drumrbaxj:

vivianemae:

everythingbutharleyquinn:

clownyprincess:

pixiejenna:

Sexy is all about attitude and personality for me.

But her curves sure didn’t hurt ~grins~

poisonivykisses:

savannah-marie:

iheartsirius:

christellegonza:

(via i-know-its-hard-to-fall, chasingstallionducks)

She was a size 16 and still sexy as all hell.

amen to this

Here, I go, off on one of my little tangents.

Yes, Marilyn was sexy and hell and she was curvy, variously so, and sexy is definitely very much about attitude and personality.

But I have some major issues with the way her image is used to promote ‘healthy body image’ for a few reasons:

1. For much of her on-screen career, Marilyn was TINY. Seriously, watch a movie like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She was still curvy, but she was incredibly petite. HER AVERAGE WAIST MEASUREMENT WAS 24 INCHES. 24!!!! The woman ain’t a size 16 by what we understand it today.

2. And regardless, a size 16 in the 50s was ENTIRELY DIFFERENT to a size 16 today. It was a much smaller size. It had different measurements. Equating it to a size 16 of today is incredibly misleading and, frankly, insulting to the experience of size 16 women of today.

3. Marilyn’s body size was not consistent throughout her life. Like most people, she went up and down. She also tended to gain weight when she was troubled (which is not reflective of someone at ease with their body) or had serious health problems (as in the photo above, taken not long before she died and while she was dealing with drug and alcohol dependency, severe depression AND was medicated - on drugs that caused side-effects - for the endometriosis she suffered from. Do we really want to be celebrating her poor health and drug-induced health impacts as reflected in her changed body-size towards the end of her life? She was in pain and miserable for much of this time). She actually worked hard to control and maintain a smaller body size, exercising regularly and being one of the first high-profile women to advocate weight-training for women.

4. Which leads to the crux of the issue: the problem with calling Marilyn Monroe a size 16 poster child for a different, supposedly more enlightened time when ‘real women with real curves’ were supposedly ”IN” is that it is a LIE. Eating disorders and preoccupations with body size and reshaping the body have existed for centuries and they very much existed at the time of Marilyn’s life. There WAS pressure on Hollywood actresses to be slim and shapely. Marilyn struggled with body dysmorphia herself. She was not just happy and content with her body, as many women of her time weren’t just as they aren’t today and projecting this false notion that they were and everyone loved big, curvy girls (and anyone calling Marilyn ‘big’ is actually buying into the screwed-up perception of body-size we have as she could never ever have truly been called plus-size and it is undermining of the issues real plus-sized women go through to call her that) allows the misperception that eating disorders and body dysmorphia are a modern invention which prevents us from truly understanding them and the way they are absolutely entwined with our history. It ignores the vast number of undergarments women in Marilyn’s time used to create a slender silhouette that were simply every-day wear. Diet pills existed in Marilyn’s time. Dieting in general existed in Marilyn’s time. ALL beauty books of the time advocated slimness as attractive and derided fatness as unattractive. Advertisements based around remaining slim for the satisfaction of one’s husband and exercise/dieting products aimed at women existed in Marilyn’s time - go look up one of those vintage ad websites if you don’t believe me. You think that media is problematic today, you won’t believe your eyes reading it from a time when sexism was overt and entirely acceptable. Additionally, like anything else, body types go in and out of fashion. In the very decade Marilyn was born in, the favoured female body type was ‘boyish’ - long, slender, slight-hipped & small-boobed. Did we all forget the roaring twenties?

It is also erasing Marilyn’s own history and experience of herself and her own body and that is not fair to her.

I think it is dangerous to get caught up on this FALSE idea of some fictional “good old days” when body-image issues didn’t exist. They did and women - including Marilyn Monroe - were affected by them.

And one tiny little niggle further - the phrasing: “she was a size 16 and still sexy” implies that, rather than social conditioning leading to fatphobia, there IS something inherently unattractive about being larger in body. This phrasing suggests that, “even despite” being a size 16 she was sexy - she overcame the terrible obstacle of being a size 16 to triumph in being sexy. Yes, even two simple little words can change the entire meaning of what someone says, even if their intention is completely different.

Love Marilyn, adore her, preach her sexiness regardless of whatever size she was - she was a goddess and I adore her - but please leave the ‘she was a size 16 and people back then thought all curvy women were sexy’ rhetoric out of it. It simply isn’t true. It’s a bandaid applied to a gushing wound.

Just reblogging this thing I ranted about on my other blog a long, long time ago. My feelings on it haven’t changed at all - just reblogging it cos that ‘size zero’ quote is pissing me the fuck off.

One other thing I’d like to point out with regards this macro - why the fuck is it so important for women’s bodies to be desired by men? “Even when” our thighs touch?

(via burnoutnotfadeaway)

I haven’t read this rant before, but I love it.

So true, and something that is also prominent in the Burlesque scene, the idea or ‘real’ women.