This'll go nicely with my stress-induced bingefest

[mothwing]

Big women like sexy underwear, too? And there are ads for that underwear? Neat, I thought.
How did the network react? "Omg, it's a fat person in underwear, cover your eyes! Take it down!"

This is the ad in question:

Also, this post about going to the OB/GYN while fat made me incredibly angry. It shouldn't have, after all the other nice stuff I've heard about people's GYNs (sexual harassment, violation, humiliation, scare tactics into submitting to a procedure, dismissing concerns and pain as "this doesn't hurt, ever, so pull yourself together" etc., and that's just the people I know offline).

Yes, I get it. Fat people ought to blob along elsewhere and not subject themselves to the innocent eyes of other people (even though, as junkscience claims, this will make perfectly thin women worry about their body image so deep, deep down that even they themselves don't realise). Yeah. I'll go do some homework and let my lifesaving chocolate nuts prepare me for boobquake.

Comments

[onthetide.livejournal.com]

That is one sexy commercial. I'll have to check out LB!

Fatphobia ugh.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Do so! It looks as though they have some awesome stuff.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I do wonder how much of the reaction is about sexy as much as fat (or...the sexy exacerbates the fatphobia?). Because sure, there are people who would look at her and be all "ewww!" but most non-media people are probably going to go "Wow, she's really sexy!" Underwear models are usually not sexy, they're just kind of...there. Like modern art. Victoria's Secret commercials are many things, but I do not think sexy is one of them.

And she's not just sexy, but sexy and aware of it and possibly planning on *gasp* having sex.

I'm not sure that the commercial would have been pulled if she'd been a super-thin sexy woman (probably not), but I do think the sexiness factor made it more "shocking" than if she were, say, wearing chaste cotton undies in a Dove commercial.

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

Did you read the comments? Because this is coming up a lot in them and I think it's onto something. For instance, the second comment, from Flackette Goes Retro:

"I'm guessing the theory here is something like what my mom told me when I started getting larger breasts, which roughly translated as: "Those thinner girls with smaller breasts can wear tops like that, but if you have bigger breasts you just need to be more covered not to look obscene." Our general societal radar interprets breasts as sexual and possibly objectionable, unless being used in a strictly ornamental sense. The bigger the breasts, the more sexual/possibly objectionable they read."

And further down (and rather more amusingly) from amake616:
"In an attempt to shed some light from the male POV since we all know this is how these decisions get made: My husband and I have had this discussion because he doesn't find the VS ads particularly sexual and doesn't understand why people would find them offensive but he finds comparatively more tame ads and photos with more voluptuous women to be more sexual and he explained it to me as (basically verbatim...keep in mind he's usually more articulate, I think the topic threw him):

'You see baby them Victoria's ads haven't really been like whoa damn since Tyra left because now they got a little bit of the breasts pushed together with the bra but that's it! That's it! It's all like collarbones and hipbones and long hair. Who gets offended by collarbones? You see a woman with some..you know...t & a & thighs and mess and that's offensive to some people because that's like whoa damn sexual. Bones aren't sexual.'"

My only problem with this line of reasoning is the inevitable downhill slope to "naturally slender woman are not sexy and are not 'real women'" which I don't want to buy into, despite not being naturally slender myself.

It is popping up a lot interesting thoughts in my head as to agency/objectification and sexual/sexualised/sexy.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I read some of them, and yeah.

I am pretty small and definitely not boobtastic, and I don't think at all that boobs=sexy in real life. But in the media mind, they are used as shorthand (although I don't think that's all of what's going on here--the women in some of the Dove commercials have similar figures, and I don't think those are meant to be sexy).

But also something shocking in the media about a larger woman (defined really loosely because this is the media!) being confident and actively sexy--because larger women can maybe, maybe be pretty, but should be pretty in an unassuming, insecure, grateful for male attention way. And the woman in the commercial does not look grateful for having a date, she looks like she knows she's awesome.

Does that make sense? I may be reading too much into the commercial, because I identified with it more than I normally do with underwear commercials not because I look more like her (I don't look anything like her or regular underwear models) but because she appeared to be actively sexy and confident rather than artistic sexualized decoration arranged sort of abstractly. Like--I guess I felt like this commercial was trying to sell WOMEN underwear, and VS commercials are trying to sell MEN women's underwear.

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

But also something shocking in the media about a larger woman (defined really loosely because this is the media!) being confident and actively sexy--because larger women can maybe, maybe be pretty, but should be pretty in an unassuming, insecure, grateful for male attention way. And the woman in the commercial does not look grateful for having a date, she looks like she knows she's awesome.

Does that make sense?

Definitely. I think how I would put it is that she is sexual rather than sexualised. Other people are saying a sexual agent rather than a sexual object, which I could go for too.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that. I am chronically tl;dr.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

While I do think that she's still sexualised, I do agree with you about her having an unusual sense of agency and purpose for a woman in an undies ad. I like that.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Underwear models are usually not sexy, they're just kind of...there. Like modern art. Victoria's Secret commercials are many things, but I do not think sexy is one of them.
Like--I guess I felt like this commercial was trying to sell WOMEN underwear, and VS commercials are trying to sell MEN women's underwear.#

Yes, that's what I got from it, too, although I can't say I can put my finger on why that is, that is to say, why the VS commercials aren't sexy, even though I think they're intended to be sexy. Maybe it's an element of sensuality, and, as you guys point out, agency that's missing in the VS ads, as well as the fact that the body types that usually feature in those ads are so similar that they stop registering, in a way. She definitely does appear to be more focused than the women in VS ads I've seen who just basically loll around beds in their dessous, in poses not aimed at a female audience.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I think the agency part is huge, although it's kind of a hard thing to define. It's hard to find non-subjective markers.

[fennyfen.livejournal.com]

Wtf? This girl is extremely sexy and confident. I don't see anything which is indecent about this ad; personally, I really like it. xD If there were more like this maybe people would stop flipping their shit about their weight. She certainly looks more attractive than most girls in underwear ads.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's how I see it. :)