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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I am not usually a fan of Ms. Traister's work. However, she is dead on with this. It is a bit disconcerting that a woman who shapes many young girl's views about the world would express this particular sentiment.
This was an excellent piece and I normally don't agree with Rebecca.
At the very least this editor should acknowledge what she said was thoughtless and try to refrain from making similar statements in the future.
And just maybe, she could start asking those designers why they make clothes that would only look good on a small segment of society, so small, that even to attractive fit women like herself, the clothes seem out of reach.
How about if they are a member of the majority of the population which is overweight and will pay for it now and in the future (along with everyone else). Should they be happy with the way they look. It's been pretty well documented that cosmetic concerns can be more effective at motivating people to change serious health problems than explaining the health issue directly.
Is anyone really surprised that Atoosa Rubenstei, editor of Seventeen, is into starving herself for pretty clothes? She works for a magazine that exists for one reason, and one reason only - to sell products to girls. In order to better sell those products, the editorial slant creates a perceived need for those products by telling women then need to fix themselves - fix their weight, wrinkles, cellulite, sun damage, hair color, hair highlights, you name it.
I have always found something insidious about these magazines talking about self-esteem, pretending to be 'for' women while secretly undermining them with the message that they need endless, endless fixing.
Girls are never going to get positive messages from the fashion rags. To suggest this is, or should be, a goal of these magazines is laughable. How many men do you think seriously see Esquire and Maxim and GQ acting as a compass by which to navigage the world, and a legitimate means for measuring their self-worth? Those magazines sell things to their audience too, but mostly it's stuff that purports to make a man's life better, more interesting, more fun. Not improving the man, but the man's life. And, with Esquire at least, there is some attention to the life of the mind - the fiction is good and the political essays are intersting. And any objectifcation going on is of the oppostie sex, and for pleasure. Women's mags, by contrast, objectify our own sex....and nearly everything in these periodicals points to improving the woman's physical self, with the implied promise that this will bring the rewards of landing a man.
I wasn't surprised to see Rubenstein's remark, and I think it's hypocritical to ask her to pretend she really doesn't think that way, when flipping through her magaizne for five seconds tells us that yes, she clearly DOES feel that way...as do all of the contributors and advertisers comprising the magazine's content. It would be downright bizarre to have this woman espousing a healthy diet and a 'we're all beautiful on the inside' message when the value of the products she is selling is predicated on the idea that no, women aren't good enough as they are, and never will be.
The answer isn't for Atoosa to become a hypocrite, mouthing the party line about loving youself for who you are no matter what size you are, all the while filling the pages of the mag with pictures of rail thin models, expensive handbags and shoes, a plethora of unnecessary clothing and accessories and a virtual avalanche of beauty products for hair, nails, skin, face and body that send the exact opposite message.
The answer is for women to stop lapping up the crap the fashion rags sell them. It's not likely to happen, though, until women stop accepting and perpetuating the notion that beauty and sex appeal are the most important qualities for a woman to possess. Stop blaming men, stop blaming the media....take responsibility and stop playing the game. Stop buying magazines that promise to tell you how 101 ways to make him wild/lose weight/firm up that cellulite/look 10 years younger. Don't buy it and don't buy into it.
The reasons mens' mags focus on looks for men(which they do, make no mistake) but on other stuff as well is becaue in addition to looking good men need to do all the other things to get anywhere with women. It seems to me that women read fashion mags because they like them, not because they feel forced to do so in order to acquire what they need to be attractive.
I agree that Atoosa Rubenstein's comments contribute to a culture of self-loathing that many girls must confront and overcome. I say this as an "ugly duckling" myself who has grappled with these issues, and I certainly do not take them lightly. However, Rebecca Traister's vitriolic attack on Ms. Rubenstein smacks of hypocrisy: not even a year ago, Salon published an article by Kate Hahn (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/06/24/gut/index.html) in which Ms. Hahn admits to the exact same sentiments as Ms. Rubenstein. I don't recall Ms. Traister blasting her home publication last June when that article ran. Do Salon's editors feel that mean-spirited attacks like Ms. Traister's are fine, as long as the critical lens doesn't turn inward? Or do they simply assume that their readers won't have long enough memories to spot the contradiction? As for Ms. Traister, has she only recently developed these passionate views about potential damage to girls' self-esteem, or did she just not want to bite the hand that feeds her when her bosses ran Ms. Hahn's article nine months ago?
Erin,
I don't think the target audience for Salon is 14-year-old girls, unlike Seventeen. That makes more than a little difference, no?
Stop buying your daughters fashion magazines if you don't want them absorbing the fashion magazine message. Don't buy them, yourself. A magazine has no obligation to raise your daughters' self-esteem.
Buy your daughters books, instead. Buy them skateboards. Buy them oil paints, sewing machines, or real estate. But don't buy them fashion magazines and then cry when the fashion magazines say the same crap they've always said. You can't count on Atoosa to be a role model. Be a role model, yourself.
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