If you’ve been inside a mall or shopped for a new bra recently, you may have noticed a shift in Victoria’s Secret marketing strategy. You still can’t walk by without seeing a 12-by-24-foot image of a woman in her skivvies, and the VS website remains borderline pornographic. But where before there were exclusively busty women in pushup bras, the lingerie brand has made room for a different look: a new ad plastered on store windows and on the company’s website reads “No padding is sexy now!” next to a photo of three cleavage-less young women in padless bras. If you dare to enter the pink and black lucite fortress, you’ll find a store awash with an unprecedented variety of unpadded bras and bralettes: lace, spandex, racerback, high-neck, cut out, seamless, ones that close in back, ones that close in front.

Far be it from me to criticize Victoria’s Secret for telling women that they can be sexy without a padded bra, but I can’t help but chuckle at VS’s new message about natural beauty. Why? Well, because Victoria’s Secret has built an empire on doing just the opposite…

Read more at Verilymag.com…

At long last, spring is upon us. Flowers are beginning to bloom, and the weather is warming up. In the fashion world, increasing demand for lighter clothing means that heavy winter coats are on clearance and clothing companies are marketing their Spring collections. Unfortunately, the season also traditionally ushers in a bevy of highly sexualized images of scantily clad ladies. Calvin Klein’s latest campaign is illustrative.

In anticipation of its spring 2016 collection, Calvin Klein commenced an ad campaign built around the hashtag #mycalvins. Launched on Instagram and advertised on billboards and in shopping malls across the country, the campaignfeatures celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Kendall Jenner wearing the famous brand along with the words “I _____ in #mycalvins.” Some of the individual images are harmless and even inspiring (I reflect in #mycalvins, says fully dressed Kendrick Lamar). Many others are utterly inappropriate.

One particularly unfortunate set of images has recently drawn criticism. An enormous billboard in New York City’s neighborhood of Soho displays actress Klara Kristin lounging with her dress hiked up with the slogan, “I seduce in #mycalvins.” Directly to the right, rapper Fetty Wap’s face is displayed along with the slogan, “Imake money in #mycalvins.”

There is, of course, nothing new about the pairing of images. Women are constantly portrayed as sexual objects next to depictions of men that are fully clothed or much less suggestive. Intentionally or not, however, the juxtaposition here aptly highlights the uniquely female nature of hypersexualization in advertising. While I think that most American women are pretty well used to it, rarely do advertisers make the double standard quite as explicit as Calvin Klein has succeeded in doing.

The ad may be par for the course when it comes to modern advertising, but women are speaking out. In particular, Heidi Zak, CEO and founder of ThirdLove, a women’s lingerie company whose mission is to design bras that really fit real women, is taking Calvin Klein to task for the display. Launching the #MoreThanMyUnderWear campaign, Zak and her team approached passersby on the streets of New York to find out what real women (and a few men) think about the billboard. Unsurprisingly, many were offended by the ad, calling it “inappropriate,” “obnoxious,” “unnecessary,” “terrible,” and “offensive.” “It conforms to really unfortunate stereotypes,” said one pedestrian. “It’s a double standard,” says another.

Compiling the responses into a video, Zak’s team created a petition asking Calvin Klein CEO Steve Shiffman to remove the billboard. Zak also penned a personal letter to Shiffman explaining her request. “It’s striking that almost a century after women won the right to vote,” Zak explains, “companies like yours are still propagating these offensive and outdated gender stereotypes: Men go to work and make money, while women are nothing more than sex objects…We should be illustrating that women do more than simply ‘seduce.'”

Modern advertisements are so thoroughly saturated with harmful imagery that it is hard to know where one would begin to make improvements. As one woman remarked of the billboard, “So much is inappropriate about the way women are portrayed in this world…add it to the list…what are you gonna do?” Calling attention to the problem is a good place to start. One doesn’t have to entirely agree with Zak’s gender philosophy to appreciate that the #MoreThanMyUnderWear campaign, and others like it, are holding companies to higher standards. Here’s to calling out sexism and being empowered women—oh, and whatever I’m wearing, I certainly will not be in “my Calvins.”

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I wrote this article for Verily Magazine, where it was originally published.

Photo by Alex Proimos

I recently wrote an article for Verily Magazine concerning Pirreli’s 2016 calendar, the one in which they decided to eschew the tradition of featuring a crew of naked size 2 models in favor of (mostly) clothed women chosen for their contributions to society. The exceptions to the no-nudity rule were Amy Schumer and Serena Williams, both of whose bodies stray from the modern “ideal.” Both pictures were widely lauded in the mainstream media as victories over body-shamers and monuments to body confidence. My article addresses the growing trend of using public nudity to handle criticism or assert one’s confidence. “I think it is odd and somewhat troubling to associate confidence with one’s willingness to appear nude in public, as the latter is neither a requirement nor a guarantee of the former. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: One’s willingness to walk around naked is a poor measure of confidence.”

Unsurprisingly, the reaction to the article has been pretty negative.

You can read the full article here.

P.S. Like most journalists/writers, I do not ultimately control the headlines that accompany my articles. Something to keep in mind.

Self-proclaimed anti-feminist Suzanne Venker was scheduled to give a speech, titled “One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back: Why Feminism Fails,” at Williams College as part of its “Uncomfortable Learning” Speaker Series. Ironically, students at the college were so uncomfortable with the prospect (one student accused the student who invited her of “dipping [his] hands in the blood” of marginalized people) that the event was canceled. However, Venker later made the speech she planned to give available online. Curious, I looked into it, and, as absurd as it may seem, I think there is a lot that we self-proclaimed feminists have to learn from her.

