From the Mouths of Babes, Through the Eyes of Body Shame

     I've been spending a fair amount of time at a preschool for work. It's been mostly great and has certainly been helping my recently overactive biological clock (that's a different blog post altogether). Today, though, something happened. On the playground, lining up to go inside, a little girl, not in the class I'm usually with, started talking to me:

          Little Girl: "I like your tattoo on your foot."
          Me: "Thank you! I like your glasses."
          Girl: "Thank you... why is your tummy so big?"

     I sat there for a second, feeling like the wind had been kicked out of me by this tiny creature who surely meant no harm. My mind raced. I couldn't let her see that I was upset, I couldn't give her any of my standard lines for adults who make inappropriate comments about my body, and it wasn't the right time to turn it into a teachable moment. Finally I said something along the lines of, "That's just how my body is." I felt good about my answer, but still really shitty about the question, and by extension really shitty that I'd let the innocent comment of a three year old ruin my day and self-confidence. I certainly wasn't winning any body-positive feminist awards.

     So there it is, another great example of how my theoretical living and actual reality don't always mesh. If you ask me, I'll tell you that everyone should feel good about themselves and there's nothing inherently better about one body over another. And I really believe that! But when I turn that in on myself, it's suddenly a whole hell of a lot more difficult to feel good. What's strange is I almost never feel negatively about other people's bodies. I can absolutely live my feminist truth when it comes to other people. Which may be why having a kid point out my faults hurts so badly. I like to pretend that other people don't see the same terrible things I see about myself. I don't like to be faced with the fact that my body is visible to the world, and the world has opinions about it.

     I used to be better at letting it roll off my shoulders. I didn't bat an eye the time a man oinked at me as I was leaving a gas station. In college, I took a concrete, positive stance when confronted with the fact someone had referred to me, at a party, in public, as a "fat girl." They were being intentionally mean, and I can move on from that. I was able to let it go because I knew they were trying to break me down and that assholes like that deserve exactly none of my time.

     Today was different. That little girl simply hasn't learned about tact and what kinds of things aren't nice to say to people. She had no agenda. She simply had a question. A small, innocent question that sent me into a spiral of body shame.

   

Meghan Trainor, Faux-Empowerment, and Pop Feminism

     As of this post, I've had Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband" stuck in my head periodically for weeks. I assume the very act of writing this post will ensure that will remain the case for many weeks to come. In many ways, I'm ok with that. Trainor has proven herself to be a harbinger of near perfect pop-confections, with her throwback sensibility, beat-driven catalog, and "don't give a shit" attitude, all wrapped up in a tiny, blonde, white package. She's cornered the market on the not-really-that-subversive fuck you anthem.

     Feminism is having a bit of a moment in pop music. There was Taylor Swift finally admitting that not only is she a feminist, but a proud one, and there was Beyonce performing in front of a huge backdrop that simply said: FEMINIST. And there was Meghan Trainor's body-positive hit "All About That Bass." After the disaster that was last year's consent challenged Robin Thicke hit "Blurred Lines," this could have been the breath of fresh air we'd all been waiting for! Of course, fun-ruining feminists like myself couldn't just let Trainor's song be. Despite her assurances that "every inch of you is perfect, from the bottom to the top," we had our reservations about what the media was hailing as a new, woman-friendly foray into pop feminism. 

     Any of you who know me, whether in real life or online, know that I *love* pop music (in fact, you may recall I wrote a full post about that last year). I can turn the critical part of my brain nearly all the way off when it comes to catchy music. But something about "All About That Bass" stuck in my craw. I wanted to sing it loud in the car, unconcerned about body politics for omgjustoneminutejeez, but... it was not to be. So here I am, once again ruining something I could have loved with my own particular brand of joy-sucking analysis. Here we go.

     Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Possibly the biggest complaint I've heard about "All About That Bass" is the critique that the song's so-called body positivity exists within the context of male gaze and heterosexual expectations of love, romance, and sense. Even her mother in the song tells her, "Don't worry about your size...boys like a little more booty to hold at night." Aside from the inherent weirdness of a mother telling her daughter what boys like in bed, the idea that the positive feelings we have toward our own bodies are validated in terms of the acceptance of a sexual partner is laughable, dangerous, and simply nothing new. There is no revolution in believing that one's body is acceptable because a lover accepts it. While gaining the acceptance of a partner can absolutely be a transformative experience for many, at the end of the day, true self-acceptance centers on a love of self, divorced from desires and expectations of others. By framing body positivity as something that we do to catch men, we're still basing our self-worth on heterosexist ideals and male gaze.

     The counterpoint of the "boys like a little more booty" issue is that it's a divisive sentiment. We've all seen the movie, tshirts, bumper stickers, etc, that say "Real women have curves." It started out as a proud battle cry of non-waify women who undoubtedly just wanted to tell the world that they exist and have value. Soon, however, we began to realize that when we claim "real women" are defined by any single attribute, we're also saying that those women who don't have said attribute aren't "real." There is no such thing as a real woman. A "real woman" is, essentially, someone who identifies as such. Period. 

     Finally, "All About That Bass" posits that an additional universal truth of femaleness is a hatred of our bodies. 

