AIBU to question what people mean by calling someone (Hannah Waddingham) a real woman?

[WorldCupWillie]

A few stories about Hannah Waddingham over the last day or two. Cue a lot of real woman/all woman comments. From men and women. What do they mean? That she's not trans? That she's never had work done?

I mean, Susan Boyle, Mary Beard, Kathy Burke, Jo Brand are "all woman"/real women, as real as Hannah. But nobody would say that about them.

She owns the room, you could never miss her

Not a description of HW at all!

Hannah is gorgeous! 😊

My arms wasted away at one point, after rapid unintended weight loss.
I then piled it all back on, but the arm muscles remained wasted.

I saw HW's arms while she was presenting summat and thought "Okay. Maybe I can build up my arms again."

I'll never have HW arms [I'm in my 60s], but my arms no longer look slack, if you know what I mean.

Her arms are most definitely to be coveted.

Agree. More women shaming other women's bodies. We are all real women and we come in all different shapes and sizes don't you know! None of them are better than the other.

The bullying allegations seem to originate from this thread. Post at 15.32 by user blahhblahhblahh.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4977698-have-you-ever-met-a-celebrity-and-did-they-act-or-look-different-to-what-you-were-expecting

I'm all woman.

Apart from my feet. I appear to have Frodo's feet, only slightly larger and hairier.

It's more the carrying the babies that's supposed to be easier with wider hips rather than the child birth bit (anecdotally I do have wide hips and had very easy pregnancies with zero issues but both ended in sections for other reasons), but I've known all shapes and sizes to have bits they've found easy or struggled with, so we know it's nonsense.

What it comes down to is that we've been programmed to believe "real women" should look a certain way to be an ideal mother/wife. By men. So really it's not worth us arguing about.

That said I do think HW is gorgeous with an amazing figure. She is a "real woman". And so am I, section scars and all!

I think the wide hips thing is BS really. Same as I dont think having big boobs has any breastfeeding correlation

This is kind of the opposite of what she is!

This is exactly what I think.

It’s an odious way of talking, trying to give the appearance of being inclusive while actually being prescriptive and exclusionary. All very ‘curvy in all the right places’. It’s often used as a skinny shaming device while trying to sound feminist and being deeply anti-feminist. Although I have no idea what people mean in this particular instance as I don’t know what she looks like.

It just means someone you could relate to. Someone you might possibly imagine standing next to at the school gates.

From a woman with straight hips, I would love her figure

I didn't know she had Manx heritage, but if so, I'm thinking: those Viking genes are deifnitely showing! Tall, blond, strong etc.

Maybe they mean she's not skinny? Though I also dislike the use of these kinds of terms, as women of all shapes and sizes are women if that's how they identify.

I don’t think they look alike. Hannah is not far off 6’ for starters. But if you see photos of Marilyn etc posted, there’s nearly always a comment about the days when women were ‘proper women’. Happens with a lot of old Hollywood actresses who are wearing shapewear to create a defined hourglass. So if we’re asking what does ‘proper women’ mean - to me, it’s an aesthetic. It’s more about the femininity of figure-hugging clothes such as wiggle dresses, hourglass bodies with notable curves, and even particular kinds of makeup (winged eyes) etc.

In reality MM wasnt particularly curvy. She was quite slender.

She was very curvy, too much to be a standard clothing model (at least initially), which is why she moved to pinup. She was also very slim.

MM's body was soft in a way you don't see with the uber toned film stars of today,

She has presence & curves, that’s what I thought it meant.

Hannah is quite Amazonian and doesn’t hide that.

with comparisons to MM, isn’t it the femininity aspect eg dresses and heels as opposed to dressing cool or edgy.

I think she looks fabulous.

And I loved her in Ted Lasso.

Me, too, although I've recently lost weight from being overweight and am definitely not toned.
However, all my life, I've had comments about my frame, including many about it being man-like, and my strong/harsh features and it's really negatively affected my self esteem.