened here? 

We've been told for a while now that the images we see are so altered and distorted that they present a beauty standard for women that is unattainable. But no matter how much I hear that, read about that, and see cool pictures or videos that illustrate the process, it's still difficult to keep that fact in mind when I see women in any magazine, online ad, billboard, commercial, etc. So I'd like to thank this amazing ad for helping me really get it - here's a whole new standard that is literally, physically impossible, not to mention undesirable and a more than a bit nausea-inducing to really think too hard about. 

And I'm sorry, I know that the square crotch cutout is really the star here, but that arm! That creepily elongated hand!

Thanks, Target. I appreciate you helping me and millions of other women better understand the ridiculously unattainable beauty standards to work hard to create for us so that we'll buy your products. You're the best. 

All These Little Things Add Up

All These Little Things Add Up.

This morning on the train, a man asked if I wanted to sit down next to him. Assuming the best, I smiled and said “no thanks, I’m getting off at the next stop.” He then turned around, put his face about four inches from that of the woman sitting behind him, and asked her the same thing. Clearly uncomfortable, she said no and then got up and moved to the other side of the train. A few minutes later, the man stood up. I moved aside to let him pass me, but he moved with me, and pushed against me despite the fact that the train was not crowded and there was absolutely no need to touch me at all to get through the aisle.

This incident in itself is not a big deal. Things happen, right? People are rude sometimes. Whatever.

But when things like this happen every single day, it starts to add up. Seemingly little things like this are things that women experience on a daily basis. Yesterday I was waiting for my coffee in the café across the street from my office building when a male employee asked me to move and wait somewhere else. Only his way of “asking” was to put his hand on my waist and push me forward, then to say “can you go wait over there?”

It’s only 9:30 in the morning. There are still be plenty of opportunities today for men to make me feel like my body is public property, to make it clear that my feelings of personal space don’t matter. They will touch me without my consent in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable. They will not pretend to try a verbal request first, nor will they apologize.

Radical, Authentic Consent

The real-life story of Alice tells about a man who would not ask for sex from his girlfriend in any physical or verbal way, but instead did something revolutionary: wait for her to ask.

This essay will be longer than usual, as I'm going to attempt to describe something that I call "authentic consent," a concept that came about as a result of Alice's story.

Feminists have done a lot of work to redefine what consent means. A quick summary: consent is often thought of and described as simply not saying "no." Popular culture is very focused on the fact that a woman saying "no" to a man who asks if she wants to engage in a sexual act (or, more often, just begins the act) signifies that she is not consenting. This is a good start, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Feminists have helped to define a vision that goes further: that simply not saying "no" does not equal a "yes" and that the "yes" must be freely given, meaning that it can't come about because the woman is drunk, on drugs, mentally disabled, a child, or being pressured in some way (like being blackmailed or threatened with some type of consequence if she doesn't perform the act). Clearly, a freely given yes is important, as a yes that is not freely given isn't really a yes at all.

I want to go beyond this more enlightened view of consent and explore the notion of pressure beyond the obvious aspects of coercion through something like blackmail or a favor done with sexual acts as the payment. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to only refer to pressure for sexual intercourse and not other sexual activities, and I recognize that the heterosexual, cisgender example that I use is limiting.

Here's a review of the three boyfriends Alice had throughout college who informed her views on consent:

My Letter to X-Sport Fitness

Hello,

Please cancel my membership with X-Sport Fitness. My ID number is xxxxxxxx.

I would like to note that the reason I am leaving is because I do not feel that the Belmont location in Chicago that I have been going to is a safe and supportive space for women. I was nearly constantly pushed to do personal training and was told that my BMI, which is the “good” range, could be “a lot better” and was asked multiple times how many inches or pounds I wanted to lose. Despite the fact that when I originally signed up I continually expressed that I had been exercising for a long time and was not there to lose weight  but merely to maintain fitness during the winter, I was pushed for nearly an hour to sign up for personal training. Despite my requests not to call or text me about personal training, I received numerous texts and calls until I finally angrily told a trainer not to call me anymore about the free hour of training.

