The Irony of Christina Hendricks

Read the following paragraph from Wikipedia, about the cultural influence of the extremely voluptuous Christina Hendricks on perceptions of female beauty:

Hendricks has been credited as having an ideal shape for a woman. British Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone praised Hendricks' hourglass figure as an ideal shape for women, saying "Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous... We need more of these role models. There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn't be so unusual." Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara says her portrayal of Joan has revolutionized perceptions of beauty on television. She has been called the "new modern ideal of Hollywood glamour—full figured, voluptuous; a throwback to the days of Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell and Veronica Lake." British designer Vivienne Westwood selected her to represent its "Get A Life" Palladium jewelry collection in March 2011. Westwood described Hendricks as "the embodiment of beauty." A study by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons attributed a 10% rise in 2010 of the number of British women receiving breast augmentation surgery in part to Hendricks' influence.

Spot the irony? All but the last sentence are trying to champion Hendricks as a role model of non-conformity to mainstream stereotypes of female beauty. The idea is that popular culture sends a message that the only way to be beautiful is to be extremely thin, and Hendricks, by being commonly considered highly beautiful despite not being particularly thin, helps subvert that message and replace it with the better one, that women with lots of different body types can be beautiful.

Then, of course, in the last sentence, we see that in fact a large part of the message of Christina Hendricks that has in fact gotten through to people in general is not that different body types can be beautiful but that you should look more like Christina Hendricks, and specifically you should go get a boob job.

Obviously I'm not criticizing Hendricks herself for this. The point is more that mainstream culture around female appearance is so twisted that you basically can't send that good message. If someone manages to be hot while not conforming to the stereotype of hotness, all that means is that we need a new stereotype of hotness to pressure everyone into conforming to. Great.


(In case anyone's wondering why I decided to write this particular post on this particular night, it's 'cause I just watched the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" of Firefly with my family.)