Skinnygirl is a women’s health product line that sells a mixture of products ranging from dressings, appliances, books, and cocktails. What Skinnygirl offers is a name brand way of being a healthy individual, with a society endorsed, beautiful, thin woman on the cover.
The line was started by Bethanny Frankel, self-described author, chef, TV star, & entrepreneur. In her bio on twitter, she describes Skinnygirl as, “bringing you healthy snacks, sips, recipes, and more!” A quick look on the Skinnygirl website and one can find any product through their Product Locator that showcases a wide variety of appetizing and appeasing products to a wide variety of female audiences. Beyond their hype, their number one selling point is that they are healthy, and create a happy, fun way to go about being healthy with other women.
For many women the idea of being healthy: eating nutritiously, exercising, treating ones body like it should be treated, is a daunting task and one not easily accomplished. Simply buying healthy foods at the super market is generally more expensive and has far less notoriety than say the popular new popcorn or cocktail.
I myself came across Skinnygirl not too long ago when I was shopping at Wal-Mart, like the broke college student I am, and was looking for a low fat, yet tasty salad dressing. I came across one of Skinnygirl’s prime products: their sugar free, fat free, Poppy seed Dressing. Next to it was a salad dressing, equally fat free, but not as appeasing to my eyes, and a dollar more! It was an easy decision, surely!
But something about the name caught me the wrong way. I stood there for several moments, but I couldn’t shake the feeling nagging at me.
As a millennial woman I have grown up in the world of the expectations placed on women to look and act, and be a certain way in order to appear sexually appealing. But really, this issue goes far beyond sex; it dives into emotional security, confidence in being a woman, and strength in being rooted as oneself. I, like many others, have fought time and time again to remind myself that the goal is health. There is nothing wrong with thinness, especially if it is a byproduct of a healthy lifestyle, but don’t be fooled, the goal is not a number, and it’s surely not to be called “skinny.”
Throughout Skinnygirl’s media they refer to themselves as being the “healthy” choice for women. Why then, is it not called Healthygirl? Or Happygirl? Or Stronggirl? What about Everygirl? Why Skinnygirl? I came to the undeniable conclusion that it is, because as a society we have accepted that this is what one must become in order to be the “right” kind of woman. They capitalize on the knowledge that if a woman attempting to be healthier sees a product with a sticker of a thin, happy girl; they will buy it in hopes that she can be skinny and happy too.
Every girl is not skinny. And every healthy girl is not even what would define as skinny. Why are we expecting that in the age of diversity every woman will look the same if they are being healthy?
Skinnygirl does not champion women to be healthy, confident versions of them. It tells women that the goal and purpose of health is to reach a certain outward look, and it passes that idea on to little girls who will grow up to be us. They will grow up to believe in a standard that was created out of judging women based on unrealistic, and unhealthy standards.
Let us instead be happy and healthy women rather than falling into anyone else’s ideal of what women should be. Skinnygirl does not represent every girl, or even every skinny girl. On that day I chose not to buy the pretty, Skinnygirl product, and I implore you to do the same.
Make your own salad dressing. Buy local produce. Be unstoppable. Be happy on your own terms. Harness your self worth in something besides a mass produced silhouette. It feels pretty good.