Once upon a time I was a catalogue shopper. I still occasionally am, but not anywhere near as much as I used to be. One of the companies I really loved was J. Crew. I had a lot of J. Crew sweaters and skirts and shoes; you name it, I had it. One day the new J. Crew summer catalogue came along – but, it was different? Something was off. What was it? I could not understand why I had such a strong sense that something significant had changed, but had it, or was I making it up?
I was not making anything up. J. Crew had made a commitment to using only authentic bodies, real women, as in models who were not – as had been the previous case – possessors of large fake boobs. As I recall, this move was made to be in step with their overall aesthetic of well-made, authentic and wearable lifestyle fashion that was wholesome, American, real.
The women were still tall and skinny AF (hardly authentically American, as the average woman in this country is around 5’3”), but what interested me was how my eye – my eye, the same eye of the same woman who by then had been examining all movie credits for women in various roles for at least a decade – had been trained to see big breasted, skinny models as the norm, so much so that when a clothing company stopped using them, holy shit – what’s off with this here summer catalog? My lil dedicated feminist eye had been trained – unconsciously – by what I was exposed to over and over, not just in the J. Crew catalogue, but everywhere women in bathing suits and every other type of clothing worn by our gender was displayed.
Similarly, nowadays, as more and more men and women of color, as gay men, lesbians, non-binary and all size and shapes of women and men but women especially are represented on multiple, different platforms and screens – there is a collective what the fuck is going on, a discombobulation, a wtf is off here, this is not what I am used to seeing, is it? And, of course, a sense of injury, outrage and even hate, not form everyone or everywhere, but when there is hate, much of it is directed at women and people of color, especially (heaven help us all) women who are – who dare – to be curvy or non-conforming. So, no, nothing is off, Virginia, but the world is changing. Thank Goddess.
This also manifests in my perception, more innocently, that any number of current newscasters and reporters are practically teenagers. That mis-perception is a normal part of aging, all of which moving parts I am attempting to manage with grace, mostly succeeding (but doesn’t that reporter look like a twelve-year-old, forchrissake?!!). This is particularly acute when I am listening to someone from, say, the Brookings Institute or within the State Department who’s got to be too young to know all that history and context. But, they do, because smart people of all ages can learn shit, including history and context. Ageism. Nobody said it wouldn’t happen to me, too. Sigh.
Representation matters, because as many have said before, if you cannot see it, you cannot imagine it, you might not believe it, and it sure as hell can make it harder to accept, as in accepting a new, broader, or more nuanced reality. I really hope to live long enough to see an end to ‘the first woman/Asian/Muslim/Hindu/ATHIEST/person of color/gay/lesbian/non-binary-trans etc., etc. of any hue or color to be elected/appointed/achieve…(fill in the blank)’, because all of that shit is old, and done with, already checked off – and it is possible. Possible.
Training all our eyes to see beyond what have been the accepted norms in all arenas, because yeah, the world is changing.