When I think about growing up in the 90s, I always return to one particular place: Beverly Hills, California. I never actually stepped foot in the zip code (until recently, when I came to work as an intern for Ms.), but I watched Beverly Hills 90210 every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. I followed the […]
Beauty
Beauty norms are societal standards that dictate ideal physical appearance and vary across cultures and history. Despite being unrealistic, norms are instilled in women from a young age, harming those who feel they do not fit the mold.
More Violence Against the Women of Juarez
Before I finished my Ph.D., I worked in the cosmetics industry for ten years as a makeup artist for Lauder Corp, which owns such prestige brands as Clinique, Estee Lauder, Bobbi Brown and MAC. The cosmetics industry is often a place where Chicanas and Latinas work their way through school, and I was one of […]
Blog Roundup: Editor’s Picks, July 12-16
This week, Ms. learned from the blogosphere that gay parenting is better parenting; MAC is marketing maquiladora makeup; Vaseline launched a Facebook skin-whitening app; abortion hit primetime; and more. Gloria Feldt, The Real L Word, Bristol Palin and Angelina Jolie are all part of the best discussions of identity, politics, and identity politics on the […]
Banning the Veil, Loving the Face?
In visible opposition to these concepts of French femininity, shrouded women question their “reality” by refusing to participate at the visual level in French culture being “there” and “not there” at the same time. With “French” beauty constantly and consistently constructed to exclude migrant identities and notions of beauty perhaps a visible simulation of exclusion is necessary to start a debate on the question of whether all Frenchwomen’s faces are equally beloved.
Bad Shoes and the Author Who Takes Them On
It happened in Milan at a 2008 Prada fashion show. “I was having a panic attack, my hands were shaking,” a runway model recalls. “Some of the girls were crying backstage, they were so scared.” Why the dramatics—An Act of terrorism? An explosion? Had the prime minister been assassinated? No. These women were fearful of […]
Unretouched Photos: Empowering or Just More ‘Empower-tainment’?
Recently, there have been a few high-profile examples of magazines publishing images of “real” women: plus-sized models, or celebrities free of makeup and/or Photoshop. The ensuing publicity can make it feel that we’ve won body image victories–but let’s look closer at these images to find out how much we should really be celebrating. February 2009: […]
Thumbs Down on “The Price of Beauty” from Jessica Simpson
By now, many have heard of (or seen) Jessica Simpson’s new Vh1 reality series The Price of Beauty. The premise of the show: Simpson and her best friends Ken and CaCee visit various countries to discover what each considers beautiful, finding out in the process the extreme lengths that women, in particular, will go to achieve that prized image.