I really enjoy Modern Family. Not just in the "this alright, I'll leave it on" sort of way. But in the way that I'll watch each new one as it is released. So it would be silly of me to pretend not to have noticed how puberty his Ariel Winter.
Although it seemed like the kind of celebrity gossip I'd usually ignore, I was intrigued by this article about her decision to have breast reduction surgery.
My gut reaction to it was, Well, if that's what makes her feel comfortable, good for her. It's her body, let her so what she wants with it, her logic seems sound.
But after a further moment of reflection, I found myself feeling less position towards it. I still completely and wholeheartedly support Winter's right to do whatever she wants with her own body. I also think that, as far as surgical body modification goes, it doesn't seem like the kind of procedure likely to herald the start of a vanity-fuelled lifetime of dangerous surgery. It's not like she spent $86,000 trying to look like someone else. Even if it was, it would still be her body to take those risks with, her right to make those choices.
Her reasoning is actually very reasonable. It's common in women with larger breasts to experience back pain, which she describes as being horrifically bad: "I had a lot of back problems. I really couldn’t stand up straight for a
long period of time. It started to hurt so bad that I couldn’t take the
pain. My neck was hurting so bad and I actually had some problems with
my spine."
That's a very good reason to get body modifying surgery. It, along with full-body burns and mastectomies for breast cancer sufferers, is one of the main reasons breast remodelling was invented.
But it's not the only reason she gave.
In her interview with Glamour magazine, she talked about not being able to find clothes suited to her body shape. She spoke about not being able to dress in a way that was considered "appropriate" for a 17-year-old because there simply wasn't anything she could buy that suited both her figure and her age. She spoke about people talking behind her back about whether or not her breasts were real or fake from the age of 14. She talked about having to pretend to be confident with her figure because "we live in a day and age where everything you do is ridiculed". She talks about how she didn't feel respected for her work as an actress because so many media outlets focussed so much on her breasts.
"It made me feel really uncomfortable," she says, "because as women in the industry, we are totally over sexualized and treated like objects."
I, in no way, have any objection of Winter's decision.
I do, however, object entirely to the kind of society that puts a young woman under that kind of pressure.
It's reasonable to see why those things would make her feel uncomfortable, especially as it's all happening in the public eye.
But, beyond the medical benefits it offers her, I don't think it's Winter who needs to change here.
I think the attitudes of the media and the fashion industery need to change. Photographers and journalists need to stop making objectification the primary function of stories about and images of women. Clothes need to be designed with every body type in mind, not just the contemporary 'ideal'. These aren't difficult changes to make, especially compared with the number of womn - young and old, famous or not - who feel the need to resort to surgery to conform to unrealistic standards.
I don't understand why people think it's not an extreme measure to resort to invasive surgery because it's not fashionable to be big-breasted or wide-hipped or round-bellied or short-legged. It's not okay to marginalise people with normal and naturally-occuring body shapes that don't meet increasingly unattainable expectations of beauty.
I want Ariel Winter to be comfortable in her body. That means, I want her not to feel pain that occurs naturally but can be avoided through surgery. It also means that I want her to be able to look her natural self, or whatever self she chooses, without being judged for it, or ogled, or objectified, or labelled, or reduced to nothing but her looks because of it.
I want every human being to feel comfortable in the skin. I want them to feel that way without having to undergro dramatic and unnecessary surgery to feel that way. I'd like to live in a world where everyone can find clothes they feel comfortable in and where no one feels like their natural or chosen body, for whatever reason, is drawing unpleasant levels or kinds of attention.
And I don't see why this is such a controversial or unpopular opinion. I don't understand why people are preapred to accept that they're not good enough in the body they were born in, for any cosmetic or non-medical reason.
Well they are good enough
You are good enough.
Regardless of whatever part of you is too big or too small or too puffy or too saggy.
What is not good enough is the culture that tell you this is not true and, worse still, makes it actively difficult for you to believe it.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 August 2015
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
If You Want to Run a Country, Grow the Fuck Up.
I am quite openly disappointed with the state of politics in the UK. I think a lot of stupid decisions have been made in the time I've been paying attention to it, particularly in the last five years. I think that not enough is being done to educate people about politics for the general public to properly understand it, unless they go out of their way to learn. Which is difficult because political journalism is in an equally pitiful state.
