Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Body Shaming, Dress Shaming, and Snail Shaming
As one often is, I found myself inspired by @peterrobinson’s latest post – in this case, a post on beauty products which may or may not have been shed by cows. Specifically, I was inspired to look up beauty products shed by other animals, such as snail slime and nightingale droppings. Well, it is difficult for a gal to look these things up without being bombarded by other supposedly female-friendly stories, on love and fashion and the like. To go in reverse order, let me start with the snail shaming:
Love is tough. Even tougher if you’re a snail born with the wrong chirality. Poor Jeremy was a left-swirling snail. Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad, for a snail. But he was a left-swirling snail born into a right-swirling snail’s world. Snails are hermaphrodites, which sounds pretty flexible, but they can’t mate with themselves and a pair of them do have to both swirl the same way in order to mate. Scientists wanting to breed Jeremy to study his (zir?) kind found Jeremy another left-swirler, Lefty, to mate with. The two had only begun flirting when they were forced to hibernate together in the fridge, which sounds like a big step – imagine being forced to move in with someone just because the two of you had been caught kissing! After this first scientific violation of gastropod sexual autonomy, stuff just kinda snowballed from there, leading to what’s certainly the most adorable use of “cucked” I’ve ever seen:
At some point, a third left-swirling snail was introduced to the fridge. Poor Jeremy woke up to find himself (zirself?) not part of a couple but a poly triad he never asked to be a part of, and soon after that, relegated to the status of “cucked virgin snail”. This is snail-shaming on multiple levels – really, it’s the scientists who should be ashamed!
We move onto dress-shaming. Israeli Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, has been shamed for wearing a “provocative” dress to the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Given what else celebrities wear (or don’t) to film festivals, you might wonder what a floor-length, mid-sleeved dress would have to be made of in order to be “provocative”. Cellophane?
No, the dress is perfectly opaque. There’s just an illustration of Jerusalem along the hem to mark the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification. This is allegedly “colonialism”. So she is being shamed for it.
Finally, we come to body shaming. Or rather to the fact that the Telegraph, despite its reputation as the “Torygraph”, seems to believe that women are absurdly easy to body-shame. Their list of “The 10 worst body-shaming and sexist adverts you’re likely to see” is remarkably tame. Half simply feature a variety of comely, airbrushed ladies, as if that’s how ladies should look – hardly unusual in the advertising world. Some of the ads are clearly intended to be humorous. None approach how shaming women can be to one another in even casual conversation. Well, except one ad, which isn’t so much shaming as just so crass and awkward it’s hard to know what the advertisers were thinking. This one:
I think the problem here is the ad is slightly confusing. It’s so hard to avoid thinking of some poor prostitute desperately advertising her low, low rates that the ad could have easily rolled out of eyeshot before you’d seen it long enough to register it must be the bus talking, not a woman reduced to selling her body for the measly rate of three pounds a day.
On the whole, I think I’m glad I don’t usually read news aimed at women. Though I realize my beauty regimen could probably use updating, so if Jeremy is still lonely…
Written for @rightangles.
Published in Humor
Korean anti-aging snail creams were all the rage a few years back.
This post reminds me of something I haven’t thought about for years, and which comes from what I am realizing, in my declining years, was a different time, when it comes to what folks thought was amusing and entertaining:
Who cares how old Korean snails get?
Oh, wait …
Midge – behind trend, as usual!
You don’t think folks of today think Flanders and Swann are entertaining? I rarely find people enjoy my singing (although perhaps no one enjoys it as little as Midge and @mrsofengland), but the sole exception I can think of has been occasional praise for All Gaul, one of the greatest pieces of political humor of the last century.
What about the tale of prejudice and doomed love do you believe our contemporaries find in unentertaining?
Jeremy is my spirit animal. :(
I love Flanders and Swann. I was talking more about the venue or the forum–two men and a piano, no gyrating, mostly-naked poptart-du-jour, or obscenity-laden rap. Just something we’re all capable of doing, really, but not as well.
