Baby Got Back - Beauty, Gender, and the Cover of SI
Oh my God, Becky - A musical journey about Sports Illustrated, Fat Shaming, Body Positivity, Gender, Health, and Beauty
Full disclaimer - What I subjectively find attractive as a White, cis-hetero Man is big, bright eyes, and a huge ear-to-ear smile. Thus, my all-time celebrity crush is 🎵Kim Deal of The Pixies and The Breeders.
Background of this Substack piece -
In May 2022 SI used a model who is larger than the models they regularly feature, who are themselves larger than the heroin-chic anorexia models in the 1990s, whatever the hell that was about. Jordan Peterson, among others, tweeted that they didn’t agree with that selection, and I responded on Twitter with a quip about how 🎵Queen and 🎵Sir Mix-A-Lot preferred girls with a little extra junk in the trunk. But this actually goes deeper than pop culture into the realm of archetypes, gender roles, and intersubjective standards of beauty.
First, while I acknowledge that not everyone agrees with me on this, I think the evidence is pretty clear that there are objective truths about health and weight, which are tied to diet and exercise.
I’ve struggled with my own weight throughout my adult life. I got obese in my 20s, and I’ve spent the last 8 years coming back through weights, cardio, yoga, and Aikido, and I still have 20 pounds and 2 inches of belt to get down to my ideal weight (I’ve lost 20 lbs and 4 inches recently). I also have a knee that gets ‘clicky’ and painful when I don’t stretch and exercise regularly, so I’m kind of forced to work out.
Being overweight or obese is tied to a lot of medical problems. Joints, organs, brain health, and a ton of other body parts are kept in better shape with regular exercise and an improved diet.
It’s a higher quality of life if you can run long distances, lift heavy things, be loose and limber, and a lighter frame makes all that easier. It also opens the door to a lot of fun activities. Look at quality of life and longevity outcomes for elderly people, and it’s clear that our lifestyle choices make a huge difference.
For partisan differences in beauty standards and gender roles, I’m going to start with males.
Conservatives -
Conservative understanding of sex (biology) and gender (I’ll go with Judith Butler here and describe gender as duties performed within roles associated with sex assigned at birth) is judged based on adherence to the traditional masculine archetype. Cartoonishly, it looks like 🎵this (in heavy metal form, courtesy of Austrian Death Machine):
But because we don’t want to live like literal barbarians (no offense to 🎵Crom), that masculine energy gets directed towards emulating the model of a gentleman-warrior who is strong, protective, caring, stern, commanding, stoic, creative, and capable of providing. This strength allows men to lead and to protect those they care about.
This scene from American Sniper portrays the Conservative Ideal Man quite nicely -
“There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Now, some people prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world…those are the sheep. And then you got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They’re the wolves. And then there are those who have been blessed with the gift of aggression, and the overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed that live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdogs.”
The Rightwing view of the Leftwing male is one of someone who has abandoned their masculinity and become subservient to women, keeping them in a state of perpetual adolescence. When Rightwing males mock Leftwing males, they use terms like ‘cuck’ and ‘soyboy’ to belittle their perceived lack of masculinity and strength. The derogatory ‘pajama boy’ memes reflect this lack of respect towards Liberal men:
So, in the name of being less like that, and more like Chris Kyle or Conan the Barbarian, they push, taunt, and constructively bully each other to lift heavy, restrain their emotions, pursue traditionally masculine hobbies, and aim to be as competent as possible. They view Leftwing culture as hostile to men and masculinity, and if you want to know more about that there’s the a bunch of Red Pill communities, and like 10 billion hours of Jordan Peterson videos encouraging young males to be more masculine.
Update (April 2023) - since I wrote this a lot of young men got really into Andrew Tate, whose hyper- or toxic- masculinity is his entire selling point.
Liberals -
The Leftwing critique of traditional masculinity, referred to as ‘toxic masculinity’ in some spaces, is that a world of males trying to be like Conan leads to real world violence - violence against women and children, wars, murder, gang activity, and bullying on a global scale, and has since time immemorial. The socially constructed ‘need’ for male dominance causes casualties, and belittles and damages cis-hetero males and gender non-conforming persons.
There are many excellent men, who are in many ways the exact opposite of ‘toxic masculinity’, who defied traditional gender norms and are extremely desirable and competent - 🎵Prince, 🎵Freddie Mercury, and 🎵Tim Curry, for starters. Even very masculine men like Wesley Snipes and Patrick have had their gender-bending fun -
Society has lots of roles and lots of non Conan-like males have contributed greatly to civilization, from computers (Alan Turing) to comedy (Scott Thompson) to civil rights (Marsha P. Johnson) to business (Chris Hughes) to heavy metal (🎵Rob Halford). The world is a better place because of the contributions of gender non-conforming males, and if America truly wishes to live up to its claim of being the land of the free, then males need to be able to be free to express themselves outside of the constructs of traditional masculinity.
For the Left, gender and sex are distinct, and gender is either socially constructed or performed, and not only is there nothing inherent to being born a male, but the belief that males should be traditionally masculine generates harmful social forces that hurt people of all genders.
