How To Look Good Naked

Lifetime's show How to Look Good Naked (HTLGN) is a show that "teaches women of all shapes and sizes to go from self-loathing to self-loving without resorting to interventions like extreme dieting or cosmetic surgery" (Lifetime). Instead of working to change bodies, HTLGN focuses on changing minds. The participant is given new undergarments, new clothes, a new hairstyle, and new makeup techniques--all to help properly dress her body type. At the end of the show, the women have a full-on 'Hollywood' photo shoot--wearing nothing but a sheet. In the American version (I'm not sure how the British version ends), the final photo is blown up and displayed on a building, and the women feel great about it! They have a new-found confidence and are completely comfortable with their previously hated and distorted body.

Does it ever work that way? Can women really be convinced they're beautiful and have great bodies simply by putting on a new bra? As Naomi Wolf points out in The Beauty Myth, all women, regardless of their beauty, believe that "the ideal [is] someone tall, thin, white, and blonde, a face without pores, asymmetry, or flaws, someone wholly 'perfect,' and someone whom they felt, in one way or another, they were not" (Wolf 1). Regardless of how beautiful a woman is, she never feels it. It seems out of this world that in the amount of time that it takes to film an hour television show, a woman can completely turn her views of herself around. But it certainly seems like a good idea, considering how many women can't begin this process of finding self-love on their own.

In the clip below, a participant is shown how distorted her body image is. However, to do this, the host has her judge other women based on how large or small they are in comparison.

While the participant ends up feeling better about herself, what about the other women? They were selected simply because they tummies bigger than the show's target. The 'good' intention of making one woman have a more positive body image is overshadowed by the undermining of the other women's self-confidence. Wolf titled her book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, and HTLGN is a clear demonstration of this. As the host points out, the larger women are curvaceous and soft, and as the street surveys point out, many men appreciate this body type. (And, as a side note, the street survey definitely highlights the idea that the "beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men's institutions and institutional power" [Wolf 13].) Perhaps they are among the women who "have a sense of a measure of freedom to dress up or down, put on lipstick or take it off, flaunt themselves or wear sweats--even--even, sometimes to gain or lose weight--without fearing that their value as a woman or their seriousness as a person is at stake" (Wolf 8). But here is a male host telling them that they are all inches larger than this woman who can't stand the way she looks, and they were chosen for this segment because they are attractive, but also because they are 'heavy.' How are they supposed to take that? It's a completely backhanded compliment. And they're receiving it in their underwear!

This idea of celebrating bodies at the same time as rejecting them is much more common than it appears. The term "plus-size model" feels as if the fashion industry (and magazines, television, etc.) is saying: "You're beautiful despite your size" instead of "You're beautiful." Period. End of story. The focus is constantly on the body shape of these women, which makes it seem that they are the exception instead of the norm. And are they even "normal sized"? A plus-sized model is used so a magazine/newspaper/etc. can boast that they are using "real women," but the average woman in America, aged twenty or older, "is 5'3" tall, weighs 164.7 pounds, and has a 37.6 inch waist" and wears a size 14 (Watson).  By comparison, "the average model is 5'11" tall and weighs 117 pounds," and a plus-size model might be, for example, 5'9" and a size 12 (Watson). Things such as Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty (which we've seen a few times in class, CFRB) are making steps in the right direction, but we're still not there.

These women, from CFRB, are definitely a part of a diverse group of body shapes and skin tones. Some have tattoos, others freckles, and others wrinkles. By putting together a large group instead of one woman, CFRB is doing a better job of making women with real bodies appear as the norm. Glamour Magazine stepped on board with this idea of "real" or "normal" beauty in October 2009 by placing an image of a "normal," non-model in their magazine. They drew no extra attention to the shape or size of this woman--she was simply there, looking beautiful.

So why aren't we "there yet," as I stated above the CFRB image? On a supplemental article on Glamour's website, user "abby95" brought up that it is not enough to feature different body shapes. It is not enough to show women who are "average" sized. It is not enough to call these women beautiful because they are curvy. She writes: "I find it funny that although we have all this hype about how we shouldn't think we're fat and about eating disorders and so on. What about the women with bad skin? Braces? Bad hair? Scars? Major cellulite? Stretch marks? Where are they? Sure, these women are plus-size models (read: most of them average), but its not exactly helping the self-esteem of those who have other body image issues. We're practically ignoring everything except the fight of the "fatness" body image" ("Supermodels"). There is much more at stake than diet and exercise. Women put on makeup because they feel they have to--to look "normal." Foundation and concealer aren't accessories (I consider lipstick and eyeshadow to be more accessory-like), they are things we use to attempt to fix a beauty standard of smooth, blemish-free skin. Maybe mousse or hair gel are "hair accessories," but what happens when a woman with curly hair goes product-free? The standard of female beauty goes so much beyond fat and thin, and the media has yet to embrace all of these aspects.

Outside Sources:
"How to Look Good Naked." MyLifetime.com. AETN, Web. <http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/how-to-look-good-naked>. 

