fashion models

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be sent to a nonsensical, exclusive modeling school where girls acquire magical powers that allow them to convince people to buy useless products? Me neither. But Tyra Banks has.

Great links to keep you busy this weekend!

• The Rotund reports on Fat Ladies in Spaaaaaaaaace: A Body Positive Coloring Book. Someone get this for me please!
• Leticia St. Remy at Xhibit P compares the pop feminism of Beyonce and Tina Fey. 
• Talk About Equality explores the TSA's dehumanizing effect on transgender passengers.
• The Association of Black Women Historians presents an open statement on The Help.
• And speaking of The Help, check out Roxane Gay's "The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help" via The Rumpus.
• Hoyden About Town discusses anti-breastfeeding prejudice against an adult star and new mom.
• Eva Rivera shares A Day in the Life of a Web Cam Model on Womanist Musings.
• Echidne of the Snakes questions the stability of the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis.
• Sarah McKenney at Sociological Images discusses French child-model Thylane Blondeau and the sexualization of young girls.
• Bleeding Cool's Eric Glover tackles different reactions to his article on the Barbara Gordon Batgirl controversey.

Share your thoughts on these links as well links to articles you've been reading and writing this week!

If we already know advertisements are digitally altered, why do we have to get rid of them? Simple answer: Because humans are beautiful and it's time they know so.

I’ve watched America’s Next Top Model intermittently over the years. I can’t really say why. I was never that interested in fashion magazines, which seemed to me to depict another planet altogether, accessible only to the very rich. I have, furthermore, never much understood the fascination with models. Understand that when I say that I am not trying to make any claims about the difficulty of the work they do - I don’t "hate models" or anything so broad as that. It’s just that they don’t seem to hold for me the kind of visceral fascination they do for other people.

I admit I do have one philosophical objection to modeling. I simply do not know how we are going to build a world where everyone is valued if we keep insisting that no, really, some people are more valuable than others. Particularly if we do so on bases over which they have little individual control - such as being socially "attractive," meeting the critical mass of "pretty" that will get you on magazine covers and sigh-ingly acknowledged, by almost everyone, as "gorgeous." I don’t see how that strain of the cultural conversation benefits anyone in the slightest.