It’s hard for women to keep track of which specific body part is currently being shamed to death, when it seems to be open season on all of them. But even by the demented standards of female self-flagellation, the emergence of “arm vagina” – aka the slight fold of flesh created where the average arm meets the average body – is a low point.Sample pic here.
If you’re reading this in a public place and unable immediately to check whether you have arm vagina, then let me help; you almost certainly do. Everyone does. It’s basically a normal human armpit, which tends to involve some spare capacity in the flesh department, what with it being difficult to raise your arm otherwise.
But in Hollywood, having a freakishly fat-free underarm, as taut and smooth as a plastic Barbie doll’s, is apparently the new goal...
From size zero to the “thigh gap”, or having legs so stick thin they don’t touch in the middle, today’s freaky A-list neurosis so easily becomes tomorrow’s fitness blogger’s goal, and next week’s impossible aspiration for your daughter. This stuff is infectious, and it stops being a frivolous issue when over half of British teenage girls say they’re unhappy with their looks, and when a smaller but still heartbreaking number feel driven to starve and punish the flesh that they have begun to see as repulsive.
Somehow we need to get across to girls that this is bonkers, unreal, insane: twisted norms that have nothing to do with their own lives or with the boys they will encounter...
13 January 2018
In case you were curious what an "arm vagina" is
From an op-ed in The Guardian:
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On a side note: we should also stop describing things as a vagina when we clearly mean to compare or show a vulva. Girls are already confused enough about their own anatomy.
ReplyDeleteThigh gap is actually quite common on fit/normal women (as in, healthy and not stick thin) provided the outset of their trochanter is sufficiently shaped. Some women would have to gain a significant and likely unhealthy amount of weight for the gap to close, whereas some women might never have such a thing no matter how fat and muscle free they fall. For a given height the length of the femoral neck can vary by centimeters, among other anatomical variations that contribute. What I'm getting at is that such things are also normal, and we should neither be shaming women for [having a gap, or whatever this week's thing is] any more than we should be shaming them for not having one. The above article clearly attempts to make women who have such a thing feel inferior and broken.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment except that I think your last sentence mischaracterizes the Guardian article author's sentiment. She is debunking these arbitrary standards, not promoting them.
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