lady magazine ads: the good and the bad

Perhaps it's not the most intellectual thing I do, but I love reading women's magazine (thought I do generally draw the line at Cosmo). I might mockingly recite the horoscopes out loud but I genuinely enjoy reading them. However, even in my lighthearted fun reading time, it's hard not to notice the split between their rhetoric of "love yourself! Your body is great!" and their articles about the latest scary celebrity trends in weight loss (such as this one from Marie Claire!). 

Of course, the cynic in me crows that these magazines are clearly smart and sustaining their sales by giving women enough of the self-esteem boosting good stuff to make them happy but reminding them of their room for improvement and ever-evolving list of bodily flaws/solutions to worry about through advertisements and articles to keep them buying again and again (they've absolutely got me hooked). Consider Cosmo: every month features at least one diet ad in the back pages (ZANTREX is a popular one), along with workout advice supplied by Tracy Anderson (a celebrity trainer whose uber-rich clientele includes Gwyneth Paltrow) who believes/brags about her skills in helping women of any body type fit into the small definition of perfection (the damn subtitle of her book promises as much: the Weight-Loss Kick-Start That Makes Perfection Possible), along with tips on how to be more confident (or at least fake it in the bedroom. For his fragile ego, of course).

But nowhere is this dichotomy better captured than in their ad content.

Marie Claire (often diet obsessed, but balanced out with a decent focus on global women's experiences) this month has the two page ad by Essie, fancy ass nail polish company, shown below.

the sheriff's own photography. and warped bright blue table.

Wicked. That's a strong fucking word. And kind of uncalled for in reference to the dessert pictured. Guilt over food? Unnecessary. Small fudge sundae (without toppings, I might add)? NOT WICKED.

But Glamour's ad from Makeup Forever gave the beauty industry's efforts a bit of redemption.

please forgive the glare

Yes, it's an ad featuring a young, white, blond, thin female with perfectly done makeup. BUT! It's an unretouched ad (certified by a public notary, according to the fine print), which means that although she may fit into a very specific and small definition of beautiful, at least this is her and her beauty, not some fake even more perfect version (granted, this is her with special lighting and makeup done by a professional, but still!).

Is this progress? What do you think about the moves to more "realistic" ads and fashion pages in magazines, especially the use of plus-size models?

Much love,
The Sheriff

the Sheriff's first film review: Orgasm Inc.

Last week, the Sheriff went to Smith's screening of Orgasm Inc., director Liz Canning's film about the pharmaceutical industry's attempts to capitalize on women's sexual insecurities and more. She was offered a job by Vivus to edit together an erotic video to be tried in conjunction with creams intended to increase a woman's chance of orgasm by increasing bloodflow, and this documentary began to take shape. She noted that she didn't intend to make a expose of the pharmaceutical industry, but it fell into place as she learned more of how medicine and science conceive of women, sex, and sexual response. The results are pretty hilarious, so I wanted to share some informative tidbits with ya'll.

Vivus was one of the first companies to get FDA approval to treat erectile dysfunction with a pill, and as the founder (an extremely ol'd dude with a vibrant bowtie) put it, the company's riches were made "bringing life back into dead penises," so they eagerly entered the race to find the female Viagra, the "cure" for female sexua dysfunction (FSD). Characterized by a lack of desire, lack of pleasure, and inability to reach orgasm the interesting thing about this "disease" is that no new medical discoveries were made regarding female sexuality to prompt the medicalization of this loose category of traits By creating a disease, the FDA crated a market, prompting women who see sex in the movies (which usually goes: two minutes of kissings, rip clothes off, penetration, INSTANT ORGASM) and wonder what's wrong with them that they don't cum in that way to begin to feel abnormal.

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association launched the statistic (which was touted heavily on the news and Oprah) that 43% of women suffer from FSD based on a survey from the 90s in which a group of women responded to questions about if they had experienced any of the following symptoms within the last 12 months for a period of several months: pain during sex, no climax, climaxing too fast, no interest and several other traits that could all be perfectly reasonable responses to stress (except for pain, pain during sex=go straight to gyno, do not collect $200). A yes to any of these listed above yielded a diagnosis of FSD, turning healthy normal women into patients. As Canning put it it shifts the meaning of sexuality into a commodified way of being, and if you don't experience if that way, you need help (which, as you may have guessed, flies in the face of everything the Sheriff believes about sex).


One of the facts that he film revealed that I was familiar with (but not enough people, especially men) are is that 70% of women need direct clitoral stimulation to climax. This Hollywood/porn way of sex of just thrust-thrust-thrust-CUM is just unrealistic and impossible and downright unpleasant for most women. Carol Queen put it thusly when asked if a prescription could help women climax "maybe it'll help if they put a map of clitoris on the box." Word.