I grew up listening to F&S, as well as the BBC World Service (when they all spoke proper English), and shows such as “My Word,” “My Music,” and “Desert Island Discs.”
You’re on for a duet of “All Gaul,” if the occasion ever presents itself. There are a few others I’m insanely fond of, such as “A Song of Patriotic Prejudice,” (don’t know which is funnier, the intro or the song itself).
As my family’s fond of saying, “Granny always knows all the words.”
Game on!
It might be a difficult song for those utterly unfamiliar with some basic household botany to relate to, for one. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any youth to whom it would appeal. After all, we exist. We’re also both on the eccentric side, though. What was once popular does tend to become outmoded, niche, although modern telecommunication makes it easier than ever for those in a niche to find each other and keep their niche going.
So long as Jeremy doesn’t get invited to a drum circle I think we’ll be fine. Plenty of snails in the sea, after all.
In re: Israel’s minister of culture – *facepalm.*
“Ride me all day.” Stop the world, I want to get off.
Misalliance was pretty funny -though I don’t know a lot about of botany, but still mostly followed the joke. True obscurantism would involve making jokes about hardware and ducks.
It’s all in which way you spin it.
. The two had only begun flirting when they were forced to hibernate together in the fridge, which sounds like a big step –
OMG Hahahaha! Hilarious! The whole thing, not just the above sentence, though it made me laugh out loud. I haven’t been online much today, but I just had to stop in here. A masterpiece, MFR! You are a talented humor writer. Thank you! And that bus ad! Gah!
I wonder how many inquiries they had.
You have moved beyond ferret shaming, I see.
You laugh, but autophillia is a real (and thankfully rare ) thing.
Here’s the original “body-shaming” ad that started it all. It makes me laugh because it’s so obviously (and badly) Photoshopped. The thing that makes me mad isn’t that it shows a model. I mean are we headed for a world where ads have to show regular people or be accused of body-shaming?? No, what makes me mad is that the first person to object to it was the Muslim mayor of London. And he objected because her “immodesty” goes against Islamic law. Huh? Well, they elected him so I guess they got what they asked for.
I saw one parody of this ad with three fat chicks saying they’re beach ready, and another that said, “If you have a body, it’s beach ready.” But that isn’t true, sorry. Haha! Where are we headed with this stuff, that is what I’d like to know. Will models be put out of work? Will they have to go work at a taco stand and wear a paper hat? We shall see.
To Sensitivity Training with me!
So much anger and resentment. Some of the blowback, representing different reactions to the ad, and a reaction to the reaction:
Left-swirling snails are rare enough, alas, that the plan is to mate Jeremy with the same interloper who took Lefty from him. Imagine that – having the same guy cuckold, then impregnate, you. #HermaphroditismIsComplicated
Where is @jasonrudert when you need him?
Following Misalliance only takes the basic knowledge of what a climbing vine is, and that honeysuckle and bindweed are both examples – something more-or-less spelled out in the song, true, but I’ve tutored otherwise-bright kids so unfamiliar with plant life they would have found such a song hard to follow.
I’m having a hard time parsing that concept.
Careful about summoning him -he’ll bring pictures.
Also, even in cities, are creeping vines really that rarely encountered? I have a whole bunch of them on my house growing up.
I should think they weren’t. Some kids just aren’t natural naturalists, I guess.
Correction and amplification:
Apparently it’s possible for snails to mate with themselves, but they almost never do. Perhaps it’s the opposite of fun to traumatically inseminate yourself:
Flounders I hear have the same issue. As they age, their eyes move to one side of their heads. So if you’re a lefty, you’re not getting any of this:
Further smut:
http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/abs/10.1094/PHYTO.1998.88.5.456
Wow, no kidding!
Barley covered smut… it’s almost barely covered smut!
Clearly a typo.