Letters to the Editor

The Excalibur opinions section welcomes typed, double-spaced letters (no longer than 300 words). All submissions must be accompanied by the writer’s name, major, year and telephone number/email address. Submissions longer than 300 words will be sent back to be shortened. All submissions will be edited for clarity, spelling and grammatical errors. All editing is up to the discretion of the editor.
Materials deemed libelous or discriminatory by Excalibur will not be printed. All opinions expressed in the opinions section are those of their authors and are not necessarily those of the Excalibur staff , editorial board or Board of Publishers.
Send submissions to our o ce at 420 Student Centre, fax to 416-736-5841 or email to letters@excal.on.ca. Please embed submissions in the body of the email.
“The Ironacles”
»  2, 2011
Dangerous standards
Stephanie Whipp
Let me preface this by saying I do not think this occurred as a conscious, malicious plot by anyone contributing to Excalibur. That said, I feel it is definitely worth mentioning and critiquing.
In the March 2, 2011 issue – of which a large section was dedicated to International Women’s Day – there appeared a great deal of positive and powerful articles about some amazing activists within our campus. However, by the end of the issue, it seems that these important messages were forgotten.
Following the section devoted to International Women’s Day, I was confronted by an article about the importance of waist size and two comics, Adventuresome and The Ironacles. In the same space where we read about the importance of accepting our bodies and confronting dreadfully harmful beauty standards – from the beautiful and powerful Rae Smith, who has been brave enough to share her struggle and, ultimately, her survival and inspiring perseverance – we are, in the end, exposed yet again to dominant discourses which counter the progress Smith has made.
We are immersed in a culture of ever-shrinking ideals of the bodies of women and ever-expanding ideals of the bodies of men. The representations of these bodies demonstrate completely unreal and highly dangerous standards, which are virtually impossible to achieve. As such, I simply cannot justify the messages present within the comics and articles. The idea that it is not the normalizing agents of our culture that need to change, but rather our individual bodies themselves, is the same ideology which many activists are trying to problematize and resist.
This issue had the power to inspire and to spread a positive message, but ending on the note that it did, I cannot help but feel a little confused and greatly disappointed.