What Happened to Real Women?

[alivemagdolene]

This caption struck me as quite Barbara Krugerian.

Comments

[myownghost.livejournal.com]

hmmm. i don't belong to the same gender as bettie page. maybe not even the same species. problematic, this. (i will have to google for barbara kruger.)

[alivemagdolene.livejournal.com]

Barbara Kruger is a definite must; I've loved her stuff for years.

[aybara-max.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dunno. As drool inducing as that Bettie pic is, I'm not big on the caption. What makes the Bettie in this photo a "real" woman, and what exactly is the captioner lamenting happened to women? (incidentally, that 'real woman' got religion and got out of the spotlight)

Eh, maybe I'm reading too much into it :)

[alivemagdolene.livejournal.com]

It wasn't so much the half-assed version of the true "Women-are-being-sold-a-bullshit-beauty-standard-by-deeply-misogynist-industries", as the odd, almost surreal quality of the words that are almost (to me) unconnected with the picture.
Like I said, it brought Barbara Kruger's work to mind.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the captioner was making (again) a half-assed, watered-down version of a truism (aforementioned misogynist industries of "beauty" and Hollywood), this based on the fact Bettie Page, like Marilyn Monroe, has become a symbol for big women (we'll overlook the fact that neither were at any point "big" women themselves).

I just liked the (I'm sure) unintentional Kruger quality. ^_^ I'm sure that's a lot like those people that collected wadded-up trash 'cuz they think it looks like a star or something.