The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Body-Positive’ Feminism

Posted on | May 25, 2016 | 24 Comments

Melinda Parrish is a “plus-size” model and that’s totally cool with me. More cushion for the pushin’, as good old boys down home sometimes say. On the other hand, she is promoting a bogus ideology:

Just Say ‘No’ to the Beach Body Craze
Your body is perfect, just as it is. You don’t need to lose weight, or tighten up your tummy, or pop out your butt in order to have a perfect beach body. You already have the perfect beach body, and you should feel free to rock whatever swimming attire you feel comfortable in, regardless of your size.
This time of year, there are many fitness regimens, potions, pills, diet plans and supplements being offered to us that claim they will “transform” our already perfect bodies into bodies that are more acceptable to society. But this year, I’m saying “no” to the beach body craze, and so should you!
I’m not saying no to showing my body love through movement each day, or to fueling my body with delicious, healthy foods, or to practicing self-care like bubble baths and massages and face masks. I’m just saying no to anyone or anything that would make me believe that my body isn’t perfect as it is, and that I have to be perpetually engaged in efforts to change my body in order to meet someone else’s standards for perfection.
There are any number of companies that would love nothing more than to sap all of your money, your time, your energy, and your self-worth in order to profit from your desire to get a perfect “beach body.” . . .

You can read the rest. This is an issue where my opinion is nuanced. On the one hand, too many women have absurdly negative, self-conscious attitudes toward their own bodies. Insecure girls become obsessed with their appearance, comparing themselves to idealized images based on what they see on TV or in magazines and, no matter how they actually look, they are plagued by a sense of falling short of their ideal. Furthermore, some girls let themselves fall into the “yo-yo” trap — dieting to lose 10 or 15 pounds, then gaining back those pounds (and usually more pounds than they lost on their diet) so that their metabolism becomes destabilized, creating a vicious cycle of failure. So, I’m against the kind of self-conscious perfectionism that results in women physically and mentally torturing themselves about their appearance.

On the other hand, the “fat feminism” movement is a political delusion. “You don’t need to lose weight . . . to have a perfect beach body,” is a way of saying there is no such thing as a hierarchy of beauty. This expresses a feminist ideology I’ve called aesthetic egalitarianism, the belief that it is wrong (“sexist”) to recognize and praise actual beauty.

Why do feminists hate beauty? Because men like beauty, and feminism is a movement that opposes anything that makes men happy. This is what produces the rhetoric against “objectification,” which is simply a term feminists invented to demonize men for admiring beauty. Feminists have suggested that the “fat acceptance” movement can “destabilize the heteronormative gaze” and women can overcome “gender inequality” by a “radical rejection of beauty as feminine aspiration.” And when I say feminists have suggested this, I mean lesbian Women’s Studies majors have suggested it, because that’s who comes up with these crazy ideas.

 

You don’t have to be perfect to be happy, but no one should be deceived by feminist claims that male admiration of beauty is oppressive.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

24 Responses to “‘Body-Positive’ Feminism”

  1. CrustyB
    May 25th, 2016 @ 1:53 pm

    There are any number of companies that would love nothing more than to sap all of your money…in order to profit from your desire to get a perfect “beach body.”

    This moldy chestnut.

    They did a study many years ago where they took newborn infants and showed them pictures of ugly women, average women and supermodels. They babies responded most positively to the supermodels. No programming, no “corporate brainwashing,” no Madison Ave. ads. Just Mother Nature and beautiful women.

  2. Honest Citizen
    May 25th, 2016 @ 1:56 pm

    What are the cholesterol levels of these people?
    How many are pre diabetic?
    Enough of SJW promoting unhealthy behavior. Obesity is unhealthy and not good.

  3. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2016 @ 2:13 pm

    They’re making excuses for being lazy. My world is so different from theirs when it comes to exercise we don’t even exist on the same continuum of reality.

  4. Critical Eye
    May 25th, 2016 @ 2:37 pm

    Why do feminists hate beauty? Because it’s a movement for the pulchritudinously challenged?

  5. concern00
    May 25th, 2016 @ 2:45 pm

    In the absence of discipline and self control, one must always reject those things that are only obtainable through discipline and self control. And while you’re at it, blame the patriarchy.

  6. concern00
    May 25th, 2016 @ 2:47 pm

    Oh, and I just can’t resist:
    “There are any number of companies that would love nothing more than to sap all of your money, your time, your energy, and your self-worth in order to profit from your desire…”

    …to eat yourself into an early grave.

  7. Tilden Buttersack
    May 25th, 2016 @ 3:28 pm

    Ok, you’re a ham sandwich [if only I has ‘shop skillz].

  8. jolly green
    May 25th, 2016 @ 3:47 pm

    How do they really take those ideas seriously?

    Grant it, some men prefer a bigger woman, and some women prefer bigger men(as a stocky guy with a beard and medium length hair it was a shock to learn I’m a “type”, )but there is no escaping the idea that there is an ideal physical type for both men and women and has been for Millenia. You really have to brainwashed into an ideology to lose all sense of reason, and objectivity to that degree.

  9. jolly green
    May 25th, 2016 @ 3:48 pm

    Well said.

  10. jolly green
    May 25th, 2016 @ 3:50 pm

    These are also the same people who categorize normal physical attraction as “objectification”, and something dark and sinister cooked up by a cabal of evil men back when the Earth was still flat.

  11. Steve Skubinna
    May 25th, 2016 @ 3:59 pm

    “Your body is perfect, just as it is.”