                    "I'm bringing booty back/

                     Go 'head and tell them skinny bitches that/

                     No, I'm just playing I know you think you're fat"

     There's so much to unpack here I'm almost unsure where to start. I'd like to take a quick moment to point out that only white people seem to really believe that "booty" is having its moment right now for the first time. I'm a white lady myself and don't feel qualified to speak more on that, but let's just all remember that booty never really went anywhere, even though white people are just now getting on board. 

     Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about this assertion that "skinny bitches...think [they're] fat." What a sad revelation. It's a little unnecessarily aggressive to even mention the skinny bitches, but it disturbs me greatly that Trainor brings the song's relevance to thin women by assuming they also believe their bodies are unacceptable. Even women whose bodies fit into the hegemonic ideal believe there is something wrong with them. That's not ok. 

     Her most recent single (and the one that's been slowly burrowing its way through my brain for the past few weeks) is "Dear Future Husband." There's been a fair amount of Buzzfeed-style hullabaloo surrounding the song's video, in which Trainor lives in a colorful, stylized, 50's throwback. If you haven't seen, pull up YouTube and give it a watch. I'll wait. Ok, back? Great. See, I actually like the video. I think there are parts of it that are, in their own pre-packaged, commercial way, kind of critical of gender essentialist values, particularly regarding gendered distribution of housework. If nothing else, the images send a clear message about how Trainor sees herself within a patriarchal framework of what it means to be a wife.  

     In my estimation, the greatest part of this song is the second verse:

                    "You got that 9 to 5,

                      But, baby, so do I,

                      So don't be thinking I'll be home and baking apple pies.

                      I never learned to cook,

                      But I can write a hook.

                      Sing along with me,

                      Sing-sing along with me."

     It has everything I would look for in a song about seeking a long-term, egalitarian partnership. There's the acknowledgment that Future Husband is employed full time, and an equal acknowledgment that she is too. Then, there's the clear statement of her expectations of mutual contribution to domestic upkeep. And then, in what is probably my favorite line of this whole damn song, she announces her own talents when she tells us she "never learned to cook, but [she] can write a hook." Sadly, this verse is maybe the only not terrible part of the song.

     When anti-feminists scream about feminists not really wanting equality but actually wanting women to be superior to men, I imagine the rest of this song is how they envision that feminist utopia. First of all, Trainor is trading big in "happy wife, happy life" bullshit. That phrase is up there with "boys will be boys" on the list of colloquialisms that make me want to smack my head against the wall, because it's not really about cultivating a happy, healthy relationship. It's about appeasing your wife because if you don't then she'll be crazy (and we all know bitches be crazy, yes?). 

     The third verse of the song is probably the clearest example of this idea come to life:

                    "After every fight,

                     Just apologize,

                     And maybe then I'll let you rock my body right [Don't worry, more on this later]                        Even if I was wrong,

                     You know I'm never wrong.

                     Why disagree?

                     Why, why disagree?"

   

     Friends, I want to begin by explaining what a hard time I'm having even beginning to deconstruct this mess of a verse. It's so antithetical to everything I know and hold true about life and love and monogamous partnership that the first time I heard it, I may have cringed and gasped audibly. Conflict is an avoidable facet of relationships. Committing to a partnership can be hard, and it's normal and necessary to have disagreements sometimes. A hallmark of a healthy partnership is the ability to fight smart and, more importantly, compromise in mutually beneficial ways. When I hear someone brag that they never fight with their partner, it's a huge red flag to me. This is not to say that there isn't such a thing as too much fighting, or that all fights are created equal, but an absence of conflict does not indicate an absence of problems or disagreement, it indicates an absence of communication. 

     Now, to get back to the line we didn't talk about, about she'll maybe "let [him] rock my body right." There are also several other instances of Trainor using sex as a bargaining chip to get what she wants packed into this three minute song. This is not a new idea, rather its roots are in the belief that woman aren't sexual beings and don't enjoy sex, thus they do it as a sort of marriage tax. By extension, if women are disinterested in sex and only do it to be nice, it's of no consequence to withhold sex until certain conditions are met. I'd say that's a pretty terrible, manipulative thing to do, and also related to some serious communication troubles. 

     Finally, the icing on the cake comes tucked at the end of a chorus about two-thirds of the way through the song. It starts out the same way as every other chorus, then ends with "and know we'll never see your family more than mine." It comes entirely out the blue. Literally, there is no talk of family before or after. It's just this random line apropos of nothing, like a tiny, calculated, dysfunctional relationship power play. Meghan Trainor clearly wants Future Husband to know that her needs come first, forever.

     I don't think that Meghan Trainor is intentionally a feminist nightmare. In fact, I'd imagine she truly believes she's empowering. And if her words are making young women feel better about their bodies, or more willing to speak their minds, that's a great thing! But the trouble with pop feminism is that when you take what may very well be a distinct feminist message and feed it through the capitalist machine, oftentimes what comes out is a fuzzy, pseudo-politics. The patriarchy has no incentive to produce popular cultural narratives that legitimately challenge a status quo that keeps maleness and whiteness and hegemony in power. This is why we must be ever vigilant in critiquing the media we consume: the very act of analyzing popular culture forces us to confront the systems in which damaging images continue to thrive. By talking about it, we can move toward creating more legitimately progressive media.