The big takeaway? Sex drive is an incredibly individual, unique thing and often relies on social context (had a baby lately? Sleeping badly? Body image worries? Happy with your partner? Stressed out of your mind?), not just blood flow or hormones, for most women.

Much love,
The Sheriff

PS-The film overall was great! Funny, informative, and provocative in a good way, and it included a lot more information than I'm including here, but I didn't want this post to be too enormous....and I'm saving stuff to mine for future posts!

friday links

A letter to Lil Wayne: I love these girls. 

The Trouble with Bright Girls: this rang SUPER true for me, and raises great questions about how we praise kids/what that tells them about themselves.

Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi? Surprisingly difficult.

Why does this shit even still happen? Why.

Weightless's beef with women's "health" magazines. 

White House declares March Women's History Month!

Fetus to testify in Ohio about abortion bill that would outlaw the procedure after the first heartbeat can be detected.


True story: I have herpes. A good piece that makes STIs less of a "dirty stupid slut" problem and more of a "this could be your problem" problem.


Men: how do you talk to your daughter about beauty?

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Much love,
The Sheriff

UPDATE ON THE PRIVATIZATION!

Hey everyone,
As one of my clearly more intelligent friends pointed out, I could just make a google account and add that to the private list and then EVERYONE can read the blog!
If you gave me your email/google account, I will still be adding it to the list (we just reached 100).

But here is the log-in info--PLEASE remember this! It keeps the blog accessible to more folks, which makes me happy!

email: reader.ff@gmail.com
password: fornicating

Much love,
The Sheriff

Guest Post: My encounter with an IUD

Babies seem to be everywhere recently, cute babies downtown, screaming babies in the supermarket, it’s been babies galore and I just don’t want anything to do with it. The idea of having a baby right now is so repulsive it makes me slightly nauseous, what’s worse is how badly my body wants a baby. Seriously, I see a baby and it’s like my uterus wants to jump out of my body.

With my “biological clock” obviously in overdrive I wanted to find a safe convenient way to ensure that I would not be getting woken up at 3am by a crying infant. I have always used birth control, but lets face it… the pill is a pain in the ass, and I always forget to take it at the right time.  It just so happened that I had my yearly gyno exam a few weeks ago ( if you haven’t gone recently you really should!) and we we’re talking about birth control and I decided that I really wanted to try an IUD. After getting the whole “risks and benefits” talk I excitedly made an appointment to get an IUD inserted.

I had wonderfully supportive friends and even my mama thought it was a good idea, so I had relatively few apprehensions leading up to the appointment, that is until I casually mentioned it to a friend of mine from back home.  Get this, she actually told me that I was going to get every STI known to man because having an IUD would automatically make me into a careless sex-addict! Excuse me, but if I’m not a whore now, having an effective form of birth control is not going to turn me into one and obviously I use condoms anyways. Leave it to one of my oldest friends to totally burst my bubble and make me feel like a complete slut just because I was trying to take an active, informed, role in my sexual health.

Obviously my friend’s opinion was hurtful, but it didn’t change my mind about getting the IUD (though I did need to hash it out with one of my better friends first). The day of the insertion I take 3 Motrin (as instructed) drink a coffee and head off to the gyno. The nurse takes me to my room and asks me if I am positive about getting the IUD and then proceeds to comfort me by assuring me it’s easily removable. The strangest part about talking to this nurse was how much she was telling me about her life, what she had for breakfast, where she had met her wife. All these extraneous tidbits that I would normally love to hear just made me feel horribly awkward about the looming reality that something was getting shoved into my uterus.

I have never felt as uncomfortable as I did waiting for my gyno to come and start the insertion process, although I knew that I wanted the IUD I couldn’t help but think of the judgment my friend had passed, or wonder if more people felt the same way she did and just hadn’t told me.  The  gyno came in, I signed the consent form (I, “mama bear”, promise not to sue your pants off if you fuck up horribly), laid down with my feet in the metal stirrups, and was raised to the seated gynecologists eye level. As the bed squeaked to a stop my vagina was on full display,

“you’re going to feel a lot of pressure”… followed by “congratulations your uterus is big enough for the IUD” (phew… I’m glad it isn’t too small, how embarrassing would that be).

“Ok, I’m about to insert the insertion rod, you’re going to feel cramping” ( I breath hard and don’t react when the stabbing pain of having something attach to your cervix happens)

“ I’m just going to try a new location, you’re going to feel that cramp again”… “ let me try this again”…. “hmm, okay one more time” (what the hell is wrong with me, why isn’t it working?)