Most of the things reported about politics is either scare-mongering or stupid. A lot of the governmental decisions reported are the ones that wind people up or cover up something more serious or just make it look like politicians are doing something more than wasting tax money. Of the rest, most political news is only scandal - MPs have been claiming expenses they're not entitled to or having sex with someone their not supposed to, somehow.
Or it's gossip.
Recently I was flipping through a Metro and saw an article that had no other news but that a Labour MP thought Ed Milliband was a wanker.
I don't really care what anyone thinks of anyone else. People are entitled to their opinions. And Ed Milliband isn't doing a great job of making Labour look great right now. So it's not an unreasonable opinion to have.
But it's not the kind thing that political journalism needs to be focussing on. Most of the places that actually convey useful, worthwhile information are private blogs that are committed to making sure that someone reports properly on politics because the media sure as hell isn't going to.
More importantly, it's nothing like professional to talk that way about the representative of your own party. Firstly. it makes him look childish and immature. And it shakes people's faith in the whole party. How can anyone expect them to run a country if they can't even keep their own MPs from calling them petty names?
I tried to find the article on Metro website, but I couldn't find it online. But it's not like there aren't plenty more instances of MPs slagging each other off like stroppy teenagers.
Nick Clegg was a guest on Adam Hills's The Last Leg recently and got a huge laugh by intimating that he thought Boris Johnson was more tosser than statesman. Which doesn't generate faith in the his commitment to the coalition, but it was at least on a comedy show, designed to make people laugh rather than educate people about the political situation of their country. In that kind of setting, it can be excused.
But when politicians and MPs bickering at and about each other makes the mainstream news, then it makes the country as a whole look petty and silly. If the people in charge of running the country can't even treat each other with respect, as adults and colleagues, as people who have a serious job to do and need to work together to it, then how can any of the general population feel comfortable depending on them?
It's getting worryingly common seeing people with this kind of authority behaving like toddlers. It's no wonder the UK is in worse shape than it has been in years.
Right now, the person who seems to taking politics seriously - and getting attention for it - is Eddie Izzard.
His intention to run for London mayor has been publicised for a while now. The vast majority of interviews concerning it focus on how he'll make the shift from comedy to politics work. But when he speaks about other politicians, he does it with respect even when he disagrees. He said of David Cameron:
And that's it.
He doesn't call him a prick or a wanker or a tit or a waste of public funding. Which I sometimes do. By speaking frankly and tactfully, he acknowledges that it's up to Cameron to make the decisions he wants to while he's in power. He isn't petty or childish or mean. He recognises the difference in their political views and the right of people to hold views that contrast to his own. And he doesn't judge any person's character or personality because of it.
He knows that there isn't space for bickering and name calling when it comes to something as important as running a country.
I can call politicians a tit. I am 21. (For three more days.) I am less than a year out of university. Most importantly, I am allowed to be immature sometimes because I am not in charge of a fucking country. Comedians can call politicians a tit. It's their job to make people laugh. And the fact is, it makes the general public feel good to mock the people in charge, the people who make the rules that in turn make them feel exploited.
It's different if you are also a politician. If you have any responsibility over other people's lives, you have to work together with the people who are supposed to be doing it with you. You don't achieve anything by squabbling. And you definitely can't be trusted with governing other people's lives if you don't understand that.
Izzard is about the only person behaving like an adult and it's ridiculous that there aren't more people treating the government of our country like the serious deal that it is.
Most of the things reported about politics is either scare-mongering or stupid. A lot of the governmental decisions reported are the ones that wind people up or cover up something more serious or just make it look like politicians are doing something more than wasting tax money. Of the rest, most political news is only scandal - MPs have been claiming expenses they're not entitled to or having sex with someone their not supposed to, somehow.
Or it's gossip.
Recently I was flipping through a Metro and saw an article that had no other news but that a Labour MP thought Ed Milliband was a wanker.
I don't really care what anyone thinks of anyone else. People are entitled to their opinions. And Ed Milliband isn't doing a great job of making Labour look great right now. So it's not an unreasonable opinion to have.
