Also, all women must be pressed to ask why they seek to embody the female ideal of beauty, and are willing to sacrifice so much to do so. Even if the fashion industry were to ban all models wholesale beneath a BMI of 18.5, while male chauvinists might delight in the curves of the models gyrating on the catwalks of Milan, the ideals held up for women to fulfill would hardly be much more attainable. This would still eliminate the old, many non-white women, short women, disabled women, and yes, even plain women, from individuals deemed physically ideal. The real question is why must a woman 'feel' beautiful at all to feel culturally validated and accepted. Central to the debate is not just homophobia, but the assumption that there is a single, 'real' womanly ideal, thin or fat, that must be found and then celebrated by the culture. At best, this ideal is something a woman can only embody, often with much time and economic expense, at one point in her life. Women must reject the objectifying gaze that forces them to 'see' one another as heterosexual men provided by the industry, and offer new ways of seeing, thinking, and conceptualizing sexuality beyond the idea of beauty at all. Although the goals of gay and feminist liberation movements may not always be the same, this does not mean that they must be forever polarized. Feminists must be careful exactly...
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