How French Women Aren’t “Real”
I have just returned from happily linking “s-turns” on the slops of the French Alps. Whilst I was there I had the opportunity to speak to a couple of French girls my own age, who were, to my surprise, as politics mad as I am. After discussing everyone from Obama to Sarkozy and letting them know my disdain for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, it was time for lunch.
Now, since French women famously “don’t get fat‘ I couldn’t help mentioning that my political party had decided to pass a motion aiming at making advertisers show to what degree they had airbrushed their adverts…
Pourquoi?
Well, don’t adverts make you feel ‘inferior’ or put too much pressure on you to be thin? After looking at me like I was a space cadet for good few moment they simply shrugged, “non”. Admittedly they confessed to reading “Vogue” more often than the french equivalent of “Now” or “Heat”. To them Lagerfeld is a modern day ‘Picasso’, it is art. The adverts are simply not considered in the same nature or afforded the same status that Jo Swinson has incorrectly granted them.
As one of our few female MPs, Swinson should be in my big book of contemporary feminist heroes. Yet I completely abhor the “Real Women” campaign and its correlating motion and I continue to object to it on practical, libertarian and feminist grounds. On a practical level the rest of the political community gave a collective sigh of “ah bless”, it made us look twee and amateur. Speaking to Lynne Featherstone after the motion had been passed she described the motion as being about “honesty” and that’s a great thing. However, the Real Women campaign isn’t about honesty in advertising, it’s about honesty in advertising regarding womens bodies only. If it was truly about honesty in advertising then it should have a motion to itself including all advertising (including the degrading treatment of men by some advertisers) and not including any womens issues.
The fact of the matter is that the “Real Women” motion was a shill. It included issues as diverse as domestic violence and equal pay; issues that could (and should) have been afforded meaty motions in their own right. Yet theses more pressing issues were given the half-baked treatment in order to cynically use them as ‘window dressing’ for Swinson’s pseudo-censorship. This alone is testament to the tenuousness of the airbrushing segment; it could never have stood alone.
So where next?! We’re stuck with a poor motion that skims the meaty issues and makes a meaningless gesture at advertisers. You should not need to be told that fashion adverts are not true to life any more that you need to be told a Picasso isn’t figuratively accurate. The “Real Women” campaign is patronisingly maternalistic if nothing else. What women need is to get back to feminist basics. Women need to stop objectifying the women in fashion adverts. We turn them into rods and then proceed to flagellate ourselves with them.
The “Real Women” campaign has been an orgy of weeping an wailing: completely emotional and irrational. It provides a salve for our self-inflicted wounds but has also granted us a greater capacity to inflict them and never let them truly heal. How women can truly help themselves is by truly ending this masochistic cycle. We need to see fashion as art. Art is useless; if an object has any function other than to aesthetically please it is no longer art. Therefore there is no reason for us to worry about not looking like a Chanel ad. Obviously that’s easier said than done but it is certainly preferable than turning yourself into a perpetual victim.
Placing limits on the human expression of consenting adults is a violation of their intrinsic human rights. It is also completely unnecessary. If you can’t break the cycle of masochistic madness then be an adult and withdraw your consent. Stop buying the products that are advertised in a way you find objectionable an the magazines that advertise them.
Swinson obviously cares about women a great deal. In this case, however, good intentions have not made good policy and done women a disservice in the process. This orgy of self-depreciation has to stop. To end on the words of my French friend: “Of course aesthetics are important but if I’m not fit I’m not free to do the things I want to do.” It’s time to stop being “Real” and start being down to earth!
DISCLAIMER: THE INDIVIDUAL PICTURED SNOWBOARDING IN THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS NOT ACTUALLY ME…
December 21st, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I normally just read the site from RSS feeds from afar but felt compelled to leave a comment on this one.
I absolutely agree to the points that have been made here. This motion, in particular, and the entire campaign is not one I’ve been able to get behind for a lot of the reasons you have stated. Until now I’ve kept rather quiet about it on the basis that it’s possible to be called sexist if you are a man disagreeing with a motion that ostensibly gives additional rights/privileges to women.
The entire campaign smacks, a little bit to me, of a populist campaign in an attempt to gain press time and publicity whilst a big majority of the population will think it’s incredibly unimportant compared to major issues that currently need debating. I don’t think it’s going to do the party any good and I don’t think the campaign will actually lead anywhere other than comments in response to an ASA adjudication every now and then.
In essence there should be stricter rules for the advertising side of it – but applied across the board and to many more areas than simply airbrushing. As much as I agree that an eye cream should not airbrush to give the impression of better results for a product – this is more related to lies in advertising, as you say, than the Real Women campaigns wider crusading message.
I’m glad someone else, especially female, has summarised my thoughts on the topic rather succinctly!
December 21st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
DISCLAIMER: THE INDIVIDUAL PICTURED SNOWBOARDING IN THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS NOT ACTUALLY ME…
I’m glad about that – she’s got quite a fat arse :o)
December 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
As the person who proposed the amendment to the Real Women motion at Lib Dem conference, I think it would have been nice if these words could have been given in a speech during the debate, rather than in a blog posting several months later when they won’t make any difference.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I think you have a lot of room to improve your coalition building techniques Bernard.
That was a very good post Sara. Would you consider submitting it to LDV for publication?
December 21st, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Bernard,
To be honest I did consider submitting a speakers card to this debate. My analysis hadn’t quite reached this level of sophistication at the time.
Also I don’t think it would have made much difference. In a big hall where people make policy the way we do emotionality is always going to trump rationality. The way we make policy can sometimes be the LibDems worst enemy – I feel another blog post coming on…
I think at the time the opposition I voiced was flippant. I just instinctively hated the motion. I didn’t actually ask myself ‘why’. And I disagree that it won’t make any difference, we’re in it for the long haul.
Paul,
Maybe.
Rgds,
Sara
December 21st, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Paul: I did my best – I had an article on LDV, I raised the issue in various discussion forums, I spoke to some people at conference, although there wasn’t much time before the motion was debated on the Saturday afternoon. There’s only so much I can do.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Real woman is a stupid campaign and I am glad that my party hasn’t tried to bring in something as silly as this.
Magazine editors and advertisers will always try to use the most attractive image no matter what. This can be done by using makeup, flattering lights, pressuring models to be painfully skinny, etc. Banning airbrushing is not going to dramatically increase teenagers self-esteem. Support and education might but those aren’t easy, publicity grabbing answers.
Is Jo Swinson going to lead the fight to ban makeup next? After all if touching up a digital image isn’t being “honest” as Lynne Featherstone claims then how is using makeup or high heeled shoes? Jo Swinson must think that women are very fragile to be harmed by these things and not too bright if women do not realise that images are manipulated without Jo’s help. I give women a little more respect then Jo is doing.
Sufficient to say that agree with everything Sara has said in her blog post here.
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