Real Women?

While flipping through a gallery of celebrity shots, my co-worker was startled by a formerly light-skinned actress' orange fake tan. "Real women are pale," she tossed off before moving on. I couldn't help but marvel how, removed from context, insanely racist her comment sounded.

If you too would have been taken aback by her comment, ponder this: why is it okay for "Real women have curves" to be a slogan?
To declare that one thing is real still leaves it's opposite ambiguous. Are other women fake? Unattainable? Imposters? None of those sound like good options when you're not a curvy woman. And let's not forget that gangly teen girls, sensitive about waiting for puberty, hear us make that declaration too.

In our knee-jerk reaction to hyper-skinny models and the heavy hand of photoshop, we may be trying to swing too far in the other direction. Fashion's response to our cry for "real women" won't be Kelly Clarkson on the cover of Vogue. (They could hardly handle the lovely Tina Fey, after all.) Instead of Kate Moss, they'll push Scarlett. The perfect hourglass being the only curves they find acceptable.

Truthfully, we're forgetting real women. Real women are varied in their beauty. We're curvy. We're lumpy. We're short; we're lithe. We're boxy. We're bird-like; we're boyish. We're thick thighed and pocket-sized. We're all real and we're all beautiful.