by KATE FRIDKIS
I saw this commercial last night. The same one kept playing on the TV show I was watching: An extremely thin strawberry blond model in underwear and a bra, dancing awkwardly. The camera zooms in on her breasts. Lingers. Zooms out. She places her hands over her face and appears to giggle in glee. She looks a little uncomfortable. She’s supposed to be having a dance party in her lingerie, alone. Because girls are always stripping down to dance alone, laughing and posing. We all know that.
Sometimes people think it’s silly to blame the media for all of the issues with body image girls have. We have free will. We are our own people. Plus, the media is this giant thing — too complicated and convoluted to diagnose. I like to think of it as an endless shallow puddle of oily water that we’re all always standing in. Sometimes we’re wearing good, sturdy boots. Sometimes … not so much.
I had the weirdest thought, watching the commercial for the third time. “I don’t want her to see this.”
OK. Um, who? Am I being haunted right now? Why is the cat not having more of a reaction?
My daughter. My future daughter. The one I don’t know if I’ll ever have.
I didn’t want her to see the spindly model in her underwear dancing for the camera, ungainly and uncomfortable and pretending to enjoy herself. I didn’t want her to come to any automatic conclusions. I didn’t want her to have to “not to even think about it” — then have it wash over her when she looks at herself in the mirror.
They picked that model to show us what is cute and sexy and pretty and girlish. What breasts should look like. What fun should look like. What being a girl is like. They picked the best example of it. I know, because of all the money they must have spent to make that ad. When you put so much money into something, you want to get it right. And if right is that model, dancing, I don’t want my daughter — who doesn’t even exist yet — to see it.
But the model’s so skinny, I keep thinking, unoriginally (don’t worry, I know how unoriginal it is), but it’s almost the ordinariness of the observation that makes it meaningful. We keep making this observation over and over, but here she is. So skinny that I’m worried. I know, I’m not supposed to be. Some bodies are naturally like that. It’s true. But then there are too many statistics about models.
Top Comments
She does not look too skinny to me. She is fit, she has a small waist and curvy hips. Skinny does not look like this.
Um.....yeah. You don't have a daughter yet ...and you are concerned about her watching a commercial thats on the telly NOW...about a push up bra. That features the model wearing knickers and............a push up bra. Does this website have a lack of articles to publish?