[Never Say Diet] Julie Bowen Doesn’t Need Your Sandwich Suggestions

She is perfectly capable of ordering her own lunch, thankyouverymuch.

More to the point, this whole hating on skinny actresses thing has really got to stop. Or at least, just call it what it is: Good, old-fashioned, body snarking, just like when the kids on the playground called you fatty. (If they did that. In which case, I’m really sorry because it must have sucked. Just like… see where I’m going with this?)

As I explain in today’s Never Say Diet post, I am far from innocent in this, but I am working hard to reform. I have suggested sandwiches to skinny people myself many a time when I was feeling bad about my own body and/or particularly confused about all the many tangled messages we get about health, weight and beauty.

So that you sandwich-pushers out there don’t get too testy with me, I did a search for “sandwich” on this here blog to see what I needed to fess up about. There seem to be two.

April 1, 2010: I suggested that Lady Gaga eat a sandwich. Now, this was in response to her pronouncing that “pop stars should not eat,” and nobody could tell if she was being ironic… so maybe nobody could tell if I was being ironic either? But still. Very sorry.

November 18, 2009: I was very excited about that song “Barbie Eat a Sandwich” by Care Bears on Fire. Well… I still like that song. And the video where they chase a Barbie doll around with giant sandwiches. Maybe it’s because the sandwich is metaphorical, since Barbie is, after all, just a plastic icon for a giant corporation responsible for pinkwashing generations of little girls? And it’s okay to be snarky about corporations even though they are people too?

Certainly, if someone makes a video chasing Julie Bowen around with giant sandwiches, I am going to be pissed. Whatever is going on with her weight (which I cannot tell by looking at her and have not been informed about by anyone who has any reason to know), she’s a terrific actress, with rock solid comedic timing, making one of the best shows on television even funnier — and that’s why she won the damn Emmy.

And if she were a man, that’s all anyone would be talking about.

 

Pretty Price Check [04.01.11]

The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of what we paid for beauty last week.

• $72: What you’ll pay for this insane night bra, which separates and moisturizes your cleavage to prevent wrinkles. You know I couldn’t not include this. (Via The Hairpin)

• 29: The age when most women start to feel old, according to a new survey. Of course, men don’t feel old until they’re 58. As someone who is just 30 days away from not being 29 ever again, I call bullsh*t on this whole thing. (Via MyDaily)

• 500 hours: How long it took to make Lady Gaga’s 14-inch high platform boots. That’s only 100 hours less than I spent in beauty school! Best part: “The boots have flying unicorns and rainbows and say ‘Born This Way.'” So, there’s your Friday Happy Hour chatter sorted. (Via The Cut)

• 1 in 3 women feel more confident when their “armpits are in good condition.” This stat from a WSJ story about how Dove is “tackling the ugly underarm” but I’m choosing a glass-half-full interpretation: 2 in 3 women (in other words, the vast majority) don’t let their pits determine their worth as human beings. This, my friends, is what we call progress. (Via Jezebel.)

• 43 percent: The decrease in liposuction procedures performed since 2000. Yet weirdly, boob jobs are up 40 percent. I have no idea what to make of either of these facts. (Via Jezebel.)

• $12,275: What a Mary Kay Lady can expect to pocket, assuming she can move a whopping $50,000 worth of product per year. (Via PinkTruth)

PS. Fat Talk is bad for you. Like, for real now. So hush up, you’re pretty already!

Pretty Price Check (03.04.11)

The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of what we paid for beauty last week.

First up! You still have 48 hours to take a picture of pretty self, all made up with clean cosmetics and enter it in the No More Dirty Looks Clean Makeup Challenge. The prize is $100 gift certificate to Spirit Beauty Lounge. Where you can get a heck of a lot of pretty for that price. So get on that.

Next:

• $3.8 million: What you’ll pay for the world’s most expensive purse. And it doesn’t even look big enough to hold your cell phone. (Via The Cut)

• 97 percent: How many of us have negative thoughts about our bodies every day, according to the latest “Wait? Women have body issues? And the sky is blue?” survey by Glamour. (Via BlogHer)

• 18: How old you’ll have to be to use a tanning bed if New York and other states pass their Teen Tan Bans. Fun fact: 80 percent (or something) of skin cancer-causing sun damage happens before the age of 18. So this makes pretty good sense. But of course, the industry is offended by the notion that they put children’s health at risk. (Via MyDaily)

• 14: The number of states that have banned those pedicures where tiny fish eat the dead skin off your feet. Public health officials in the UK are investigating to determine whether this practice is downright revolting, or just icky. (Via Jezebel.)

Pretty Price Check (07.19.10)

The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of how much we paid for beauty this week.

First up! Thank you to the lovely commenter over on this Sociological Images post, for giving Beauty Schooled a big shout-out — and hi to all of you new folk who have traveled over from there!

If you’re looking for the post she referenced (the story of Client Nine and the Parent-Supervised Eyebrow Wax) click here. To be honest, it’s a lot less dramatic that the Toddlers & Tiaras clip over at Sociological Images — but that maybe makes it that much creepier. Because Nine’s mom wasn’t a reality TV-hyped pageant mom, where you expect her to say outlandish things so you get to scoff and judge her. She was just a normal mom, wearing faded nursing scrubs and not much makeup. And Nine’s dad was this average-looking guy in old cordoroys. And they thought getting her eyebrows waxed was just what you do when she gets to a certain age, so she can look a certain way, and we can all relax about it. Judging that mom felt a lot more uncomfortable because it meant also judging myself.

