#VSFashionShow: Twitter's View on Women

So the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show happened recently and if you went on Twitter, I imagine many of you had the same experience as me. The #VSFashionShow hashtag pretty much exploded with body-shaming, objectifying, and just generally misogynistic commentary. Just by looking through my timeline, I was close to throwing up. Here are some highlights:

These reactions perfectly demonstrate society’s treatment of women’s bodies in 3 ways.

1)      The impossible standard of perfection.

Women are shamed for being too fat, and they’re shamed for being too skinny. People try to disguise their body-shaming by saying it’s about the person’s health, but how much can you actually know about someone’s health just by looking at their body? People love to make the assumption that a skinny woman doesn’t eat normally and that a fat woman eats too much, but that’s not true. Different people have different healthy weights and bodyshapes that you can’t understand by just looking at them. The point is that there is no universal “healthy” image, so people can stop pretending that exists and acknowledge their unrealistic expectations for a woman’s body. Only by acknowledging that there’s no “too fat” or “too skinny” can we move away from this culture that keeps trying to put circle blocks into a square hole.

2)      The pressure on women to meet that standard.

I don’t think I screen capped any, but there were hundreds of tweets from girls talking about their plans to diet and/or exercise to try to achieve the Victora’s Secret Angel Body. Many of them expressed guilt over what they had already eaten for dinner, and even more mentioned feeling depressed because they’ll never have the perfect body. Although this pressure definitely comes from a male dominated society, women are also responsible for creating an environment that encourages and perpetuates these concerns. I’m not saying that this is their fault, but there are endless sources of support for self-hate. For example, every major magazine that’s targeted for women had someone livetweeting the fashion show and reinforcing the pressure to fit that image. If anyone could look at these tweets and not see a problem with the culture surrounding women’s bodies, I suggest looking at their medical history for brain damage.

3)      The value of a woman being decided by her appearance.

This is a hard one to summarize in one sentence, as it refers to all sorts of judgments made about a woman based on what she shows on the outside. Revealing clothes = slut. Make up = insecure. Nice/expensive clothes = stuck up. Uggs/leggings = dumb, rich, white girl. They can get a lot more complicated, but you get the picture. There’s this ubiquitous idea that a woman who puts effort into her appearance has something to hide, or at least isn’t comfortable being her true self. Guys have decided to counteract this idea by telling women not to wear make-up because they find the “natural look” more attractive. First of all, this implies that women should base their appearance on what they think guys want to see. And second, what most guys are really saying is they want a girl who looks pretty without putting on make-up. Regardless, there shouldn’t be any label or value applied based on the way a woman chooses to present herself, whether “fake” or “natural”.

All I'm saying is that maybe it's time we stop acting like we have a claim on every body of a woman that we see, and stop feeling justified sharing our opinions on them. Also maybe everyone should acknowledge that we don't treat men's bodies the same way at all. If there were a male equivalent of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, the reaction would be completely different. Maybe we should be teaching women that there is no "wrong" body. It still astounds me that that's not universally recognized, and I'm sure you feel the same way. Stay rad, pals.