Ladies in knickers

[Cameron2012]

I am curious as to wether anyone feels ' empowered' by the pictures in the papers and on media of famous and random women in their knickers, standing with other women in their knickers showing off their ' real' bodies.
I just don't get it, looking at other peoples imperfections doesn't make me dislike my own,stretch marks, big tummy etc any less.
Does it really make any difference to anyone's self body image? does anyone feel empowered by this? Seriously?
Or is it just pictures of ladies in their knickers?

or even kittens in knickers

When I was young, I never saw an image of a woman with a body like mine, I felt too fat, too hairy, out of proportion and the wrong shape, and the media have the impression that I was the only one who looked do bad

But if you look around any office, shopping centre, beach, swimming pool , public place or indeed for most people, friends and family, you will see plenty of women who look just like you. Why do women need images of women to validate themselves rather than the women they meet in real life everyday?

I really don't understand how anyone can look at a picture of say Kate Moss and think it is realistic for anyone other than Kate Moss and the tiny number of women who look like Kate Moss.

So far as stupid campaigns like Dove's I have boycotted Dove ever since they started that ridiculous "every women is beautiful " nonsense.

If only I looked half as good in my undercrackers!

"Whoever's bodies it is, it's still about what women's bodies look like, isn't it? "

YES!! Too pretty/not pretty enough, too much surgery/not enough surgery, too saggy/not proud enough about your saggy bits, we CANNOT win because it is still about what women look like. Trying to have a counterbalance to the only young, pretty, smooth, taut female bodies are acceptable, I can appreciate the sentiment, but it still shows, as someone else said, that just the women we know and what they look like, isn't good enough for us to know it. Our everyday experience isn't enough, because for so many women, their everyday experience is being obsessed with what we look like, or what others think about what we look like, or what we think about how other women look, or whether or not others are obsessing about how we look today, and so on and so on and so on..................

Are the presenters in Loose Women good TV presenters, do they have inspirational careers as journalists and writers, are they writing exciting books..............No, yet again, it's what do they look like, and are they being correctly brave about it. How do we change this obsession with female appearance, and female bodies as something that is continually being looked at and judged, or women being judged for displaying or not displaying whatever bodily changes they are currently undergoing...........

Not all dismal though -- I was thinking of the change in perceptions of the bodies of disabled people during the paralympics, where the focus was not so much on what they look like, but what they can do.
The statue of Alison Lapper pregnant in Trafalgar square. I think it has had the effect of more people feeling able to display their multi-coloured painted protheses, rather than the old-style hide it and try and make it look like a 'real' limb surgical pink (which is a bit of a bugger if you're black!).But for women, we still have women and girls being kicked off flights for wearing the wrong sort of trousers, or having their clothing taken off for wearing the wrong sort of swimming attire, and so on and so on. Women and what we look like and what we wear or don't wear is still a battleground.............

Men are celebrated for what they do, women for what they look like. There is nothing empowering about an ad which effectively says "well, you look a bit crap, but hey, we'll set it up so someone looks at you."

What about what we can do, what we can achieve, what we manage in the face of adversity, the extraordinary women who achieve the incredible, the ordinary women in difficult circumstances for whom just keeping things going is an achievement? Why does it come down to "hey, you too can stand around on prime-time TV in your knickers, whoop whoop, hang out the fucking bunting"?

O for the day when one can let one's body be seen, not because it's beautiful but because it doesn't matter whether it's beautiful or not.

Why do women need images of women to validate themselves rather than the women they meet in real life everyday?

I think it's because the media and the pictures in them - TV, magazines, films, newspapers - should ideally reflect society. And when women and girls see no one that looks like them in the media, or see people who look like them described negatively or ridiculed, they start to wonder what that says about their place in society, or if they even have a place at all.

One of the girls I look after is black, with very dark skin and close cropped Afro hair, worn naturally and not dyed. She was looking through one of her teenage girls' magazines once (I know, I don't buy them for her) and commented that she has never seen a girl that looks like her in any of them.

She knows lots of black women, in her family and in our community, but I know that not seeing anyone who looks like her held up as an aesthetic to aspire to makes her feel unattractive and not good enough, and irrespective of the logic, that makes me cross.

I do think nudity is empowering in some contexts. Perhaps not so much to sell products tho... i dont think selling things or advertising things really empowers the female body much.

A healthy dose of reality might be helpful to some women. Seeing that others don't look perfect.

Women-only bathing beaches would be a better solution than some pictures of celebrity ladies in their knickers.

I'm a fan of the tumblr site with pictures of hairy legs, but that's not a commercial thing.

