http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlRwwGMczFw: Women “talks back” to accusations of Jessica Simpson’s fatness.

My last blog which mentioned Jessica Simpson and her appearance in a Pizza Hut commercial has been bothering me in light of the recent controversy surrounding her slightly more voluminous figure. Brought to my attention by Fox News, the ever-reputable distributor of up-to-the-minute Pulitzer-worthy reporting (insert sarcastic tone if unfamiliar with Fox News or Bill O'Reilly in general), expounded about Jessica’s battle of the bulge—her weight “crisis”. Even more shocking than this, is a New York Post cartoon, the brain-child of controversial cartoonist Sean Delonas, in which an overflowing Jessica—rippling in rolls of lard—is pictured dumping now boyfriend Tony Romo for an awaiting Ronald McDonald lounging in the background, awaiting his hefty honey. Something is wildly amiss here. Between the lust-laden image of a toned, svelte Jessica—the woman who (taking a Freudian stance) stops the action/ narrative of the Pizza commercial in moments of lingering erotic contemplation—and the (not so different) vision of a slightly softer woman who is condemned to pop-culture perdition for her curves—there is a disturbing disjuncture. It appears culture condones a woman selling fast food (popping tidbits of greasy pizza in the mouths of salivating hormone-raging puberty-ridden teenage boys) as perfectly sexual and attractive. Yet, heaven forbid she should actually eat the sustenance she is selling (as suggested by Mr. McDonald in the background) lest she be condemned to abjection, de-sexualization and extirpation from her gaze-worthy glory. It seems our culture has a psychical pre-disposition and underlying male-determined affinity for the visual presence of anorexia-embracing “titsickles”, and that a woman with moderately expanded curvature immediately provokes a disgust which is debated on the likes of CNN and Oprah, and pondered by a probing Dr. Phil, detailing the consequences of “letting oneself go.” As speculated in US Weekly, Jess jumped from a meager 120 pounds (when she donned her daisy dukes in Dukes of Hazard) to a "shocking" 135. Well considering the average American gains 10 pounds over the holidays, and Jessica herself confirmed she had to work out 2 hours a day to get down to her “fighting-weight”, such gradual hip expansion seems expected and normal. And call me crazy, but doesn’t her size 6 (according to a horrified US weekly) still make her well below the national average of size 12 (according to last count)? And what is this saying to an “average” size woman? Obviously if Jessica is advertised as fat, anyone over a size 10 must be morbidly obese! Such a crisis. Looking at the Post cartoon—which vilifies Jessica as a horrid creature drowning in the fat folds of her non-existent neck—and comparing this image to the real visage of the woman which spawned such (moral?) outrage, there seems to be a shocking and ugly truth revealed about the circumscription of female sexuality within rigid borders of minimal body size. Perhaps this is to be expected, as the “classical” “bourgeoisie” female body has always—as delineated by Professor Musial—been bound and kept rigidly in check; an industrialized female medium of non-suggestive consumption and the policing of excessive pleasure. Well pardon Ms. Simpson for taking pleasure in something other than a treadmill and the resultant crisis of bodily ambiguity brought about by the minimal increase in the circumference of her thighs. The demonizing accounts which poured forth from pop-culture think-tank’s (post full-figured horror) suggest a pathetic desire to manage a collective cultural anxiety provoked by exposure to what is wrongly considered abject. In response to the grotesque (I still can’t believe her body could be considered as such), condemnation became a defensive mechanism by which culture maintained its collective sense of boundedness. The cartoon, as a vastly outrageous conflation of Jessica’s body, represents the visual channeling of societal paranoia; an exacerbation of the abject intended to showcase the horrific consequences begotten by the betrayal of self-restraint. The sad reality of this scenario is that this perceived transgression (of our ephemeral and ludicrous cultural body standards) is most likely not, as explored in Laura Kipnis’ article on Hustler magazine, a cultural/class critique aimed at confrontation with middle-class hegemony achieved through the disavowal of the “classical body” and, by extension, classical sexuality. In all likelihood Jessica has not strategically rebuked cultural limitations of female corporeality but simply deviated from her inflexible regime of carrot sticks and “chicken of the sea”. Although this happens to “normal” women continuously and perpetually throughout their lives (according to diet demi-god Dr. Phil the average woman gains and looses the same ten pounds 31 odd times in their life---shall we all capitulate now?) such occurrences at the level of celebrity (who seem to hold the collective hope of society in their representations of idealized human perfection) are presented as irrational, pseudo-unsanitary and outwardly declared as repulsive. The agent of corporeal abjection meanwhile becomes a cultural marker forced to justify her out-of-control flesh and appetite, backed into a discursive corner where she must claim her right to display such an expanded bodily reality (which in reality is merely normalcy). Thus are produced the Tyra Banks of the world which must scream “So What?” when interrogated in the media over their 'heinous' 160 pound 5’11 figures. How does this all tie in with advertising and sexuality you might ask? Well, it has occurred to me that advertising exists beyond the realm of glossy print spreads and TV commercials and is present in many forms of cultural production. The Post cartoon, which cruelly mocks and ridicules Jessica for daring to eat the types of food she is paid to sell through her (formerly intact) sexuality, are hocking and advertising a cultural perception of the female body and female sexuality which is both powerfully communicative and tragic in such power. As in Japanese Cartoons of the early 20th Century which worked to psychically manipulate Japanese society into accepting Japan’s newly-adopted occupation of imperial megalord (in their budding establishment of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere) such modern cartoons of bodily critique display a similar sort of odious manipulative intent; creating a sham of an bodily-conscious, pop culture Co-Prosperity sphere where wayward women are brought under the cultural imperialism of middle-class bourgeois sexual hegemony and forced to conform to minuscule clothing sizes or be displayed and contorted as anti-sexual wild-beasts of enormous consumption. This instance has laid bare the corruptive social constructions of modern advertising and the processes which shape our collective conceptual framework and systems of meaning regarding appropriate and appealing female sexual display and worth. The number of people which have picked up on this absurd characterization of Jessica Simpson as fat-beyond-salvation is encouraging, however, regarding the average man/woman’s ability to form negotiated and counter-hegemonic readings (according to the canonical work of Stuart Hall). Although some social sectors have obviously fallen in line with the fat-filled falsehoods of pudge-panicked capitulators, the Woman’s heartfelt shout out to Jessica Simpson in video #1 (in which she emphatically declares Ms. Simpson NOT fat, comparing a svelte Jessica to herself at 5’5 and 160 some odd pounds) is both heartwarming and culturally encouraging. Yet interesting to me, regardless of the insightful cultural commentary this woman doles out unapologetically (including her self-declared of curve-appreciating mentality) she none-the-less finishes off with a rather startling pronouncement “ohh! I’m getting a treadmill soon” (something to that effect) and proceeds to do a “treadmill happy dance.” So therefore we should condemn the streamlining of body image which dictates we abstain from all things carbohydrate, yet if given the chance for self-alteration, break out into a song-and-dance interlude? Obviously there are limits to our encoding and decoding capabilities, perhaps some middle-ground resonates most accurately; a negotiated reading in which one digests some of the malevolency of prevalent body-conscious hegemony attenuated by the independence of postmodern carte blanch, pick-as-you-choose identity constructionism.

Ultimately, although I pledged to myself that my blog would not degenerate into a discursive rant over body image, it is obvious to me now that provincializing the perception of the body and removing it from cultural advertisements of femininity and female sexuality is impossible. Oh well, at least Jessica can relax and enjoy a slice of the pizza she worked so hard (?) to promote now that her dirty dietary laundry has been aired.