I understand that this is how the personal trainers earn their income, but their pushiness was extremely unwelcomed, and their tactic seemed to be simply to make me feel so insecure about my body that I would give into the offer for personal training. I would like to note that my husband has experienced nowhere this amount of pressure and harassment from the staff.

I hope that in the future, X-Sport Fitness will become a place that does not view shaming women about their bodies as an acceptable means of gaining profit. I hope that I will be able to return to this gym, which has very nice equipment and is just down the block from my house, to work out rather than traveling across town to exercise someplace where I do not feel judged for the fact that I my BMI is in the healthy range and I am not underweight. I hope that X-Sport Fitness will become a place where women are not asked about how many inches or pounds they’re trying to lose, but rather how they want to feel, and that when our answers are “no,” we are heard and respected and not shamed into saying “yes.” I hope that it becomes a place where all people, no matter what they look like, what their BMI is, or what their goals are, feel welcome, accepted, and supported.

Please cancel my membership.

Best,

Eva PenzeyMoog

Chicago, IL

penzeymoog@gmail.com

A Story: The Guy Who Refused To Get Consent

This is a special guest edition written for a friend who wishes to share her story but remain anonymous. It will be followed by another essay about authentic consent (in which I will call her "Alice"). If anyone would ever like to share a story or viewpoint (anonymous or not, written by yourself or told to me to write for you) please don't hesitate to get in touch!

***

Like most American women, my view of consent was both progressive and terribly dated at the same time. I was informed about rape, I knew how to forcefully say "no" and was more than comfortable doing so, and had a handful of pleasant hookups and minor relationships under my belt by the time I had my first real boyfriend in college. He was incredibly attractive and all through our short-lived relationship, I simply felt lucky that he wanted to be with someone like me - attractive enough but not anywhere close to his muscular, careless beauty. He was kind and sensitive and I give him the benefit of the doubt that no one taught him about what real, authentic consent meant.

image: fem2pt0.com

It would go like this: we'd start making out, and it would get progressively more intense, until he put his hand to my pants and would begin to unbutton them. I'd put my hand on his and move it away. He would never try twice in one night - what a great guy, I thought. There was no verbal communication, and consent to him simply looked like my non-verbal hand-moving "no," instead of a loud verbal "yes." This happened for a while until one night I decided I was ready for my first below-the-belt experience and didn't push his hand away. It felt wonderful and terribly uncomfortable at the same time, and we didn't talk about it afterwards. He never asked me how I was doing, if what he was doing felt good, or what he could do better. I started to get him off with my hands, but he never succeeded in doing the same for me. I didn't have the language to express my feelings of frustration and a nagging sense that this wasn't equal and therefor wasn't right. No one had ever taught me to advocate for my own pleasure, and I certainly hadn't seen it in any of the TV shows, movies, or songs that largely educated my view of sex.

Why we're actually upset about The Biggest Loser's Rachel Fredrickson

You've probably heard some of the media outcry over The Biggest Loser's Rachel Fredrickson's weight loss. She dropped from 260 pounds to 105 pounds, losing 60% of her body fat. It's caused a lot of people to wake up about the show's dangerous message: that fat shaming is acceptable and even encouraged and that the ends justify the means - even when those means involve dangerous dehydration, brain-washing, and eating disorder mentalities. 

Biggest Loser winner Rachel Fredrickson

But I don't think the general public is actually concerned about her weight. I think that people are upset with being forced to come face to face with what the brutal work that a woman has to do to meet the standards of our skinny-obsessed culture. Rachel Fredrickson has ruined the fantasy that rail-thin women are the norm and that if you're not lucky enough to be born that way, it's not too much work to get there. She's shown just how much work it is. And to deal with this discomfort, we claim that she's too skinny, has gone too far, that we're "worried" for her. But she looks like pretty much every runway model I've ever seen - but now that the curtain has been pulled back on what it takes for her to look like that, America is freaking out.