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 The InSite: Before seeing the Kate Moss poster on
the bus, were you aware of how media images contribute to
the negative way girls and women feel about their
bodies?
Kathy: I've been aware of the problem for years.
Just listening to friends talk about their bodies or things
I'd read in Ms. Magazine about little girls
self-esteem starting to plummet at age
12. Also the changes in the way women were shown in
advertising as they got thinner and thinner! I was waiting
in line for "Shakespeare in the Park" one summer in New
York. Behind me was a family. They had a young teenage
daughter and she had a couple of friends with her. One of
the adult women started passing out cookies. "Does anyone
want a cookie?" One of the girls said "I'll have a cookie. I
can start my diet tomorrow!" They all sort of giggled and
took the cookies. I turned around to see these gangly 15
year olds and thought "My God! It's as if they just
regurgitate the 'language of womanhood' as it is today."
When I was little I remember we'd play tea party and pretend
to smoke because our mothers smoked. Now girls growing up
pretend to diet or actually diet, because they hear that's
what women do.
...the way women
were shown in advertising...
they got thinner and thinner!
The InSite: When you were a teen was weight
something you were obsessed with?
Kathy: Not for me, personally, because my mom was
always really slim. We were all skinny little girls. It
didn't even enter in. Only now, as an adult and working in
this do I look back and remember that there were some girls
who were dieting or weight conscious. I remember a
girlfriend of mine did a speech on
anorexia when we were in the 8th grade
[this was 1976]. It was the first that I had ever heard of
it. The next year, when I was in high school, I remember one
of the senior girl cheerleaders. Now I know she was
anorexic, at the time I just thought "She is so skinny!" But
it didn't have nearly the prevalence it has today.
The InSite: So we're talking about changes over the
past twenty years. Starting from the mid-'70's when most
people didn't even know what an eating disorder
was to our current obsession with dieting and
using images of women and teenage girls to sell everything
from clothing to cars to computers. And the bodies in those
images barely even look like women anymore... they are so
thin!
Kathy: Right! In that same amount of time
advertisers have really capitalized on the growth in glossy
magazines and our absolute focus on TV. My generation might
have been the first that really sat in front of a TV and
certainly the girls coming up now see more TV than we did!.
I have two younger sisters. One four years younger and one
eight years younger. Both of them have a more negative
self-perception than I do. And each one is worse than the
other! When the youngest turned 21, I was there to help
celebrate. We went to a bar and she was pointing out friends
she knew and it was all in terms of "Oh, she's
bulimic." or "She used to be
anorexic..." I couldn't believe how mainstream it was and
how well known! It was just like a rite of passage. And my
sister, herself, was anorexic. Although I didn't have the
connection in my brain then to see. I was in that family
denial. My sense is that her whole generation has gotten it
[negative self-image] and the generation behind them is
potentially getting it even worse!
...advertisers have
really capitalized on
...our absolute focus on TV
TI: I have heard of girls as young as 5 talking
about how they need to go on a diet!
Kathy: A woman called me and said that her 6 year
old wouldn't put on a bathing suit because she thinks she's
too fat! She wouldn't take swimming lessons this summer. I
think it's just tragic that a little kid at the beginning of
the summer has such a weird perception of what she looks
like or what she should look like that she won't
even enjoy the water.
TI: It's really sad!
Kathy: All these little things made me wonder why
we allow this and what I could do. It's just so unfair that
a young girl can't grow up and like her new
curves and her new breasts and her new round bottom. Girls
are made to feel self-conscious about their bodies and their
male peers are not. Although that's an untapped market that
advertisers are tapping into now. We'll see what happens.
Maybe men will rebel more than we have.
TI: I can't help but think that the advertising images
spring from the minds of male ad executives to begin with.
Is that true?
Kathy: Sometimes I wonder if there are men sitting
around a table and saying.. "What can we do?" Because it
does seem, when you look at it from a historical
perspective, that the times women had more power, like
during the Suffragette Movement when women were trying to
get the vote [1915-1922], that that was also an
"anti-female" body ideal. You know, real thin, the
flattening of the breasts, the hiding of curves. Then times
when women went back into the home, like in the 1950's
[after World War II] those were the cinched waists and the
full skirts and a very "female" [look]. Like we could use
our power [and show the true shape of our bodies] because we
were in the home.
TI: So what happened the moment before you got this
idea to start About-Face?