    That is just flat out screaming stupid. No the hell it isn’t, I don’t give a damn who you are. No body is “perfect.” Every single one may be improved in some way. But what makes this really toxic is that some bodies need improvement, for the health and well being of the person. If you have unduly high serum cholesterol, or blood sugar, or are morbidly obese, then it’s going to make you get all dead earlier than you need to be, and make your life worse until then. And even if you don’t, there are always things even healthy people can do to be healthier.

    This is idiocy on the order of “Getting an STD was the best thing that ever happened to my sex life” or “My mental illness makes me an unimpeachable authority!” or “I’m twenty, never married, hate men, but can tell you everything about men, marriage, and how to raise children!”

    There’s stupid, there’s delusional, and then there’s just outright harmful. This is all three.

  12. Steve Skubinna
    May 25th, 2016 @ 4:01 pm

    Yeah, if it weren’t for the Entertainment-Cosmetic-Industrial Complex, nobody would have a clue what he finds attractive.

    Besides, I base my opinion on the ideal women on the images homosexual fashion designers show me.

  13. Steve Skubinna
    May 25th, 2016 @ 4:02 pm

    Haven’t you heard? Stupid is the new Empowerment.

  14. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 25th, 2016 @ 4:29 pm

    Michelle Parrish would hardly look plus size in real life–she would look normal proportions (and she is very pretty).

  15. concern00
    May 25th, 2016 @ 4:30 pm

    If you don’t like your women fat, you’re a hater. If you turn down a homosexual advance, you’re a bigoted hater. #Tolerance

  16. Steve Skubinna
    May 25th, 2016 @ 5:38 pm

    Again, the gay men in charge of the fashion business like boys, so they tend to pick women who look like boys… at least from behind.

    Straight men? Ummmm, nope. And to be honest, most straight men find Barbie to be a little creepy too. So I’m not taking any crap about unrealistic body image from anorexic, neurotic feminists.

  17. Tehy
    May 25th, 2016 @ 5:45 pm

    Same here; if people want to live their lives without caring what other people think about them, fine, but what fat acceptance feminism usually preaches is instead that what other people think about you is, not irrelevant, but merely incorrect, and furthermore there is no way to be correct and you should be angry at anyone and any society that says otherwise.

  18. Quartermaster
    May 25th, 2016 @ 6:11 pm

    I like a curvy woman. The woman above is not curvy.

  19. Mike G.
    May 25th, 2016 @ 7:58 pm

    ISWYDT and I like it.

  20. Finrod Felagund
    May 25th, 2016 @ 9:29 pm

    Plus size doesn’t bother me. It’s the so-called super size, the ones that are *trying* to gain weight, that scare me. But just as importantly, it’s the mental ugliness that really turns me off, and more skinny girls than plus size girls exhibit that kind of attitude. I’d rather be with a girl that’s happy that someone’s interested in her than one that thinks she’s God’s gift to mankind, no matter what their respective weights are.

  21. Leah White
    May 26th, 2016 @ 1:39 am

    “my room mate Lori Is getting paid on the internet $98/hr”…..!tc457urtwo days ago grey MacLaren. P1 I bought after earning 18,512 Dollars..it was my previous month’s payout..just a little over.17k Dollars Last month..3-5 hours job a day…with weekly payouts..it’s realy the simplest. job I have ever Do.. I Joined This 7 months. ago. and now making over hourly. 87 Dollars…Learn. More right Here !tc457u:?:?:.?.?.?.? http://GlobalSuperJobsReportsEmploymentsShieldGetPay-Hour$98…. .????????????????????????????????????????????????????::::::!tc457u….,…

  22. Sailorcurt
    May 26th, 2016 @ 7:08 am

    She doesn’t need a sandwich, she needs a slimfast

  23. JohnnyL53
    May 26th, 2016 @ 1:33 pm

    “I’m just saying no to anyone or anything that would make me believe that my body isn’t perfect as it is…”

    I think she’s including in this comment not only anyone that physically tells her to shape up as well as any other woman that is actually hitting the gym. Just their existence offends her.

    One thing I have found out from perusing Tumblr or Instagram, is that for everyone of these fat positive feminists there is a Brazilian fitness model trying to monetize her workouts with strategic product placements.

  24. Hallie Cantor
    May 30th, 2016 @ 1:40 am

    The problem with feminism — some of their grievances are valid. The movement, in fact, had healthy beginnings, as far as the objectification of women & other issues. The problem is, the feminists threw out the baby with the bathwater. They failed to differentiate between Western or societal practices vs. the ways of the real world (which seem to anger liberals in general).

    A guy wanting a movie star might be caught up in a Western fantasy. However, every group, even a non-Western one, has a standard of beauty, which not only men but women idealize. People like beauty. Men appreciate beautiful women.

    The problem here is the feminists’ attempts to fit a square peg into a round hole. They are not only trying to attack the beauty ideal, but they are desperately trying to get people to accept fat as beautiful — or, rather, that ALL women are beautiful. Sorry, they are not. I am not.

    This is not to say that all fat women are unattractive. It’s more of a personality issue or the way one carries herself. A former roommate of mine was obese, yet she loved to wear nice clothes, make-up, etc. She did not lack for male admirers. There are reed-thin women who drive men away because of their attitudes or behavior. Femininity is a state of mind, not just an appearance. But no matter how many feminists run into the room with their hair on fire, they are not going to convince me that someone flabby & hairy, or covered up to the wazoo in tattoos, is “beautiful.”