Although it's no secret that actresses and models are under intense pressure to stay thin, you don't often hear of the same disordered eating plaguing the music industry. Recently, singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield went public with her battle with anorexia, that ultimately required inpatient treatment at an eating disorders clinic. She also chronicled her struggle on her blog. Mamapop's Miss Banshee:
Juliana entered an inpatient treatment center for her eating disorder, and wrote about it on her blog, letting her fans and the internet at large into her struggle with the disease, and hopefully showing others who are affected by anorexia that they are not alone in their struggle, and that there is hope. What Juliana reveals in her blog is heartwrenching stuff, but at the same time, I believe it can be invaluable. Anorexia is a killer. In fact, it is the most lethal of mental illnesses, leading to death in up to 10% of those who suffer from it. Here is an excerpt from Juliana's blog regarding her emotional state in the throes of the disease.
The oft-quote passage from Juliana's own blog:
Sometimes I feel like a human pincushion. Every painful emotion hits me with ridiculously exaggerated force. And the anxiety feels like hands inside of me, squeezing my guts really hard.
There's was an outpouring of sympathy from the music blogospehere, including Stereogum and The Guardian.
A few years ago, NME caused a stir by featuring the Gossip's Beth Ditto on the cover. Naked. Alice Bag from Diary of a Bad Housewife had this to say about the controversial cover:
Beth is one of the sexiest women I know. I know that some people find rail-thin females attractive and that's fine but it doesn't do it for me. Women who are curvaceous are much more attractive to me. Aside from that, women who are curvaceous, intelligent, talented and self-confident have every right to flaunt their sexuality if they want to. I guess the short answer to the question is that I don't have a problem with any individual appearing naked on the cover of a magazine but I am thrilled to see Beth on this particular cover. She IS the Queen of Cool.
Twisty from I Blame the Patriarchy, however, has this to say:
A mainstream music magazine has put a naked chick on the cover. This stunningly unremarkable event in the pornulational continuum induced not the slightest blip on my obstreperometer. Magazines put naked chicks on their covers roughly 82,697 times a day; it’s all part of the general background noise created in pop culture by the constant crushing of women’s dignity in the giant trash compactor of oppression. But wait! The naked chick on the mainstream music magazine cover is Beth Ditto, who is fat! Suddenly everyone’s talking about this cover... Pictures of naked women empower nobody but the men who pimp’em out and the voyeurs who consume’em. A woman may elect to reap the benefits of her capitulation to her oppressor, and she can even call it “empowerment” when she does it, but that doesn’t mean she’s not full of shit, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s doing any other women the least bit of good.
As a long-time fan of The Gossip, I loved the cover. I saw it as a positive thing. Beth Ditto is a stunning, curvy woman with talent to boot. It does pose the age-old question/problem that women are always going to be criticized for their bodies (though the cause of eating disorders is more multi-faceted than just unhappiness with one's appearance), thin or curvy, and what they choose to do with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment