YOU: No Photoshopping Necessary
One of my favorite non-profits in San Francisco, About-Face, is on a mission to make a difference in how women see themselves. It’s no secret that pages of glossies, gossip mags, blogs and tabloids are overridden with airbrushed photos and images of women who were already too thin to begin with. And yet what are we doing about it? Nothing. Or, well, barely anything. (The April issue of French Elle is an astonishing exception.) Even the efforts to impose minimum weight requirements on (runway) models seems to be going nowhere, and we continue to see the same manipulated images — the most recently publicized of which is Gisele’s missing baby in the latest London Fog ads — and self-esteem-bashing messages.
And all this is for … what? To uphold unachievable standards the fashion and beauty industries are trying to impose on us? What about something that screams You’re awesome and beautiful just the way you are! Not quite the self-affirming message you get from looking at, say, the latest Louis Vuitton ad campaign.
So this is where About-Face comes in. They’re actually doing something about it. In addition to presenting media literacy seminars to schools and universities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that help equip women with the tools, information and confidence they need to resist the media’s negativity and notions that you’re never enough, About-Face goes to the streets to directly impact the local community. To deliver the messages they feel women deserve to hear, but hear all too rarely.
Their latest stunt?
This Saturday, August 15th, About-Face supporters of all ages will be putting up static-cling decals in the dressing rooms of various stores that say the types of things women ought to hear when they look in the mirror. Messages like “Confidence is beauty” and “YOU: No Photoshopping necessary.”
They’ll also be setting up their own dressing room at the excessively foot-trafficked cable car turnaround where Market Street and Powell Street meet. (If they’re diverted elsewhere, check Union Square!) Here, women can step up and write on the mirror and express the messages they think women deserve to hear.
Jennifer Berger, About-Face’s executive director, shares in a press release that the young women involved in the organization and this particular activity believe that:
Women and girls have the right to feel beautiful the way they are, rather than trying to conform to the unreal, unattainable images we see every day. Sadly, many women and girls don’t like their bodies the way they are, and we need to change that.
The public is invited to participate during the event. Members of the community can talk with women who come up to the outdoor dressing room, or help the girls covertly put up decals in local stores. (All items posted in dressing rooms will be removable without damage to the walls or mirrors.) If supporters can’t be there in person, they can catch the action on Twitter by following @aboutfacesf.
EVENT DETAILS
Event: “Covert Dressing Room Action” by About-Face
When: Saturday, August 15, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Where : Cable Car Turnaround at Market and Powell Streets, San Francisco, CA (In case of problems in that area, this event will be 3 blocks up Powell at Union Square, on a sidewalk bordering the square.)
Are you on Facebook? Check out more event details there, too!
About-Face Background
About-Face equips women and girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect their self-esteem and body image. They deliver media-literacy workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area, enable girls and women to take action in their own ways, and maintain the resource-filled web site About-Face.org. About-Face is based in San Francisco, and educated more than 700 young women in the 2008-09 school year.
About-Face’s success with previous actions has been profound, and includes their teen-driven action using full-sized body-shaped cardboard cutouts at the Powell BART/Muni station in late 2008, the Yay! Scales action in Union Square in July 2008, and our “Please Don’t Feed the Models” poster in 1998.
Let’s be honest here, though, most girls in America ARE overweight. We are excusing it by saying it’s not realistic to be skinny. It is… they are just to damn lazy!