 Kathy: I was on my way to an
R.E.M. concert and I was watching these new ads on the San
Francisco buses driving by. They had a picture of Kate Moss
lying naked. The photo highlighted her sunken eyes and all
of her bones. The way she was lit made her look as emaciated
as possible. I had been thinking "Why is this [ad] campaign
still going on? Why don't people get angry about this?" At
the concert I thought, "I could vandalize those ads! I could
change them. I could wait for buses and slap a big sticker
on them that says 'Emaciation stinks!'" I fantasized about
this for awhile. Logistically it would have been very
difficult and it also would have been illegal. [laughing]
But as I was talking about the idea, one of my guy friends
said, "Why don't you make posters?"
The photo
highlighted her sunken eyes and all of her bones.
TI: What especially appealed to you about the
idea?
Kathy: Well, we're so visually oriented.
Everything is big and beautiful and glossy and if you can
have equally interesting and glossy images out there then
you can fight on their same turf. Although it's really
difficult because I got the printing for a thousand posters
donated and advertisers are spending billions on billboards.
TI: This thing you did created quite an
impression, didn't it?
Kathy: Yeah. It got a lot media attention.
Probably because there were a lot of 40 year old women in
news rooms all over San Francisco going "Yes!" So I was
interviewed on all the local stations and the story went out
over the AP [Associated Press] wire and wound up in
newspapers all over the country. It created this
groundswell, and I thought it would. I envisioned teenage
girls riding buses and looking out the window and seeing
this poster at construction sites [that's where we plastered
them] and just saying "That's a familiar image but that's a
whole different message."
TI: About 180 degrees different!
Kathy: When I was a girl there was an element of
fairness [that we believed in]. Whatever didn't seem "right"
or "unjust" seemed worth fighting for. I was hoping to
trigger in girls a little reminder that "Hey! You can voice
your opinion. You can change things."
Why is this [ad]
campaign still going on?
Why don't people get angry about this?
TI: Aside from the media response what kind of
personal response did you get?
Kathy: I had gotten a post office box because I
thought maybe people would want to contact me and it was
printed on the poster. Then every day I'd get 6 or 7 or 8 or
10 letters in the mail. Sometimes I'd open them and they'd
have checks in them.
TI: What did people think they were doing with
this money they were sending?
Kathy: They wanted to support this organization.
One day I got a check for $500. The woman included a letter
that said she had seen the poster on the news and then she
was walking her dog and she saw it on a wall. So she came
home and broke up with her boyfriend and she sent the check!
She ended up helping out for a while too. People still
write, mostly email. The other day our web mistress said,
"We've gotten 200 emails in the last week!" It's usually
from parents and teachers, two groups that deal closely with
young girls.
TI: What's your vision for the future of
About-Face?
Kathy: It's been over two years since the first
poster and I still work full time [at another job]. Just
last week I asked my bosses if I could go part time because
the momentum is really building. We've got a web site
[www.about-face.org], but we haven't
officially announced it. Yet it has been honored on other
people's web sites as the Pick of the Day or Week. It's been
written about by Wired Magazine, which is the
place to be if you have a web site. Ultimately we want the
web site to act as a resource center. On the one hand we're
educating, showing images from our culture, siting facts and
addresses of companies, in case people want to take that
route and write to them. Also with references and links to
other organizations related to women's health or women in
general. Then, at the same time, to provide a component that
emphasizes the other, positive aspects of women. How it's
not just about how we look and how much we weigh, but all
these other really amazing factors that mainstream American
culture doesn't acknowledge at all. You take a really sharp
woman, like Hillary Clinton and you're inevitably going to
hear about the size of her bottom in the press. So girls are
always getting this mixed message "Be smart. But not too
smart."
... girls are always getting this mixed
message
"Be smart. But not too smart."
TI: Sounds like you've got the cyberspace
component down. How about plans for a "real world"
About-Face presence?
Kathy: Ultimately we'd like to have an office, a
real location, where we can have teen groups, speakers,
maybe a counseling service... every aspect of the issue from
media literacy to self-esteem building to eating disorder
awareness and prevention. We'll see. The response has been
amazing and the "luck level" on this has been really high.
TI: I think your timing on this issue is very
good. This past summer ['97] when a San Francisco Bay Area
ballerina died from anorexia, that was front page news! That
story would not have been front page two years ago.
Kathy: Two years ago I got a lot of flack about
the poster. Even some of my friends were like "It's not that
big of an issue! Ignore ads. What's the big deal?" But I
knew there was something that was just haywire. And last
summer President Clinton said, "We have to stop the heroin
junky chick look in advertising." I mean, when the President
is talking about it!