But it's not the kind thing that political journalism needs to be focussing on. Most of the places that actually convey useful, worthwhile information are private blogs that are committed to making sure that someone reports properly on politics because the media sure as hell isn't going to.
More importantly, it's nothing like professional to talk that way about the representative of your own party. Firstly. it makes him look childish and immature. And it shakes people's faith in the whole party. How can anyone expect them to run a country if they can't even keep their own MPs from calling them petty names?
I tried to find the article on Metro website, but I couldn't find it online. But it's not like there aren't plenty more instances of MPs slagging each other off like stroppy teenagers.
Nick Clegg was a guest on Adam Hills's The Last Leg recently and got a huge laugh by intimating that he thought Boris Johnson was more tosser than statesman. Which doesn't generate faith in the his commitment to the coalition, but it was at least on a comedy show, designed to make people laugh rather than educate people about the political situation of their country. In that kind of setting, it can be excused.
But when politicians and MPs bickering at and about each other makes the mainstream news, then it makes the country as a whole look petty and silly. If the people in charge of running the country can't even treat each other with respect, as adults and colleagues, as people who have a serious job to do and need to work together to it, then how can any of the general population feel comfortable depending on them?
It's getting worryingly common seeing people with this kind of authority behaving like toddlers. It's no wonder the UK is in worse shape than it has been in years.
Right now, the person who seems to taking politics seriously - and getting attention for it - is Eddie Izzard.
His intention to run for London mayor has been publicised for a while now. The vast majority of interviews concerning it focus on how he'll make the shift from comedy to politics work. But when he speaks about other politicians, he does it with respect even when he disagrees. He said of David Cameron:
“He is center-right, so I’m okay with that. He’s not my party — ‘It’s more about the few than the many.’ He said he wouldn’t take apart the National Health Service, and he sort of did.”
And that's it.
He doesn't call him a prick or a wanker or a tit or a waste of public funding. Which I sometimes do. By speaking frankly and tactfully, he acknowledges that it's up to Cameron to make the decisions he wants to while he's in power. He isn't petty or childish or mean. He recognises the difference in their political views and the right of people to hold views that contrast to his own. And he doesn't judge any person's character or personality because of it.
He knows that there isn't space for bickering and name calling when it comes to something as important as running a country.
I can call politicians a tit. I am 21. (For three more days.) I am less than a year out of university. Most importantly, I am allowed to be immature sometimes because I am not in charge of a fucking country. Comedians can call politicians a tit. It's their job to make people laugh. And the fact is, it makes the general public feel good to mock the people in charge, the people who make the rules that in turn make them feel exploited.
It's different if you are also a politician. If you have any responsibility over other people's lives, you have to work together with the people who are supposed to be doing it with you. You don't achieve anything by squabbling. And you definitely can't be trusted with governing other people's lives if you don't understand that.
Izzard is about the only person behaving like an adult and it's ridiculous that there aren't more people treating the government of our country like the serious deal that it is.
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Please Don't Die, Kickstarter
Why does everything I love collapse and die?
I think Kickstarter, and its crowdfunding allies (indiegogo, Patreon, and so on), are incredible. I love that someone thought them up. I love how they're used. Mostly. I love, basically, the whole idea of crowdfunded and crowdsourced work.
Personally, I love it from an artsy perspective, because everything I learn about every creative industry makes me hate it more. Seriously, don't bother going after a creative career unless you're willing to either put in all the work yourself or compromise every artist value you have. I am getting closer and closer to a sincere belief that dealing with the established media is like making pacts with every evil entity from every religion and superstition man has ever dreamed up.
Or maybe it's not all that bad and I'm just upset. But my exaggerations come from a legitimate foundation.
Crowdfunding, to me, seemed like a way around all of that. It was a way of letting people choose what they wanted to consume, rather than being forced to drink the generic toilet-water Simon Cowell expects us to accept as 'art'.
