Cream for cellulite? Satisfy my appetite
FHM, instant mash and tinned goods: YUSU’s opened up a great big can of beans.
It doesn’t take a raging feminist to see a problem with the YUSU Bags of Fun. It does however take Sam Bayley and Matt Burton to see no problem at all. I am left not so much angry, but bemused - who really thought there would be no objection to the pink and blue welcomes from YUSU this year?
Sexist allegations aside, I am capable of boiling a potato. Why students have to be subjected to the revival of a certain instant mash brand is beyond me. Re-hydrated potatoes haven’t become any more palatable and students are bums - or so I’m told - so I have more than enough time to mash my own spuds, thank you.
But I’m skirting round the obvious sexism issue. I must clarify: I am not an angry feminist, but FHM and chocolate versus cellulite cream and deodorant? It’s a fairly clear message; boys sit back, while girls get busy grooming. Oh and also, ladies, even if you can eat a full tin of beans, you shouldn’t, and because you lack the restraint to eat only a ladylike portion, then here’s a half-size tin. In case you hadn’t guessed, it’s the beans that bother me the most.
Fact is, having tossed my cellulite cream into the bin of liberation and ruminated over a cupcake I very quickly ceased to be angry about FHM. I knew I was going to go home and read my housemate’s sample copy of the “Men’s General Interest Magazine” cover to cover and when I proved myself right, I was disappointed. Not by the exploitation of the female form, but to find that they’d missed out the Ladies’ Confessions section. It’s the best bit, not least of all because it was clearly written by men. Real women don’t say “it’s just too big” nearly that often in real life.
I object to FHM no more than I object to Cosmo or Glamour. YUSU just got it wrong in thinking that most boys are as interested in nubile bi-curious blondes’ (aka sexually deprived computer geeks’) sexual fantasies, as me. “Heteronormative” FHM may be but on its own it’s just a silly magazine. Yet paired with cellulite cream it carries a much heavier gender message.
It’s stating the obvious to say that giving out cellulite cream panders to our image-obsessed society, but if YUSU let it pass then maybe this does need to be made explicit. Perhaps one day I will be fooled into buying a horribly expensive cellulite cream but I shall buy it myself, not be offered it by my Student Union.
Even the reactionary project at Freshers’ Fair was wanting. Ditching your cellulite cream for a munch on the way home may be a statement against YUSU, but it is also a trivialisation of the sexist issues at hand. It perpetuates the idea that if you hold any kind of feminist views, you don’t care about the way you look. Contrary to popular belief, you can care about cellulite and womens’ rights.
The crux of this overblown situation is not about the offensive nature of individual products. Everyone has their own pet hates about what was in the bag. Boys around campus were reprimanded for reading their FHM; many fresher girls couldn’t get over their cellulite cream “hello” and I continue to stare in wonder at my half-sized tin of beans.
The extent of insult caused by each item is all a matter of opinion but nobody can deny what a ridiculous grouping of products it was. I don’t know what would be more upsetting: if Sam Bayley and Matt Burton deliberately masterminded the plan to put women in their place, or if, as is tragically the probable case, they didn’t see the problem from the start.
And the beans! I just can’t get over the beans! I’m going to go and eat a whole tin and hope I find the answer at the bottom…hell, I might even have two.
Matilda Marshall
Your points are completely accurate, except for my part the horrifying thing was the chocolate and not the beans. I think however that some of the complaints are ridiculous; no wonder feminism has a bad name, hard core feminists complained about how porn was included in the male packet since it is entirely inappropriate to encourage young adults to indulge in it… as if young men don’t already indulge in it, as soon as they learn to click a mouse, they learn to use the internet to find porn.
I can understand way the mistake happened, and I completely believe it was a simple mistake and not malicious abuse, it happened because the two men in charge never considered asking a female colleague what they thought. Any woman in the world would have said, “Actually I think cellulite cream is inappropriate, so give them chocolate too.”