Darcy has a post up featuring Daniela Hantuchova, a Slovakian tennis player that she alludes to as having gotten "too thin", perhaps due to pressure to appear glamorous. This struck me as interesting because an athlete's first responsibility is to be functional in her sport.
You can't put the shot and be worried about fitting into a size 0.
In fact, those two goals (emulating a super-model and excelling in your sport) might be contrary. The post stirred a memories of a couple of movies (as most things do) which illustrate--something or other.
First of all: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Captain Kirk is climbing up El Capitan. The close shots, of course, are 57-year-old William Shatner. The reverse angles--the ass-up shots, if you will--are of some guy with a much, much skinnier ass. These shots--presumably masterminded by director Shatner--set the tone of meta-silliness that pervades that movie.
Second of all: Her Alibi. Back when it still seemed like a good idea to make TV icon Tom Selleck into a movie star. Real-life Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova plays a Romanian acrobat, though completely lacking the body of an acrobat--or indeed, a body that was probably much good for anything, except looking at. Well, and snagging a rockstar husband. (All credit to her, though, since they're still married 20 years later.)
But whatever a body that thin can do, it can't do one thing her character could (and needed) to do: Climb a rope. And so we got the reverse of the Captain Kirk situation above. From one angle, skinny Paulina. From the other, a heftier stuntwoman.
I was struck by the fact that--much like Shatner--they couldn't find anyone even close to the body-type of the actor chosen to play the part.
A propos of nothing, I guess. Just flotsam bubbling up in the ol' Bit's mind.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Body image is one of the trickest things to talk about. Women are insane when it comes to this, trust me I know. I see many woman who come into the store who have rockin' and I mean rockin' bodies but claim they are too fat and have to loose twenty pounds. It is the pernicious influence of the fashion world that makes them crazy.
ReplyDeleteIt is the pernicious influence of the fashion world that makes them crazy.
ReplyDeleteBecause left to their own devices women would always behave in the most sane and sober manner possible?
OK, Jason, craz(ier).
ReplyDeleteBut we probably don't need to rehash the body image issue again.
Fashion is fickle. Women like to follow fashion. This virtually guarantees that there will always be some segment of the population unhappy.
It's not just body image, either. I've known lots of women with straight hair who wished it was curly, and lots of curly-haired women who spent hours straightening.
Go figger.
Meanwhile, I don't think men change all that much. Certainly not relatively speaking.
Women don't care what men think about how they look. They know men are easy to please (for the most part). Women dress for other women, and other women undermine other other women since they themselves have the emotional scars from being undermined by other other other women.
ReplyDeleteI think I can count on one hand the number of times a straight male friend has commented on my dress, or me on theirs.
And by dress, I mean mode of clothing oneself, not dress in the frilly frock sense. Were I to wear a dress in public, I think I would get many comments from friends and strangers alike.