This video is Mika, a UK pop artist, performing his new single Big Girls (Are Beautiful), due to be released in the U.K. next week.
Of course, it’s on youtube.com first.
And the comments that follow it are pretty typical. A few “yay! I love this” comments followed by a lot of “that’s disgusting” “get rid of the fat chicks” genre of commentary.
What do you think of this? Watch it first before you read my own commentary. I don’t want to colour your impression.
Done? Ok.
Mika, while bopping along and repeating the phrase big girls are beautiful, is followed by some not-skinny women dressed in…corsets! Corsets. CORSETS. Garments designed to bind you down to make your waist smaller and your boobs bigger so you can fit into the current expectations of beauty.
This leads me to believe that in order to make the song catchy, Mika felt the need to drop some of the (possible) original lyrics in his song: big girls are beautiful, when they are bound up and fit the hourglass frame that we, the patriarchy, has determined that it is time to resurrect in fashion, just to show those skinny chicks that they don’t really rule the world. Ha! (chorus).
Anytime a particular style, look, size, shape, race, or ethnicity is heralded as beautiful, it implies the rest are not. This song doesn’t cheer for the beauty we all possess, it highlights only one beauty. And I find it hard to hear this and not think “fetish” mostly because the people who claim to love big, beautiful women, have fetishized it. It’s not about accepting a woman as a whole, but that they have some particular kink that makes them want large women and not any other. Women still being seen as bodies, not as people.
Big girls, you really are beautiful. And so are the rest of you. And it has very little to do with you how you look and everything to do with how you live, how you carry yourselves, and the respect you give to yourself and others.
P.S - if you’re over 18, you’re a woman, not a girl (I’m sick of being called a girl by men).
P.P.S. – burn the damned corsets.
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Trudi Evans |
| About the author: |
| Trudi Evans is the publisher of As We Are Magazine and an active member of the board of directors for the Eating Disorders Action Group. Her interests range from politics and writing to environmentalism and mixed-berry cobblers. She resides in Nova Scotia with her spouse Rob, their son Sam, and Sam’s cat Hero. |
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