Fashion Friday: Pinup Style Edition

(Yet another installment in our sporadically-updated series. Tune in for the next episode sometime in the fall!)

Speaking of the unrealistically skinny appearance of most models, I found this article about a trend in which girls take inspiration from pinups from the 40s and 50s, saying “to women who have grown up with the spray-tanned, skinny models as their beauty ideal, this look is new and refreshing, and even groundbreaking” and that it “'is a way of being feminine without looking like a little girl in pigtails and ruffles. Wearing stockings and high heels, there’s something fundamentally adult about that'...They draw on a pervasive nostalgia for 'more innocent days when sexuality wasn’t portrayed as so hard core and in your face.'”

It's certainly interesting, but at the same time I'm more than a little meh about embracing something that was originally about the objectification of women, even if it does involve a far more realistic approach to women's figures and a much more classy/glamorous way of dressing. You can dress in a chic and classy way without necessarily taking your inspiration from pinups. Thoughts?

College Teaches You More Than Math

(Now that finals have blissfully faded into the past-that-is-no-longer, I feel like I can finally post this)

One thing that college has taught me is that there are very few woman who are truly happy with the way they look. I am by no means thin, and I start seeing red a bit whenever somebody pats the fashion industry on the back for being "realistic" and including "curvy size eights" ::eyeroll:: When I was in high school, I looked askance at all of the thin girls I knew and thought bitterly that surely they must be happy -- they were thin for crying out loud!

Then I got to college, and listened to first my roommate, then the rest of the dorm moan about how fat and ugly they were. How could this be? This group of girls moaning about their weight included a beauty who ran a mile every day, my roommate who is curvaceous in the absolute best sense of that word and an assortment of sixes, eights and tens who were all perfectly healthy, curves and all. Maybe we weren't all in the best of shape, but we could hardly be labeled overweight, let alone obese. Seeing these girls (whom I regarded as pretty-near-perfectly-sized) just as unhappy with their figures as I was with mine astonished me.

Honestly, I don't have anything else very profound to say. We've all been sold a bill of goods* by the people behind the checkout glossies, and I can't imagine that attaining the nigh-on impossible ideal body that they present would make me (or anybody else) happy. As cheesy and trite and cliched and banal as it sounds, who you are on the inside really does matter more.

(No, duh, disclaimer: losing weight for reasons of health is a different kettle of fish from losing weight for the sake of societal pressures and conventions and fitting into the popular clothes)

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*You don't suppose the fact that fashion magazines are at least half advertisements has anything to do with this, hmm? Buy this face cream, that sweater, those boots, and be THIN! PRETTY! HAPPY! It's almost like they're businesses... ::le eyeroll::

Love in a Modern World

First off, a refreshing defense of true love in a shallow, cynical culture by Fr. Longenecker.

Followed by a thought-provoking project, wherein Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano photoshops classic nude paintings, nipping the waistline and, ahem, augmenting the bust. More than a little depressing, no? Honestly, it surprised me how wrong the thinner versions looked, practically emaciated. So much for the modern standards of beauty.

Funny But Sad

{H/T: Modestia}

only skin-deep

My mother just sent me this beautiful article by Laurel Rae Mathewson:

The year before I was a senior in high school, I went on an exchange to France. I got skinny. When I returned to America, I felt great, looked great, and received high praise. That post-France pinnacle of svelteness is where my troubles with food began in earnest. Any more pounds represented failure, a deviation from "my best self." I began eating emotionally. I gained 10 pounds.

At New Year's I decided to get serious about getting back to the "right" size. In good-student fashion, I read reputable books and magazines and followed all the rules. I was the ideal dieter. I ran and lifted weights. Mathematical tricks of weight-loss became second nature: The calories in an apple (small, medium, or large); which foods satisfy most for the fewest calories (pancakes are great for this). I steadily lost 1.5 pounds a week for eight weeks and was in better shape than ever. My dieting was officially healthy, nutritionally balanced, and utterly obsessive.

During winter quarter I reached the nadir of my journey with food and with God. I felt inadequate and disgusting. I desperately wanted God's help in ending this vicious cycle, but God never seemed to fully deliver. When I was stuffed, bloated, and incapacitated from a binge, I would pray, weeping: Take this from me. Help me. I don't want to be like this. I believed salvation would come from obeying the legalistic idol of strict self-control and self-improvement that I thought God endorsed. As I wrote in my journal:

God did not create me to consume my time worrying about calories. I know how sick it is ... so why don't I stop? Why do I create my own problems? ... Am I afraid of perfect happiness? … Why else would I sabotage all the gifts that I've been given, keep myself from thriving? … My thoughts disturb and distract me in lecture, in church, in conversation. … I count every calorie that goes into my mouth; yet it doesn't stop me from eating an entire package of cookie dough.

Perfect happiness. I thought it was mine for the making—and that God expected nothing less.

Food is a gift from God to be enjoyed, especially with others, creating communion and fellowship. It's not meant to be an idol. Like sex, like work, like material comfort, if we seek to satisfy the hunger of our souls with food alone, we will remain empty. I used food to cope with the spiritual void of an "estrangement" from God, created by my own conviction that I could perfect myself, given enough determination and discipline. Disordered eating was my symptom of accepting neither grace nor my need for it.

Read the rest of the article here. It's so good, I wanted to copy and paste the whole thing, but I felt like that may be slightly unethical (proper internet/blogging citation procedure is still slightly shrouded in mystery to me.) The authoress brings up beautiful points about the struggles of body image, from the unique perspective of a woman of Faith.

One of my favorite lines from her article is: "I was created for a higher purpose than a size 6." It's so true. The flesh is weak-it's easier to become a size 6 than to become a person filled with grace. And in a culture that's obsessed with externals, it's so easy to loose sight of the fact that beauty is not only skin-deep. Beauty is radiated through a smile, through loving eyes, through a kind voice and a listening ear. Not that the happiest girls are the most beautiful girls, but that the most beautiful girls are the happiest girls.

"For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; for beautiful eyes, look for the good in others. And for poise, walk in the knowledge that you are never alone." --Audrey Hepburn