Stop using the term "real women" to refer to curvy girls. Tall skinny girls aren't imaginary. Regardless of how a girl looks:
All women are real women.
All women are real women.
(For now, I'm going to ignore some of the problematic language of this quote and just discuss the themes it addresses.)
The concept of a "real woman" is tangentially relevant to the post I recently wrote about person first language, especially in terms of dehumanization. You might be thinking to yourself, "What about all the women on magazine covers who've had plastic surgery, are covered in make-up, and have been airbrushed as much as possible? Aren't they fake women?" No, they're real women, too. They're living, breathing human beings just like yourself. They might have made choices different than yours, such as electing to have plastic surgery, and they might be represented in a deceptive manner, such as with photo manipulation, but they are still real women.
To determine the legitimacy of a woman's womanhood or of her humanity by her appearance—or even the choices she makes about her appearance—is fallible at best. Even the fact that we as a society consider "real vs. fake" to be a dichotomy by which we classify women is really quite disturbing. The existence and prevalence of this binary framework implies that a woman who performs femininity can be somehow not a woman because society does not deem her legitimate as such. On a deeper level, the dichotomy also threatens to allow women who aren't "real" to be somehow less than human.
If women don't fit into a specific box—the box of seemingly natural but still somehow artificially defined beauty, the box of physical curvaceousness, the box of traditional femininity—then they aren't "real." If you aren't real, what are you? Are you fake, or imaginary? Whatever you are, if you aren't real, you don't count. The dichotomy of "real vs. whatever-isn't-real" makes it possible for each and every woman to fail to count at some point.
For the sake of the legitimacy of everyone's gender performance, and for the sake of the very real humans around you, be mindful of the way you and those around you use language to place people into abstract boxes. Please, do stop using the term "real women" to refer to those with curvier body structures. But also keep in mind what it means to participate in that binary classification at all.
Top image source: Pure Nourishment
The concept of a "real woman" is tangentially relevant to the post I recently wrote about person first language, especially in terms of dehumanization. You might be thinking to yourself, "What about all the women on magazine covers who've had plastic surgery, are covered in make-up, and have been airbrushed as much as possible? Aren't they fake women?" No, they're real women, too. They're living, breathing human beings just like yourself. They might have made choices different than yours, such as electing to have plastic surgery, and they might be represented in a deceptive manner, such as with photo manipulation, but they are still real women.
To determine the legitimacy of a woman's womanhood or of her humanity by her appearance—or even the choices she makes about her appearance—is fallible at best. Even the fact that we as a society consider "real vs. fake" to be a dichotomy by which we classify women is really quite disturbing. The existence and prevalence of this binary framework implies that a woman who performs femininity can be somehow not a woman because society does not deem her legitimate as such. On a deeper level, the dichotomy also threatens to allow women who aren't "real" to be somehow less than human.
If women don't fit into a specific box—the box of seemingly natural but still somehow artificially defined beauty, the box of physical curvaceousness, the box of traditional femininity—then they aren't "real." If you aren't real, what are you? Are you fake, or imaginary? Whatever you are, if you aren't real, you don't count. The dichotomy of "real vs. whatever-isn't-real" makes it possible for each and every woman to fail to count at some point.
For the sake of the legitimacy of everyone's gender performance, and for the sake of the very real humans around you, be mindful of the way you and those around you use language to place people into abstract boxes. Please, do stop using the term "real women" to refer to those with curvier body structures. But also keep in mind what it means to participate in that binary classification at all.
Top image source: Pure Nourishment
No comments:
Post a Comment