TI: This issue ties in to so many of the things
we cover on The InSite. Like inequality within
abusive teen relationships. It often
happens to girls with low self-esteem, believing that they
aren't as good as boys. That they can be ordered around and
controlled by boys. That comes out of a girl's
feelings
of who she is, how she
looks, where her value lies. It's all
interconnected.
Kathy: Exactly!! There are huge societal
implications because girls who don't feel good about
themselves may put themselves in a position to be
mistreated. And their children grow up thinking that it's
okay to mistreat women. Or that women aren't as capable in
the work place. All these things trickle down and pretty
soon there's a huge inequity. We've got rising violence
against women. Rising rates of
teen pregnancy and
HIV among young women. All this stuff
is interrelated and there's a lot of good work to do.
TI: You've been working on this for a few years
now. You're obviously aware of all aspects of the problem
and how each one of us has been negatively influenced by the
media's presentation of women in our culture. What do you
have to say to the teenage girls of the world to get them to
change their attitudes?
Kathy: The most important thing is to trust your
own instinct about things. It's really difficult because
you're not always sure what your "gut" is. Because you're
always weighing things: "Oh I really want to do this. But I
really like the guy. But he really treats me badly; but I
really like him." Somewhere in there you have to trust your
gut and also remember to treat yourself well or you really
can't expect anybody else to. We all set the tone for how we
get treated. For years I listened to stories from my
girlfriends about their stupid boyfriends and the mean
things they did and I'd think "Oh, he's so bad!" And at some
point I realized, "To some degree she lets that happen!" If
she said, "No! That's not how I want to be treated." Then
she won't be. Teenagers have a hard time knowing that they
really do have power and it's okay to not always be "nice"
and "perfect." You don't always have to be the funny,
cheerful one and ultimately people will still love you.
We all set the tone
for how we get treated.
TI: And what about all this garbage we swallow about
looking perfect according to someone else's standard of
beauty?
Kathy: All girls should go out and look for an
adult woman in their lives who they think is really neat.
Then look at her face and her body. Is she a "perfect"
person? Yet there's some really wonderful spark in her. The
way she smiles or the streak of gray in her hair. The way
her hands look when they're working. Whatever it is, those
are the things we need to remember. It's the spark that's
coming from within. It's so corny to say "Beauty is only
skin deep." But it really is true. The thing that sustains
is the way the person feels about herself. Ultimately the
way you feel about yourself is going to be more attractive
to a guy than anything you can do to your outsides. It seems
so tragic to me that girls think "If I only do 100 sit-ups."
What becomes "unattractive" is that obsession. He wants to
go to the beach with you. He doesn't want to hear you
whining about how you can't wear a bathing suit because you
think you look too fat.
TI: Yeah, girls need to lose some of their
wimpiness.
Kathy: Absolutely! Also to do things they like
doing. Be more conscious of how much time they put into
worrying about how they look! Focus some of that out into
the world... doing things that would gratifying to your
soul.
TI: There's nothing cooler than an 8 or a 10 year old
girl striding across a playground. Or riding her bike
letting her hair blow in the wind. Feeling free. Then you
see that same girl at 14 and she's holding her arms across
her chest, hiding, looking really sunken, doing weird things
with her hair and her eyebrows.
Kathy: Yes! That's what's so sad! Someone
stole who that girl was!
"Someone
stole who that girl
was!"
TI: And some of us never find our way back again. It's
really scary.
Kathy: Maybe girls can make a promise to
themselves that they'll always do something for just
themselves, every day, no matter what. Just something to
nurture their brain or their creative streak, or whatever it
is.
TI: And not care what anybody else thinks, for that
one occasion.
Kathy: Being a teenager is a hard time but if you
nurture and keep watering that little tiny plant in there,
then when you're ready to really "tend the garden" it will
be strong and resilient.
TI: Girls like that become role models for their
peers.
Kathy: Exactly. So maybe if one girl does it, then
another girl will do it too. Maybe they can have a club. On
that one day they go do something for themselves.
TI: And forget about the boys!
Kathy: Yeah!
Maybe
girls can make a promise to themselves that they'll always
do something for just themselves, every day, no matter
what.
Contact About-Face
at :
PO Box 77665
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 436-0212
Visit the About-Face web site
at
www.about-face.org
Contact Kathy at Kathy@about-face.org
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