What's Sexy Now?

Visiting with family over the holiday, I happened to catch an episode of a program called “America’s Got Talent.”  It’s a talent show competition where judges evaluate a number of different acts and decide whether or not to pass the contestants on to the next round. It’s basically "American Idol" with comedians.

The acts varied in quality and style. Some people were obviously there as a joke, some on a whim,  and others for more serious and disturbing reasons. The troublesome nature of some of the participants’ motives were made crystal clear once the last act of the night appeared on stage.

The Glamazons are a four-member singing and dancing outfit from New York. Apparently, they fancy themselves a sort of burlesque troupe, belting out tunes and traipsing around the stage in fancy Victorian lingerie.

Their gimmick is that they aren’t slender, sexy model types. They’re the “full-figured” zaftig types. In an interview before their performance they told the camera their goal wasn’t merely to entertain, but to campaign for the full acceptance of larger female body types.

Sounds good. I know the incessant stream of scrawny twenty-somethings on the front of magazines and in commercials, and almost everywhere else, is a problem. I know lots of women feel bad about not measuring up to that standard.

The problem with the Glamazons isn’t that they wanted to lobby for the acceptance of larger, more voluptuous female body types. The problem is their understanding of acceptance.

These are not ugly women. There are plenty of men out there who would adore and cherish and, no doubt, marry any one of them. Their size and weight need not be an impediment to finding a mate and establishing a solid family to which they might devote their lives.

This kind of acceptance, however, is not enough. What this group is after is societal change. They want the world to affirm that they are just as sexy as any spring-break waif in a bikini. This much was clear from their skimpy outfits and erotic dance moves. These plus-size gals want you to want them in a big way.

So, we see the criteria by which they judge whether or not they are “accepted” is the degree to which they and women like them are reduced to the objects of carnal lust in the same way skinny girls are. Their campaign for acceptance is predicated not so much on the insistence that their humanity be recognized, but on their being just as willing to allow that humanity to be degraded as smaller women are. The Glamazons want a world of equal opportunity exploitation.

They are, of course, doomed to fail. Will most men's biological predilection for svelte bodies and years of cultural conditioning to prefer a certain body type be overturned by a few women singing in teddies and insisting big is beautiful? Fat chance.

In the competition to be the most lusted for object in the world, these women are bound to loose, if only because the pool of men who find their body type sexually attractive is limited. That's why they'd do better to hope to be accepted by a husband than by a culture. To feel really loved, each of these women needs to find only one good man; and finding a good man is an infinitely easier and, I suspect, more rewarding task than finding an approving audience.

Comments

[Katie]

Great post!! You have really hit the proverbial nail on the head "equal opportunity exploitation".

Thank you for your compassionate ( yet realistic ) input on women in our culture.

[Dean]

Thanks, Katie.

[Heather]

I have been watching it as well, the comments by the judges really got to me. They were appauded for thier "look" and were passed though.
However they were NOT good singers or "dancers" and many others with an equal amount of talent WITHOUT the sex "appeal" were passed over.
It's clear what caught the judges attention - and it wasn't thier voices. The hollow "acceptance" they get for thier act is and will ever be shallow and short lived.

[imajackson]

Dean, it's good to have you back. I second your thoughts about this group of women who miss the mark. Ungh, this battle will wage on, won't it? The battle to make people less than people. I am glad we have a wit like yours to point out our folly. We need it...even I sometimes get lulled into the lies...and I like the sharp thinking that pulls me out. Thanks Dean, glad you're back in the swing of things online.

[Daryn]

Dean:

Thrilled to have you back.

This post was great! Although I didn't watch the TV show, this post really made me think. Thanks!

Makes me wonder how our culture now defines success.

Keep up the great work.

[Amy Lu]

What would I ever do without you or Barbara Curtis?

I have to offer up a hearty "Amen" to everything you've said, as usual.

[Dean]

Daryn,

Thanks. Yep, the definition of success has a lot to do with it.

[Erica!!!]

While I agree that looking for equal opportunity exploitation should not be the goal of these women, I do feel that it is important that all healthy body types be accepted as beautiful by our culture.Many "spring break waifs" are unhealthy, probably most, and for our culture to continue valuing their body type over ALL others, is detrimental to most women,1, because most women don't look like that and to try to could be detrimental to their health and 2, the reason that body type is attractive has a lot to do with our culture's desire to have women who are easily dominated and coerced by men.
I think that feeling sexy and being admired as sexy are not always to be equated with exploitation, and anyway, as women they are already being exploited. as FAT women they are being dehumanized and exploited (albeit in different ways than their less heavy sisters). So to be on television, not as a before picture, and not as somebody who exemplifies ugliness and laziness, and not as the butt of a joke, but as sex symbols, is a very positive thing for them.

[Erica!!!]

also for many women, finding a husband is not their end goal. Being fat should not be a sentence to married life if thin isn't.