And while we’re at it, I have to ask what good it does for us to get all up and arms about that pageant mom and say she’s a bad parent or wildly insecure or whatever? Tearing down other women for their choices about the beauty myth is just never productive. (Even when it’s funny. And I’m as guilty of this as they come.)

Tearing down the industry that sells us that myth, on the other hand… is our raison d’etre here at Beauty Schooled. So let’s get our Price Check on! (Yes, it’s Monday not Friday and I’m late again. It is summer, you know.)

• $75 is the price tag on Bikini Ink, which is the new vajazzling, only it’s a fake tattoo that goes where your pubic hair belongs. (This makes me extremely hopeful that the vajazzling trend is dying so that people will stop rushing up to me on the street/sending me text messages/emailing me and asking, “oh my GOD, have you blogged about vajazzling yet?” Which just kept resulting in me NOT blogging about it, because it made me grouchy. On the other hand, I am mostly posting this so I can say “yes” when they start asking the same question about Bikini Ink.) (Via American Spa Blog and BellaSugar, where I found the picture above.)

• 78 percent of men report visiting a spa or salon in the last year (on par with 80 percent of women). I’m shocked the figure is this high (wondering if it includes barbershops?); not shocked that the most sought-after service for dudes is getting a massage. Because Spa Work Is Not Sex Work. But Some People Are Confused About That. (Via Jezebel.)

• $20-30 is the cost of the circle contact lenses made popular by Lady Gaga and girls wanting huge Bambie eyes. Oh, also blindness. Or at least, pink eye. Pass. (Via iHeartDaily)

• $19.50 is what you’ll pay for Gap Kids Skinny Jeans. And how do we feel about marketing “skinny” jeans to little girls? Not so great, hmm? J. Crew calls ’em stovepipe jeans, that would have worked for me. (Via New York Magazine’s The Cut)

• 18 is the age of Charice Pempengco, a FIlipino singer who just released her first album and got Botox for an appearance on Glee. (Via Female Impersonator.)

• SPF 100 is a total crock of sh*t. Just wear your 30 and reapply, reapply, reapply. (Via Beauty to the People.)

And on that note, who cares if it’s really Monday? Blow off work early and go to the beach — wheee!

(I mean, I can’t, but you still should. Because I’ve got JUST 18 NIGHTS — and ummm, 9 more makeup hours — LEFT at Beauty U* so the only tan I’m getting this summer comes from Stephanie’s airbrush gun.)

Must Read: (At the beach or wherever you are) Newsweek’s new special report, “The Beauty Advantage.” I’m reading now… so expect pithy thoughts soon.

Get Excited For: Wednesday, when Annie Leonard releases her new video, The Story Of Cosmetics. I. Know.

*Spread over four weeks, don’t get panicked now, and remember, the blog doesn’t end when Beauty U does — it gets better than ever!

[Beauty Overheard] Somebody Get Lady Gaga a Sandwich.

Because of this little moment, from Vanessa Grigoriadis’ feature in the current issue of New York Magazine:

At five-two and 100 pounds, with her hair styled into a mod blonde bob, she looked flush from a strict diet of starvation: “Pop stars should not eat,” she pronounced. She was young, skinny, and blonde, but she had a prominent Italian nose, the kind of nose that rarely survives on a starlet.

Feministing’s Jos registered her frustration about this yesterday, saying:

Gaga gets a lot of credit from feminists (myself included) for creating a pop art space where marginalized young people who feel like freaks and weirdos can be at home. So it’s disappointing to see her speak so flippantly about the dangerous body image issues and disordered eating that is supported and encouraged through pop culture. At the same time, the honesty is almost a relief – at least Gaga is being open about the expectation that female celebrities starve themselves. Now we just need to change that standard.

On board with the standard-changing plan. Though I do wonder if Lady Gaga thinks a moronic food comment is all part of her character/identity crisis; a minute earlier in the story, she insists that Lady Gaga is her real name, and calling her Stefani means “you don’t really know me at all.” (Grigoriadis notes, “I never thought she was going to actually be Lady Gaga” and describes the pop star speaking with an accent that’s half British Madonna and half robot.)

Still and all, it would be nice if Lady/Stefani/whoever the heck she is could get behind pop stars eating lunch every now and then. (Also if my local radio DJs could lay off “Bad Romance” for a week or two, so I can finally get it out of my head.)

PS. Darlings, I am highly aware that with all the Feminist Carnival excitement this week, I haven’t gotten you any Beauty U updates. Trust me, it’s not for lack of  stories. A lot has been happening — so much that I needed to take a few days to process and put it all together for you. So you get something a little better than my first response, which is more or less “WTF waxing!!!” Yes. Waxing. So please, keep checking this space. (Adding me to your RSS feed is a grand way to stay on top of everything Beauty Schooled, hint, hint!) I’ll have fresh tales from the trenches starting Monday.

Meanwhile, if you’re just joining us here Beauty Schooled (perhaps because you’re discovering me via cross-posts on Feminist Blogs or Feministing’s Community Blog) take this time to get caught up with all my esthetics adventures (from week 1 to 19!) here.

[Photo: New York Magazine]