A Response To The Criticism of Kate Upton’s Body: Why We Need An Empowering Community of Women

On June 10^th, 2012 the “pro-skinny” blog, Skinny Gossip, published a post titled, “Kate Upton Is Well Marbled” that called her “thick,” “vulgar,” and “plus-sized.” The post writes, “Huge thighs, NO waist, big fat floppy boobs, terrible body definition – she looks like a squishy brick. Is this what American women are “striving” for now? The lazy, lardy look?...Has fashion become this?”

Since the release of this article, several feminist and fashion websites have responded. Jenna Sauers of Jezebel wrote a wonderful piece that highlights the tragedy of the website’s intolerance of Upton’s body image. She writes,  “If Kate fucking Upton's thighs are not immune from public dissection, then who is? The truth is, none of us are. As long as we live in a culture that tells women that being admired and desired for the way we look is merely the normal condition of womanhood, something fundamental to our sex, it will be considered acceptable to evaluate women for their decorative value.”

Hayley Phelan at Fashionista made similar claims about the bind that contemporary women find themselves between being labeled emaciated and plus-sized: “So if Crystal Renn is too thin, and Kate Upton is too fat, then what is the “ideal”? Can models–or regular women, for that matter–ever win when it comes to weight? The answer, as it is now, is no.”

Sauers and Phelan are right: the anxiety over visual representations of women in the media and the projections made on to everyday women is undeniable and it will not go away any time soon.

What informs these distorted body image fantasies? Is it the fashion industry, which has a long history of supporting unhealthy images of women? Perhaps, but the industry is currently trying to change their tune with the recent Vogue “Health Initiative” and the new Seventeen Magazine “Body Peace Project” that came after the advocacy of a fourteen year old girl.

Is it the unrealistic expectations of heterosexual men who have impossible ideals of femininity? Maybe, but it is important to note that Upton herself reached fame on the cover of Sports Illustrated 2012 Swimsuit Edition and is on the July 2012 cover of GQ as an addition to the canon of American bombshells.

While both the high fashion world and a few chauvinistic gentlemen contribute to the warped ideal of femininity, the current social attitudes among women also, surprisingly, adds to individual women’s critiques of their bodies. Though Skinny Gossip is no poster child for sisterhood, its tip for “Thinspiration” to “pay close attention to other girl's bodies. Pick them apart — try to find faults even with the best bodies. Then apply these high standards to yourself” is, sadly, not too foreign for many women.

Upton has been a source of criticism from other women for some time now and has been portrayed as a Jezebel figure of loose morals who would fall into the category of f**k in a game of F**k, Marry, Kill. She has been rejected from high fashion as a refined lady and instead has been branded a “page 3 girl” by Victoria’s Secret’s show runner, Sophia Neophitou, a reference to the promiscuous, voluptuous women featured in England’s The Sun. In Upton’s upcoming Vogue debut, the magazine writes, “it is in fact those two deeply abbreviated swaths of fabric on which Upton's not inconsiderable fame rests, which might make you think that this Sports Illustrated cover girl, almost always photographed nearly naked, is not exactly the ideal customer for Altuzarra's cuddly coat.” In an attempt to dance around the subject of Upton’s ladylike high fashion potential, they manage to suggest she is classless and subsequently cast her out of a clique of more respectable women. As Jezebel’s Sauers observes, “As long as women are in competition with one another to have the ‘best’ body, we all lose.”

Where is the space for change and new attitudes about women’s bodies? It lies within the establishment of a strong community of women who stop silently and verbally comparing themselves to one another, commenting on other women’s clothing, and suggesting a girl “eat a sandwich.” As feminist literary critic, Elaine Showalter, writes in her groundbreaking 1981 article, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” “a theory of culture incorporates ideas about women’s body, language, and psyche but interprets them in relation to the social contexts in which they occur.” In other words, women’s understanding of their bodies and ideas of self are informed by cultural contexts. For Showalter in 1981, that context was a phallocentric—male-centered—one, yet in 2012 many women have successfully found a social space that is uniquely feminine and largely outside of patriarchy.

But these spaces still lie within a context of competition between women and they need to be reimagined in a way that allows for more acceptance of womanhood. Showalter calls the space outside of patriarchy the “wild zone” that is “the place for the revolutionary language” and “liberated desire and female authenticity.” Using Showalter’s imaginary place of womanhood, women today can aspire to create a sisterhood that accepts different body sizes and expressions of femininity. In this way, intolerance from women like the anonymous one behind Skinny Gossip will not be welcomed and acceptance of women’s bodies will span across the fashion industry, men’s communities, and sisterhood alike.