From: rsrodger@wam.umd.EDU (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: Subverting the Beauty Myth
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: 4 Jan 93 19:47:14 GMT

In article <1i5eukINNgmh@agate.berkeley.edu> seid@popov.EE.CORNELL.EDU (Steve Seidman) writes:
>I hope people will start posting stories about films (and books)
>that are subversive to the so-called beauty myth.


	Prove that there is a "beauty myth" or at least define what
	you are speaking of.


>I recently saw a film that really fills the bill.
>It was a John Waters film called "Hairspray"
>Besides being a good film in the ordinary sense, it
>featured a really fat girl as the main star.


	John Waters is the local (well, I'm close to
	baltimore) king of tasteless film.  Have you
	seen "Pink Flamingos"?  It is, truly, a work of
	art.

>She was presented as beautiful and glamorous and fat,
>and no apologies about it.  At no time did the film
>say anything like "She can still be beautiful INSPITE
>of being fat"  (that would be too HollyWood, and too apologetic)



	Umm, I would disagree.  She was *not* presented
	as glamorous when compared to the attention that
	the other girl (name escapes me--debbie harry's movie-daughter)
	recieved on looks.

	Instead, Waters had her win big for a good personality.
	I find this touching, but not entirely realistic.

	Anyway, I might point out that Waters seems to have a thing
	for really, really obese actors/characters.  He once spent
	an interview ignoring questions and talking about this
	great idea for a movie he had that he wanted to call
	"Consuming Passions" about a world taken over and run by
	fat people, but alas, with Divine dead this may never materialize.

	"Consuming Passions" is already taken as a title anyway, it is
	a British movie about a company that accidently drops a few
	workers into the mincing machinery to make chocolates, and starts
	a sales craze.  <It builds from there, somewhat along the same
	lines as Little Shop Of Horrors>...


>Rather, she was shown, through the story and the dancing
>and her poise that she was the beauty queen in no uncertain
>terms.  I found this really unprecedented, and therefore
>really subversive to the idea that we will always tend to
>identify best with the conventionally thin and beautiful starlets.


	This was at the expense of the good-looking girl,
	who was portrayed as a shrill, offensive bitch.  Is
	this even remotely evenhanded?


>BTW: Anyone can watch this film, it's really vanilla, so
>don't worry.


	True.  It's been shown on network television a number
	of times.



>Of course there are some subcultural features
>to the film but people not clued into it just simply won't
>see it at all.



	What are you talking about?  Divine?



>I happened to see the film as a video with a
>mixed audience (to say the least) and *everyone* enjoyed it.
>PS:  I really think that the standard beauty images are visually
>transmitted so that cinema is really the *only* medium that can
>subvert the standard image.  Photos, and paintings might work too,
>but I'm not sure if books will cut the mustard.

	I think books are just as important.  Books, magazines.
	In fact, books present, in many ways, a view of humanity that
	is as unrealistic as any movie has ever dared.  Take the extreme--
	the stories on alt.sex.stories are hardly realistic, and
	they encourage all sorts of false beliefs.


--
	Blaming "society" for your problems is like blaming clouds for rain.
         ---  boycott == censorship == closed mindedness == cowardice  ---
	      "Psalms 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."
		Shepherds are for sheep.   -----      Pain teaches.

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