I'd like to thank Beyonce, or perhaps more appropriately her parents Matthew and Tina, for creating a beautiful woman, with curves and all, talented enough to fight the general portrayal of women in mainstream media as waifish toothpicks, flaunting all that is unfeminine and encouraging women and girls of all ages to fight their natural body growth in unhealthy ways thus keeping their body as childlike as possible. In doing some research on this particular post, as the video posted above (or the actual music video -which I couldn't embed) is what encouraged me to write this appreciative note regarding the ability to accept my own curves a bit more, lead me down a more racially diverse road than I expected to head. Initially, I thought simply that a woman with curves is a rarity in pop culture and I should interject my "thank you" when I feel so inclined, and while Beyonce is a beautiful woman, with hips and natural breasts, a small waist and gorgeous legs, she is also a woman of color and while that doesn't matter in the way I appreciate her beauty, it does exemplify the dichotemy of what is considered beautiful for white women and what is considered beautiful for women of color.
The passive, aggreable, and unthreatening version of a wilted flower portrayed by white women for so many years in Hollywood is what we can thank for the rise in the need of sizes like double zero, websites promoting anorexia, and "Best and Worst Beach Body" specials running year round reminding us that cellulite is not acceptable no matter who you are and is a far cry from the appreciation of a curvy body depicted in paintings of the Renaissance or Baroque eras. Tyra Banks, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and Salma Hayek are all women with both breasts and hips who are considered beautiful by the mainstream but if you take a look at the white women considered beautiful, they're either Pamela Anderson-esque caractures of what women should be and plastic surgeon created cartoons, or they're like Angelina Jolie (who in my personal opinion was more attractive before she lost tons of weight), Rachel McAdams, Keira Knightly, Nicole Kidman or Jessica Alba, all of whom are certainly beautiful and I would give my right leg (but it'd probably take both legs for me to weigh enough to match any of their scales) to look like them, but none of them are women, even if I stopped eating for the next 4 months, I could ever be as small as. That's because I am a woman with breasts. I am a woman with hips. Granted, I could stand to lose some weight, but even at my most healthy, I'll never be a size zero. I'm simply not built that way.
There is hope, however, for white women in media to be portrayed as something other than a wilting, curveless, child-like nubiles or an overweight, sexless, unattractive secondary character. People like Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men, show that even white women can have curves, have breasts and hips and thighs and be considered attractive and not overweight.
Perhaps my post here is rambling and doesn't come to a concise point, but it's something I felt the need to touch on. My initial idea was to praise Beyonce for her fantastic body, her talent, her video etc, but had to acknowledge, as a white woman, that I should be able to be proud of the shape of my body as well, despite the fact that it is less accepted by mainstream media as typically beautiful.
