Sexy back?

“The booty is the new boobie,” proclaims the Globe and Mail’s Deirdre Kelly in last week’s Style section. One of Kelly’s interviewees, a “physician” (who performs plastic surgery) asserts: “The moment you are over 30, the bum starts sinking down and with the new technologies we are able to lift the bum and give the bum that appearance of a bunny’s [yes, that’s right … a bunny’s]—round, perky, and sag-free.”

I am over 30. Apparently, my bum has been sinking for six years now, so I guess it’ll be down around my knees before long. Unless I take measures—i.e., thousands of dollars—to shape my bum like a bunny’s.

I happen to be reading Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique, a 1963 book that explores how women during that era were (quite successfully) urged to locate their identity within the home, within the role of nurturer to their husbands and children. The section I’m in right now is looking at the editorial lineups of women’s magazines in the 50s, which included such titles as:

• Femininity Begins at Home
• It’s a Man’s World Maybe
• Have Babies While You’re Young
• How to Snare a Male
• Should I Stop Work When We Marry?
• Are You Training Your Daughter to Be a Wife?
• Do Women Have to Talk So Much?
• Don’t Be Afraid to Marry Young

Now, I love the Globe—love the Style section. But there is something insidious about Canada's national newspaper (which I read carefully and which influences my thinking) carrying a half-satirical, half-serious article about the lengths women are going to in order to knife and inject their bums to current trends in sexy. And just a few weeks back, the prominent style personality Jeanne Beker had a column in about the excellent procedure she had to depuff her eyes.

I’m not naïve—I know that pointing out all the ways we women are failing at being sexy, and then suggesting quick fixes, is the bread and butter of women’s media. But it seems to me the focus is pretty intense right now—and getting a lot more attention in media I usually trust.

I have a fair idea of what Freidan would say about this.

As for me, my intellectual side is on guard against pop culture edicts about what I have to look like. But that’s not my only side. I confess to feeling slightly overwhelmed about all the things I could be doing to make myself more feminine, more acceptable. The things a lot of other women are doing. To more and more parts of their bodies.

The Feminine Mystique rears its ugly head again.

Comments

[Sarah]

what if you got a new ass that actually looked like a bunny's-- like with a fluffy tail and everything? this guy must be on drugs. not only is he tapping into misogyny, etc, but since when is the ideal feminine butt shaped like a rabbit's? do rabbits even have butts?

[doug]

Another G&M writer I'm keen to admire recently did a big piece, with several pics, exploring "man-scaping". I'd bet that if Betty were writing now her thesis would be slightly different.

[kiley]

Yep, it's true - men are under more pressure now from the aesthetic industries. Interesting that relatively early on in this phenomenon, men like your writer are finding the humour in it. Humour is a pretty good defense.

In fact, I think men are under more pressure in a lot of ways. They are now expected to be good, nurturing parents as well as earners, not to mention keep their guts in check. Not to say they weren't expected to be good fathers before, but there was more of an expectation of absenteeism due to work demands. I think that's less the case now. The ideal has changed, and while some of it must be welcome, some of it must be darned confusing and hard to juggle.