What I learned was surprising. While Venker refuses to align herself with feminists and has been highly critical of feminist movements, there is nothing she says that is inherently “anti-feminist.” As such notable people as Aziz Ansari, Hillary Clinton, and Emma Watson have all reminded us, feminism, by definition, is the belief that women and men ought to have equal rights and opportunities. Therefore, as Watson says, “If you stand for equality, you are a feminist.” Interestingly, Venker’s opinions do not violate that definition.

Asked why she is not a feminist, Venker explained that she does not subscribe to the notions that (a) women in America are oppressed or (b) the only difference between men and women are their genitals. She may be wrong about whether women are oppressed, and we can argue about whether women and men are by their natures different, but—by our very own definition of feminism—those positions are not inconsistent with what feminism is.

Far be it for me to force someone into a movement they openly disavow, but it is worth pointing out that Venker does not disavow what equality feminists so desperately desire. Rather, she (harshly) criticizes the feminist movement for failing to truly obtain it. And if her accusations carry any weight, then they are accusations that any true feminist might want to take seriously…

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE at VerilyMag.com

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I wrote this article for Verily Magazine, where the full article was originally published.

What do you remember about the year 1990? Julia Roberts made us believe in Prince Charming with the release of Pretty Woman; parachute pants were having their first (but not last) moment of popularity; and Vanilla Ice was topping the music charts. Less well-known but of great importance, however, was the release of a computer program that changed the game forever. That’s right, I’m talking about Photoshop.

Flash forward to today, when the media’s obstinate use of Photoshop is mind-blowing. In the past decade, a barrage of Photoshop scandals have occurred—discrepancies that have ranged in severity from the infamous darkening of O. J. Simpson’s complexion in Time magazine to countless instances of tacking celebrity faces onto chiseled bodies. Or we can look to more recent offenses such as Justin Bieber’s enhancement for Calvin Klein ads or Jezebel offering a hefty bounty for the non-doctored photos from Lena Dunham’s Vogue shoot. The outcry is happening, but what kind of progress is really being made?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I have yet to meet anyone who likes how Photoshop is used these days. I have never heard people say they think the extent to which fashion models, celebrities, and politicians are digitally altered is having a positive impact on society. Quite the opposite. Just last month, Valeria Lukyanova aka “The Human Barbie,” came under fire when she confessed to airbrushing her photos. Lukyanova has long admitted to using hair extensions, breast augmentation, and extensive makeup to achieve her look, but she has historically denied the use of Photoshop. The fact that she lied about undergoing the digital knife while publicly admitting to undergoing a surgical knife tells us something about Photoshop’s approval rating.

I think it’s great that Verily exists—a brand committed to not using Photoshop to alter women in its imagery—but in that way, it is somewhat of a cultural anomaly. For every publication that refuses to photo-edit its models, hundreds more already exist that are shamelessly altering their images. Clothing stores, magazines, advertisements, and more continue to shrink, buff, smooth, and even chop down their models, often with comically absurd results.

The pervasiveness of Photoshop in the media is also seriously concerning, not so much because the photographs are not real but because they are being presented as though they are. This practice distorts our perception of beauty—with measurable consequences, particularly on young women. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that how women are portrayed in the media is linked to their mental and physical health, especially in relation to body image dissatisfaction, the prevalence of which cannot be overstated. A study published earlier this year found that “87 percent of U.S. women are unhappy with at least one body part.” One in every five women has plans to pursue cosmetic procedures, and one in every three would consider it. The number one reason the surveyed women were considering such procedures? The “desire to feel more comfortable with oneself.”

Given this, it is understandable that public opposition to the use of Photoshop has morphed into a kind of digital witch hunt: Speculations are made and suspects are put on trial, and then they are virtually burned at the stake via public shaming. (Anyone remember the Beyoncé–L’Oreal Photoshop debacle? Or the many times Bey has been called out for allegedly doctoring her Instagram photos?) Understandable, yes—but ultimately counterproductive.

If I thought that a woman’s self-esteem ought to correspond to where she falls on the prevailing scale of physical beauty, then I would think this “witch hunt” worthwhile. As if to say, “Let’s find out who doctors their photos, so we can know who, really, is the fairest of them all.” Sure, if my confidence has to be determined by my spot on a scale from least beautiful to most beautiful, I’d like the scale to be accurate. But it doesn’t. In my mind, that perspective gives women far too little power over their own happiness—and the media far too much.

Like so many others, I have attempted to assuage feelings of physical inadequacy with the consolation that the beauty game is rigged. But what started as a way to cope with the impossible levels of perfection I saw on magazine covers became my default method of dealing with all the beautiful women in my life. Rather than appreciating stunning pictures of friends and acquaintances, I found myself wondering whether or not they’d been airbrushed. “They don’t look like that in real life,” I have often thought to myself. “It’s the lighting, the contrast, the filter.”

These thoughts started to consume rather than console me, and that’s when I realized: More important than finding out whether people are editing their photos is the much bigger issue that we are deriving our confidence from where we fall on the scale in the first place. And obsessing over the fact that “no one really looks like that” does not solve that. In fact, it may actually be doing more harm than good.

The “no one looks like that” approach to repairing self-esteem attempts to boost confidence by acknowledging that we are not as far from the top of the beauty totem pole as a magazine cover or lingerie ad would have us believe. But encouraging young women to draw comfort from the understanding that the latestCosmo cover is retouched, regardless of whether it is true, is really just reinforcing the notion that their self-esteem ought to be dictated by how their looks stack up against everyone else’s.

In all the talk and debate about Photoshop, here’s the question no one seems to be asking: Why is beauty in others—enhanced or not—such a threat to our egos?

READ MORE….

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I wrote this article for Verily Magazine. The full article is published there.