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Popular Culture Review
have a responsibility to not reinforce age-old objectification of women, to insist
that their marketing departments find other ways to market them.
The current advertisement for Celine Dion’s musical show at Caesar’s
Palace is a case in point; it is a literal decapitation ad, a golden silhouette of her
body stance standing in a sea of reddish-orange flames. Dion appears to be very
conscious of women’s issues (in print and television segments produced about
her) and yet here is an ad for her show that reinforces stereotypes. First of all,
the silhouette is a caricature; her silhouette is exaggeratedly pencil thin. Granted,
Dion is tall and slender; she has the body of a dancer, long arms and legs. Yet
her billboard reinforces a contemporary trend concerning body image—the
female image is shrinking.
The Las Vegas showgirl is the epitome of ideal beauty. Yet, most of the
showgirls are not as voluptuous as their representatives on billboards would
have us believe. Las Vegas showgirls reflect a trend in female body image that
has been slowly decreasing for decades. Since 1959, according to Londa
Schiebinger, the average weight and hip size for women in Playboy magazine
centerfolds has decreased steadily (419); the average Miss America weighed 134
pounds in the mid-twentieth century and now weighs less than 117 pounds, as
Bruce Arrigo chronicles (251). Schiebinger brings to light that the pop culture
icon of American beauty, the Barbie doll, has gotten smaller and smaller since
her creation; her measurements, if reconfigured into that of a full-size woman,
are “very thin—far from anything approaching the norm” (399). One might say
this reflects a trend in the past 50 years towards healthier eating and lifestyle,
but I do not think that is what is really happening. In contrast, the ideal male
form in print media, in film, in videogames, and in children’s toys has become
ultra muscular, has bulked up and increased in size (Tough Guise). For example,
male dolls of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo from the Star Wars franchise are
bigger and more muscular than they w W&Rv