Interestingly none of them are displaying less than perfect bikini lines or hairy legs and armpits.

It looks bizarre but then I think... If they don't then there'll be no exposed bodies in the media that aren't young, toned, cosmetically enhanced and airbrushed. That does have an impact on how people view themselves.

The fashion for the wobbly, stretch marked, distended shapes and excessive fat to be exposed to the world is a reaction to the perfection the media bombards us with. I kind of like it. I can look at them and think, phew, I'm not the worst...

Women-only bathing beaches would be a better solution than some pictures of celebrity ladies in their knickers.

I like the idea of adopting a bathing culture like the type found in Japan. Men and women segregated into different baths, people hanging out nude socially.

Men and women segregated into different baths, people hanging out nude socially

That would be grim. I really don't want to see naked people.

It wouldn't be compulsory, I'm not feeling an authoritarian vibe!

"I'm a fan of the tumblr site with pictures of hairy legs..."
Come on, LINK please! I'm a great fan of the furry leg................

"and commented that she has never seen a girl that looks like her in any of them. "
This is an excellent point.

I could also say the same about butch dykes. Many years ago, Huffty was a presenter on The Word for one series. She was a dyke with a shaved head. Which led to me getting a lot of comments and being asked if I was her - despite the fact that we were nowhere near alike except for the bald dyke bit. I also get mistaken for some random buddhist that some people have met (or so they claim).

SomeDyke
I know Huffty (not socially, through her women's centre), shes awesome and her legs have the most glorious coat of leg-fur I've ever seen. Her wife is awesome too.

'Men are celebrated for what they do, women for what they look like'

Yes, this. Even when women are supposedly being celebrated for their actions there appearance will still be commented on. I remember reading an article about women search and rescue helicopter pilots in Afghanistan. They were carrying out an incredibly skillful and courageous role, but a big chunk of the text was about their hair, their makeup, their earrings. No one would ever write a similar article about men and describe them in that way.

" . I remember reading an article about women search and rescue helicopter pilots in Afghanistan. They were carrying out an incredibly skillful and courageous role, but a big chunk of the text was about their hair, their makeup, their earrings. "
Ffs how annoying

" . I remember reading an article about women search and rescue helicopter pilots in Afghanistan. They were carrying out an incredibly skillful and courageous role, but a big chunk of the text was about their hair, their makeup, their earrings. "

Yes, why not? After all, the hardest part about being a woman is figuring out what to wear...

I have mixed feelings about these pics. I'm sure the target audience isn't men, for them to ogle at, but for women, to give them confidence.
But ultimately to give them confidence for them to ogle them, prehaps?

not rtft

It's still objectifying

It would be nice if we didn't have to have images of half--naked women everywhere, no of course there's nothing empowering about it. Where are the snaps of men being similarly empowered. It still says that we are what we look, that what we look is who we are

nah

I find it so depressing. To me it just say"Look women, no matter how far you progress in your career, you're still just women, so you still have to undress for the cameras.". It's not empowering, it's just reminding us that it never ends. We have to be on display all our lives.

While I agree that it would be good to see more a wider range of women in public roles so that young women could see themselves being similarly successful without having to radically (and sometimes impossibly) change that doesn't require anyone taking their clothes off.

I suspect that the women who (thinking positively) this advert might have been intending to reach are more likely to react with disgust than feel some sort of validation. And yes it seem ludicrous to imagine a group of older ordinary men being photographed sitting around in their undies, which says it all really.

I think what would actually be empowering would be if we had a culture that was more open in general about nakedness. I live in Korea and it is really normal to go to the public bath with family/friends, get naked, get in the jacuzzi and have your companion scrub you down.

You see all sorts of bodies: fat, skinny, saggy boobs, stretch marks and it really makes you realise that in the end, it's just a body and no huge deal. Most people have flaws.

But in the UK, we have to parade women around in public in their underthings, but baulk at changing in the gym unless we hide behind a towel.

Very odd attitude to women's bodies.

I'm pretty indifferent to those photo shoots and Dove adverts. They don't talk to me, they're just a bit odd.

Also women on social media "proudly" displaying all their "stretch marks"/"tiger stripes" and "cellulite". Ugh they just irritate me. They always have nice bodies.

What I have found quite positive though is seeing naked/nearly naked women on shows like Embarrassing Bodies and Anna Richardson' Sex Education Show. I always come away from those experiences feeling more confident and normal and absurdly slightly shocked that not all women look like the models I see everyday in advertising etc.

Objectifying and not empowering in my book. I wish they'd all just leave women's bodies alone.