I adored everything about it. Immediately. I followed Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter adventure religiously. I've backed loads of projects on Kickstarter - music, films, games - and even when I can only offer a few pounds, I like how much more involved backers are made to feel. For instance, creators will send regular email updates on projects that have more meaning that just to sell you more crap. They write in such informal, friendly tones that you really feel their gratitude. The distance between artist and consumer, when broadened by the industry middle man, only looks wider when you've got the communal feeling of a crowdfunded project to compare.
And then I backed a project called The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a PC game based on an H. P. Lovecraft story. It was a high-profile project that get over 100,000 views in the first couple of days, not to mention shares on FaceBook and Twitter by all kinds of people. By rights, it should have done insanely well. It should have hit its goal with no trouble at all.
Instead, it got fewer than 2000 backers. Which is pitiful.
The makers of the game sent regular progress updates to everyone who pledged, thanking them for their involvement and generosity and letting them know how things were going.
On 30th October 2014, they sent their final update. It thanked everyone who had been willing to help, and regretfully informed us that the project had fallen through. It explained how they had gone about their Kickstarter campaign in huge amounts of detail - there was practically no way they could have generated more interest in their game. They tried to fathom where it had all gone wrong.
They seemed forced to conclude "Kickstarter is dying".
This is definitely something I did not want to believe, but they offered some really good statistics to back their arguments. They did everything right, but crowdfunding had failed.
And this breaks my heart.
As someone who, one day, would like to make a living doing something creative, and who thinks our arts industry is horrifically broken, I was really excited about crowdfunding.
I am well aware that it had its problems, its kinks that needed fixing. There are plenty of 'crowdfunding gone wrong' stories floating around. There are plenty of people ready to use honest crowdfunding platforms to abuse the generosity of others.
But, at its core, it is a beautiful thing.
And even the slightest suggestion that people have already given up on it disappoints the hell out of me.
I think Kickstarter, and its crowdfunding allies (indiegogo, Patreon, and so on), are incredible. I love that someone thought them up. I love how they're used. Mostly. I love, basically, the whole idea of crowdfunded and crowdsourced work.
Personally, I love it from an artsy perspective, because everything I learn about every creative industry makes me hate it more. Seriously, don't bother going after a creative career unless you're willing to either put in all the work yourself or compromise every artist value you have. I am getting closer and closer to a sincere belief that dealing with the established media is like making pacts with every evil entity from every religion and superstition man has ever dreamed up.
Or maybe it's not all that bad and I'm just upset. But my exaggerations come from a legitimate foundation.
Crowdfunding, to me, seemed like a way around all of that. It was a way of letting people choose what they wanted to consume, rather than being forced to drink the generic toilet-water Simon Cowell expects us to accept as 'art'.
I adored everything about it. Immediately. I followed Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter adventure religiously. I've backed loads of projects on Kickstarter - music, films, games - and even when I can only offer a few pounds, I like how much more involved backers are made to feel. For instance, creators will send regular email updates on projects that have more meaning that just to sell you more crap. They write in such informal, friendly tones that you really feel their gratitude. The distance between artist and consumer, when broadened by the industry middle man, only looks wider when you've got the communal feeling of a crowdfunded project to compare.
And then I backed a project called The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a PC game based on an H. P. Lovecraft story. It was a high-profile project that get over 100,000 views in the first couple of days, not to mention shares on FaceBook and Twitter by all kinds of people. By rights, it should have done insanely well. It should have hit its goal with no trouble at all.
Instead, it got fewer than 2000 backers. Which is pitiful.
The makers of the game sent regular progress updates to everyone who pledged, thanking them for their involvement and generosity and letting them know how things were going.
On 30th October 2014, they sent their final update. It thanked everyone who had been willing to help, and regretfully informed us that the project had fallen through. It explained how they had gone about their Kickstarter campaign in huge amounts of detail - there was practically no way they could have generated more interest in their game. They tried to fathom where it had all gone wrong.
They seemed forced to conclude "Kickstarter is dying".
This is definitely something I did not want to believe, but they offered some really good statistics to back their arguments. They did everything right, but crowdfunding had failed.
And this breaks my heart.
As someone who, one day, would like to make a living doing something creative, and who thinks our arts industry is horrifically broken, I was really excited about crowdfunding.
