by Aviv Rau and Calliope Wong
As teenage girls and former consumers of alternative and feminist publications and blogs circulating the Internet today, we’ve noticed a disappointing trend of girls with pale skin, knobby knees, thigh gaps, and pastel hair being featured almost exclusively. In fact, the trends are so exclusive that they’ve turned us away from these alternative media altogether. What we once believed were progressive media catered specifically to us, we’ve since realized are quite narrow-minded. These “alternative” images still conform to mainstream beauty standards, which are Eurocentric and prize thinness. Like their mainstream counterparts, these magazines put forth a countercultural ideal that still favors white, thin, young, traditionally “feminine” women.
The purpose of countercultural (and, of course, feminist) movements has often been to remain progressive and representative of otherwise-unrepresented communities, even when the mainstream has slipped into rocky terrain. Whether or not alternative media have any obligation beyond showcasing aesthetics, it’s not as if the mainstream media is generous to anyone who isn’t a very thin, very Eurocentric, cisgender girl. That’s why we expect the alternative world to do a better job representing marginalized people. However, independent publications and blogs like The Ardorous, i-D magazine, Rookie, and countless others to set forth the same narrow, oppressive, and exclusive beauty standard in their work.
These countercultural, feminist media includes few, if any, women of color. As in mainstream media, curators and photographers prefer to feature white or white-passing girls. For example, websites like Rookie and the popular Tumblr “pale blogs” are full of pictures of white girls, but contain few, if any, girls of color. Sky Ferreira-esque waifs, pale and white-passing, are far more likely to be featured than darker girls. On those rare occasions that darker skinned girls do appear in these media, they are strategically shrouded in hazy, pinkish filters and ostentatious outfits. It’s as though curators are trying to de-emphasize these girls’ ethnicities by literally filtering and processing them to fit the whitewashed, Eurocentric standard. Rather than creating opportunities for diversity of representation, many of these alternative media engage in whitewashing that hurts women of color.
Plenty of “alternative” trends are fitted specifically for light-skinned women. Pastel hair, for instance, is all over alternative media. However, to dye one’s hair such a light color requires, for women of color and darker-haired girls, expensive and dangerous amounts of hair bleaching. Pastel hair is usually modelled by pale, white women with fine, straight long hair, so even if a dark haired girl wants to have pastel hair, it’s physically hard for her to achieve the trend. Similarly, in certain niches of the internet, growing out body hair and dying it bright colors is becoming popular. Many of the Tumblr “body hair positivity” blogs, however, feature a ton of white girls with superfine, pastel leg hair. It’s not exactly commonplace to see a coarse-haired, dark skinned girl rocking body hair on these sites.
These media are exclusive when it comes to body shape and size, too. Models are often frail and thin, and curators are once again fetishizing the “heroin chic” aesthetic that was so popular in the 1990s. (Arvida Bystrom photoshoots, for example, hardly contain thicker girls.) The women and girls portrayed are mostly small-breasted, thigh gapped, and hipless. That is not to say that they do not deserve a place in feminism and in the media; feminism is just as much for skinny white girls as it is for busty women of color! However, featuring only thin women makes thicker girls feel underrepresented. Worse yet,clothing becomes tailored to fit models rather than average girls. The pressure to fit into the “trendy” clothing featured in independent media encourages many girls to resort to dangerous methods of weight loss.
But it’s not surprising that the alternative world advocates a narrow beauty standard. Part of the issue is that these media are run largely by thin, white, and cisgender people. Presuming that counterculture has some moral obligation to be inclusive, they should be making an effort to include a wider range of people in their work. The internet widens audiences and opens up these alternative publications–once tucked away in remote corners of counterculture–to everyone. Wouldn’t it be lovely if every single viewer could feel validated by and represented in the alternative world? Because, believe it or not, not all of us are twee, pastel-haired, flower crown-donning types with thigh gaps and pale skin, but that’s most of what we see in alternative media.
For alternative, feminist media to live up to its goal of inclusivity and acceptance, we ask them to place emphasis on morals and values before aesthetics. Curators, after all, should have a larger duty in society than just showing images which they find attractive or validating. They should also ensure people of all body shapes, genders, and ethnicities can feel comfortable and validated flipping through the pages of an independent publication or scrolling through an alternative blog. The question remains, however: Is the true purpose of alternative media a moral one? Or does it exist, like mainstream media, for largely, if not purely, aesthetic purposes? Regardless, as it stands currently, the independent, countercultural media’s blatant preference of thin, young, cisgendered, Eurocentric girls is no more inclusive than that of the mainstream.