Their critique of the Rightwing position on masculinity is that if society is to overcome its systemic and persistent violence, then males needs to evolve and move on from being a bunch of primitive cavemen.
So let’s move onto the ladies, and I’ll do my best to not get myself murdered or exiled here.
Rightwing views -
There are at least two intertwined sub-worlds in Conservative thought towards women - Tradwives and Equity Feminism.
The tradwife view, typically found among religious conservatives, is that society works best when men go out and bread win and women stay home and raise children. I didn’t realize this until I re-watched Mary Poppins with my own daughter, but that movie has an undercurrent of anti-feminism and tradwifeism - the mother is too busy fighting for suffrage to pay attention to her children, so the ‘practically perfect in every way’ 🎵Mary Poppins has to sweep in on her umbrella to raise the children and save the day.
(Sidenote - if you ever feel like you really screwed something up in this life, realize that someone destroyed Julie Andrews vocal cords doing routine surgery. That’s the equivalent of setting the Mona Lisa on fire IMO.)
One argument I frequently find in this world is the 'Paradox of Declining Female Happiness' (Stevenson and Wolfers (2009) The abstract for this paper reads,
“By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”
More commonly, I see The Gender Equity Feminist position, which as laid out by Christina Hoff Sommers, is about acknowledging that while men and women are different (body strength, Big Five psychology, etc.), those difference should never be used to tell someone that they aren’t allowed to pursue what they believe is the good life, which they should be free to define for themselves.
If a woman wants to be a stay at home mom, great. If she wants to be a lawyer, or an astronaut, or a cop, that’s also great. Or she can be a famous political commentator (and possibly elected representative), like Candace Owens - that too is wonderful:
In either case, Conservative women tend to value traditional femininity - looking good, staying in shape, being nurturing and caring, desiring a traditionally masculine guy for marriage, and all the virtues associated with all of that. Like Conservative men, they value order and family and desire stability and safety for themselves and their families.
Leftwing Views -
A lot of Leftwing women are in basic agreement with Equity Feminism, in that it should be their choice what to do with their lives and bodies. They may value traditional femininity, exercise, and healthy living, but also don’t begrudge those who go against gender expectations. Because enforcement of traditional gender norms have led to all kinds of sexual harm (rape, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, etc.), there’s a moral virtue in challenging gender norms, including how women look and behave. Whereas Conservatives would say certain behaviors are vulgar or unladylike, there is an argument that those views are socially constructed and serve to keep women down within patriarchal structures.
What they’re looking for is 🎵a little respect. By smashing patriarchy through rejecting traditional social norms and mores, they’re liberating people of all genders to be free to decide for themselves how to live. Some of these structures that perpetuate patriarchy are:
Fat Shaming - Society puts forth the image of an ideal women - thin, attractive, etc. This archetype then gets used as a weapon against women who don’t fit it, and in the case of women who are larger, this comes in all sorts of forms from rude comments to design features that don’t take their size into account, to difficulty dating and finding a partner, to not being respected or being seen as responsible and competent.
Body Negativity and Beauty Standards- A lot of women suffer all kinds of problems (cutting, suicide, eating disorders, etc.) because they judge themselves against the traditional model of beauty, and they don’t like how they compare. Formerly it was fashion magazines, but since 2014 social media has really messed up a lot of girls who negatively compare themselves to the girls they see on their cell phone screens.
Jonathan Haidt does a great job looking at the data on how much harm social media is doing to women because of its damaging effects on self-esteem here.
From a Leftwing perspective, these norms are part of larger social structures that harm women in all kinds of ways, including encouraging men to see women as prey, to objectification of women as mere sexual objects and denying their humanity, to dismissing their thoughts and concerns as being secondary to men’s.
Thus, seeing bigger women pictured as beautiful is seen as a strike against these harmful social forces, and celebrating that women come in all shapes and sizes. After all, 🎵girls just wanna have fun.
Finally, on what counts as beautiful, there are a few pretty constant traits that cis-hetero people are attracted to - facial symmetry; signifiers of health, fertility, and youth in women; status, muscles, confidence, and height in men, and so on.
But even so, people are drawn to all kinds of things, including body types, personalities, quirks, and shared interests. I think the Left is correct that whatever body you find yourself in, you should cherish it and not spend your days beating the crap out of yourself because you don’t look like someone else. And also that it’s rude to bully fat people.
And I think that the Right is correct that whatever body you find yourself in, you can improve it. You can gain endurance, strength, and flexibility, and that opens up windows to all kinds of possibilities - running marathons, rock climbing, bear wrestling, etc. You can always eat less junk and instead consume more fruits, lean proteins, and veggies. You’ll feel better, and life will be more fun and rewarding.
And back to the Left, they’re right about empathy. We’re all going through our struggles, and there’s a fine line between positive encouragement and being hurtful.
And as for what I think about about SI model Yumi Nu being attractive or not - she’s alright, but she’s no 🎵Kim Deal.