Watson, Bruce. "Glamour's risky gamble on full-sized female models." Daily Finance 11 Oct. 2009: Web. <http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/glamours-risky-gamble-on-full-sized-female-models/19190929/>

"Supermodels Who Aren’t Superthin: Meet the Women Who Proudly Bared it All ." Glamour.com. Conde Nast, Oct. 2009. Web. <http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2009/10/supermodels-who-arent-superthin#slide=1>.

Come on Barbie, Let's Go Party

This imagine is simply a little side note to the more major blog posts going on in these two sections. Every Sunday (and sometimes late on Saturday nights), Frank Warren posts anonymous secrets that have been mailed to his home. While the topics range from secret candy habits to suicide prevention, this particular one caught my eye--and I don't think it's only because we've been reading about this revolution in which "gender blending in sexual politics" is occuring (Wykes 132). As Naomi Wolf states, "women must want to embody [beauty] and men must want to possess women who embody it. This embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men" (Wolf 12). However, men are now "beginning to aspire to previously feminine concerns for 'looks'", which may be stemming from the "leisure and pleasure industries, which have increasingly targeted male beauty and body consumers through advertising" (Wykes 132). When I was in middle school, I used to rant about how some of the "popular" boys were chubby, had bad skin, had braces, etc. and all the "popular" girls were stick thin, straightened their hair, and were already wearing makeup. It bugged me, even then, that the standards that men and women were held to were so different. But, as stated by both Wilkes and this post card, the tides are turning--well, at least they may be evening.

"The Illustrated Lady"

Julia Gnuse, the most tattooed woman in the world, is inked on over 95% of her body. According to an interview conducted with the Today Show, the tattoos "are not a vanity project; they’re actually a type of camouflage" (Inbar). Gnuse suffers from a skin disorder, cutaneous porphyria, which causes her to blister when exposed to any amount of sunlight. After her first few tattoos, Gnuse succumbed to what those in the body modification community refer to as 'the itch.' And now, aside from "part of her upper lip area and the skin near her ears," her entire body is covered in tattoos instead of scars (Inbar).

Does Gnuse's use of tattoos as "camouflage" effect her beauty or how she could be considered beautiful? While her sores, if left alone in their 'natural' state, would most likely be considered to deem Gnuse ugly, grotesque, or disfigured, the tattoos change the perception of her skin in a different way.  Umberto Eco writes that "just as the decoration of a facade adds Beauty to buildings and rhetorical decoration adds Beauty to discourses, so does the human body appear beautiful thanks to natural ornaments (the navel, the gums, the breasts), as well as artificial ones (clothing and jewelry)" (113). If we were to consider tattoos artificial ornaments, it would be simple to don Gnuse's tattooss beautiful--breathtaking, even. She is more ornamented and decorated than anyone else in the world, so does that make her most beautiful?

Eco quotes Thomas Aquinas in saying that "a thing was beautiful provided that it was suited to its function, in the sense that a mutilated body--or an excessively small one--or an object incapable of correctly performing the function for which it was conceived [...] was to be considered ugly even if produced with valuable materials" (111). On one hand, Gnuse's body and skin are still capable of performing their 'normal' functions (as we discussed in class--skin functions as a protective shelter, a part representing a whole, a boundary between our body and the outside world, a place of encounter, etc.) Tattoos don't make her skin less able to protect her body or desensitize it from make it less able to protect her body. On the other hand, many would consider even a single, large tattoo to be too much and would argue against altering one's skin so heavily. A person with these views might say that Gnuse went too far and her skin no longer serves its 'normal' function, or that it no longer represents any form of 'natural' beauty. Some might say that the tattoos are a form of mutilation--even though they are "valuable materials" (enough sessions to cover an entire body must cost thousands of dollars). And while Gnuse's skin was mutilated prior to the tattoos (her scars), some might argue that her choice to battle nature lends it to be ugly.


As was discussed in class, some things that different cultures consider beautiful (lip plates, neck rings, etc.) disrupt the normal function of a  body. However, both lip plates and neck rings would be considered beautiful by Eco's standards of ornamentation--they are artificial ornaments that 'enhance' natural ornaments. It's hard for us to look at someone with a stretched neck or lip and see its beauty--to us, it looks painful, uncomfortable, unnecessary, or simply strange. These ideas of beauty, as we've seen throughout the past few sections, are clearly cultural. Are the ideas of function cultural as well? Perhaps African tribes consider stretched lips to be entirely functional, because they serve the 'purpose' they were intended: finding a partner. The function might not be necessarily about biological function, just as beauty is not necessarily about worldly perspectives.

The real questions here are: how much is too much? When can we draw the line between 'normal' and 'strange'? Are we even capable of drawing this line, as long as the parts are still functional? Is function a valid argument of beauty?




Outside sources:
Inbar, Michael. "Ink up! Meet the world’s most tattooed woman." Todayshow.com. MSNBC, 27 May 2010. Web. <http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37374413>.