I am well aware that it had its problems, its kinks that needed fixing. There are plenty of 'crowdfunding gone wrong' stories floating around. There are plenty of people ready to use honest crowdfunding platforms to abuse the generosity of others.
But, at its core, it is a beautiful thing.
And even the slightest suggestion that people have already given up on it disappoints the hell out of me.
Saturday, 5 July 2014
Go suck a dick, media.
It offends me that when I typed 'm' into a search box, the first
suggestion was 'Magaluf girl'. I can assume with a fair amount of confidence that I don't need to explain what I mean by the story about the Magaluf girl. I don't care about the Magaluf girl. So
she sucked some dick. It wasn't classy, but it also wasn't news.
I don't care how much dick she sucked. She - you - I - everyone - has the right to suck as much or as little dick as they like, for their own or others' pleasure, in exchange for goods, services, money, whatever, as long as they do it of their own free will, and they have the right not to be judged for doing so. She can suck all of the dick in the world and it won't make a difference to my life. Fact is, if I want to know about people sucking dicks, I'll go out of my way to find people sucking dicks. There is plenty of it out there without it also being in the news. So maybe, by society's current standards, it was tacky to exchange twenty blowies for one alcopop, or whatever it was, but if she thought it was a fair trade then that's her call to make.
Personally, I resent the fact that the media has insisted that I have to hear about it, when there are much more important things happening in the world. I've been reading recently about scientists finding the part of the brain that switches on consciousness. I've been reading about secret paedophiles in our government. I've been reading about disabled and mentally ill people protesting because they can't afford to live because of the meagre benefits they get from our twisted government. These are all far more important than the fact that some girl sucked a few dicks, but all have been ignored by the general public because all they are about is that a girl sucked a few dicks.
This is why I loathe humanity. There are more interesting things to read about, things which are more valuable to humans in general, than "lol at the slut", which is effectively what we've been given here in place of actual news.
What people choose to do with their own and other peoples' bodies is their business and no one else's. If they choose to tell their friends or tweet about it or post videos of it online, that's their decision. Sex between consenting adults is not and never should be in the news. News about rape cases, fine, people need to know how to deal with predators and abusive people, to know that the law and the government won't tolerate people treating each other like that, et cetera, et cetera. But this is just gossip, and it's clogging up the social consciousness to the extent that it is pushing out things that actually qualify as news.
And because it is apparently far more interesting than anything that actually matters, here is a dick (from Wikipedia):
I don't care how much dick she sucked. She - you - I - everyone - has the right to suck as much or as little dick as they like, for their own or others' pleasure, in exchange for goods, services, money, whatever, as long as they do it of their own free will, and they have the right not to be judged for doing so. She can suck all of the dick in the world and it won't make a difference to my life. Fact is, if I want to know about people sucking dicks, I'll go out of my way to find people sucking dicks. There is plenty of it out there without it also being in the news. So maybe, by society's current standards, it was tacky to exchange twenty blowies for one alcopop, or whatever it was, but if she thought it was a fair trade then that's her call to make.
Personally, I resent the fact that the media has insisted that I have to hear about it, when there are much more important things happening in the world. I've been reading recently about scientists finding the part of the brain that switches on consciousness. I've been reading about secret paedophiles in our government. I've been reading about disabled and mentally ill people protesting because they can't afford to live because of the meagre benefits they get from our twisted government. These are all far more important than the fact that some girl sucked a few dicks, but all have been ignored by the general public because all they are about is that a girl sucked a few dicks.
This is why I loathe humanity. There are more interesting things to read about, things which are more valuable to humans in general, than "lol at the slut", which is effectively what we've been given here in place of actual news.
What people choose to do with their own and other peoples' bodies is their business and no one else's. If they choose to tell their friends or tweet about it or post videos of it online, that's their decision. Sex between consenting adults is not and never should be in the news. News about rape cases, fine, people need to know how to deal with predators and abusive people, to know that the law and the government won't tolerate people treating each other like that, et cetera, et cetera. But this is just gossip, and it's clogging up the social consciousness to the extent that it is pushing out things that actually qualify as news.
And because it is apparently far more interesting than anything that actually matters, here is a dick (from Wikipedia):
 |
| See the non-effect it has on your life? Now go do something useful. |
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