“You are doing so great, I cant believe you’re handling this so well, I know it’s painful… but I just can’t get it in, your uterus is just tilted to far back. I’m sorry”

At this point I have been laying with my vagina in the air for a solid 40 minutes, I wanted to say “ well try harder” but I knew she had my best interest at heart. I felt broken, my uterus is such a freak of nature that she (who has inserted hundreds of IUDs) can’t put it in.  I went in to get an IUD put in to prevent pregnancy but for a split second I was actually horribly scared that I would never be able to have a baby. I was reassured that this didn’t mean I couldn’t and wouldn’t have beautiful healthy babies at some point and sent home with a prescription for another birth control. The ladies at the front desk harmlessly asked me if I had severe cramping, and when I explained and they let out a collective “oh” I felt like giving my uterus a hug and telling it “it’s not your fault, I still love you even though you’re ruining my plan for easy birth control”.

My cervix is now bloody and angry for being prodded at, I still slightly feel like “damaged goods,” and it bothers me to no end that I got so upset at the IUD insertion failure.  Although the IUD option is obviously not viable for me, I still think that it was worth the attempt. My experience is unusual, and though it was not what I had hoped for, it was not a negative experience. If the opportunity presents itself I will try to get an IUD again.

How do you all feel about IUD’s, birth control, the gynecologist, your uterus, your partner’s uterus, babies? Have you had a “damaged goods” moment?

-Mama Bear

gettin' all private again

There's a pun in that title somewhere, but I'm too sick/lazy/tired to find it.

source

As many of you may (or may not) know, next year I will be a teacher. YAY!

But people are weird about teachers and sex. BOO.

Thus, I've decided that I've got to make the blog private again. I did everything I could to just get my full name as fully removed from the blog as possible, but the Mount Holyoke News editor refused to take down the article about my blog, and while she removed my last name, it still brings it up in a Google search and that's enough to make me look less than exemplary.

So, please either leave your emails below, or email me at fornicatingfeminists@gmail.com. You must have a Google account to do this, so keep that in mind. It takes just a few minutes, and I'll still be pumping about good stuff about sex, body image, and feminism...it'll just be a little less exposed. What really sucks is that the blog is limited to 100 readers by Blogger if it's private, so get that shit in early! And maybe you can share your Google log-in info with friends, so you don't have to miss out on juicy posts.

The blog will be made private in one week from Friday (i.e., March 11th). Perhaps this isn't necessary, but I'd rather not risk it. And it might be as simple as changing the domain name and moving the content elsewhere...but I don't know yet. I'm investigating my options, but for now, this is the quickest and easier option, even if it makes me sad. 


UPDATE: Please see this entry about how you can continue to read FF without being on the list (which is full now. Thanks for all the love!).

Much love,
The Sheriff

mother influence

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I had a lovely visit from Mama Sheriff this weekend (who adores Smith and Northampton and would be a perfect Ada Comstock scholar), which makes me feel grateful that we have such a good, authentic, honest and healthy relationship, despite the fact that I gave her absolute hell during my pre-teen years. And, although mothers can sometimes be blamed and demonized when their daughters develop eating disorders, I'm also grateful that she never gave me any major neuroses about my body or weight based on how she felt about her own. The only negative things I ever heard from her about body were about her stomach. Mama Sheriff has never in her life been overweight, yet her small tummy pudge (surely larger after having three kids, and now being 50) has been the seat of her self image for my entire life (I must admit though, it is a fixation I've inherited, since I essentially am Mama, just with a bigger vocabulary and smaller nose).

Although we see photos of "flawless" celebrity mothers on the daily whose bodies are seemingly untouched by pregnancy and childbirth, the truth is that both are HUGE ENORMOUS process that will change a woman and her body, sometimes in incredible ways (you made a PERSON and stored and nurtured it in YOUR BODY and then GOT IT OUT of you. DAMN!). But this change can still be devastating when we're taught and socialized as women to invest so much of our self-worth, sexuality and identity into our bodies and appearance. This woman's story over on Shape of a Mother (a site that allows women a space to showcase their bodies post-pregnancy, without judgment, stretch marks, sag and all) particularly drove that home for me.

If you merely look at her photos, her body is in great shape and makes her maybe look like one of those celebrities that we kinda hate for how quickly they snap back into shape (what are they, wizards?!). But her story is heart breaking and outraging, as one of her motivations to lose weight was based in her husband's cruel retort to her asking when they could resume sex: "Not until you lose the baby weight." As a commenter noted, it was nice of her to stay with her husband (though the way she tells her story, it is one of redemption)!

I have had many friends and family members who reported how much better they felt after "getting their body back" (back from what? Who took it, the baby?), how much sexier and more like themselves. Whether that's authentic or just born of a limited idea of "sexy" based on fitting in their high school jeans size, I can't say. But I myself have joked that I'll lose weight just before getting pregnant to make the weight gain less scary, so I observe this without my judgment face on.

What do you think? It is "letting yourself go" to accept one's new shape/size as a mother, whatever that may be? Or does "getting your body back" through weight loss hold some empowerment, even if it is often bound up in socially conditioned ideas of what's beautiful/sexy (ideas that don't really include mothers unless they're stereotypically hot MILFS)?

Much love,
The Sheriff