In my area in Europe, things are getting worse. Since the economic recess started, it looks like it’s the larger cup lingerie that’s been taking the hit. Although the average woman is US size 34D, most lingerie stores stock up mainly on A’s and B’s thinking that will sell.

Take for example, the largest department store in my city, its lingerie section has the best selection of brands in the country. Yesterday, I went looking for a sport swimsuit in my cup size (US 32E) and was curtly told they did not stock cup E at all in any kind of swimsuits!

On the way home, I really felt I was treated like a leper. Was this a message that women my size are supposed to stay away from doing sports, away from beaches and swimming pools?

Ordering on-line has not worked for me in the past. I did, however, check the British webstores and found out that any swimsuits my size were either sold out or not suited for actual swimming nor my kind of active aqua aerobics. And goes without saying, anything remotely okay was always black and ugly… (sigh).

(I’ve never understood why large breasted women are thought to want to go to a public swimming pool in an ugly black rag.)

The second issue concerns proximity–most people do not talk to others in a close up relationship. Much of advertising that focuses on the face comes in the form of facial close ups and it is not a stretch to say that if people spoke with their faces close up (as in a facial close up) they would indeed see the pores, wrinkles, moles, blemishes etc. Again we don’t notice them because when speaking we do not focus on the face. However with camera close ups we are focused on the face (or other body parts). Blemishes etc become noticeable because of the proximity generated by the close up shot. “Softening” the image and removing blemishes, wrinkles etc does not make the camera more like our eye. Rather it fails to acknowledge the impact of proximity on what we pay attention to. Put your face in close proximity to mine, and yes I am more likely to notice your “flaws.”

Which brings me to the third. Retouching to show us what our eye sees merely reinforces the disciplining of the body in ways that reflect dominant conceptions of “legitimate bodies.” Yes the camera produces distortions but again what is relevant is the logic that animates the correction of those distortions that is relevant. Sure one can say we correct for the camera adding 10 pounds so we see the “truth” of this person’s body—and yet there is anxiety about the body—we need to correct for those 10 pounds because the person does not have those 10 pounds–and they shouldn’t. So what if the camera adds 10 pounds, we can all accept and realize that distortion and move on. And yet we don’t and presenting the “truth” of X model’s body ensures that we know that they know that shouldn’t look 10 pounds heavier in their everyday lives.

Two final points:

1) If people did not pay attention to the bodily flaws of others, why all the body snark? If they did not, there would be no need for the exceptional cultural political work that this blog is doing. In fact people do pay attention to these things, advertising tell us we should be paying attention to these things (concealer, wear a Hip T to hide your muffin top, botox to remove wrinkles etc).

2) Most complaints about Photoshop are not concerned with retouching or correcting for minor distortions. All the attempts to regulate the use of Photopshop emphasize significant use of Photoshop to alter images. While I do not discount that individuals here have encountered general dismissals of Photoshop, much of the discourse concerned with the cultural impact of Photoshop addresses significant manipulation of images, manipulations that are consistent with logics that are not about showing the “truth of bodies” but rather presenting images of ideal bodies that should be attained particularly through the consumption of particular products.