For those who don't watch the show or didn't see last night's episode: When one of the main characters tells a girl who asks him out that she's fat, the suddenly feminist cheerleading captain, Wendy, sets out to prove a point about unrealistic beauty standards by Photoshopping the girl's picture. But Wendy's plan backfires, as the boy now believes the girl is actually "hot"—and when the girl's manipulated photo goes viral, she's the school catch. Soon the entire cheerleading squad hits the gym—in truth, a computer lab where a trainer yells at them to digitally whittle their bodies faster—leaving Wendy alone and frustrated that her point has been totally missed. Worse, everyone from the school counselor to the nightly news team assumes she's taken up the crusade because she's jealous (or "jelly," in the show's parlance). The show ends with—spoiler alert—Wendy giving up by digitally manipulating her own photo so she looks as "good" as her friends. (There's also a side plot involving Kanye West's slow discovery that Kim Kardashian is the inspiration for The Hobbit. It is South Park, after all.)
In my recollection, this is the only episode this season—and one of the few overall—that has focused on the girls of South Park Elementary, and this is the topic they chose. And it's with a decidedly male perspective; men ages 18-24 are South Park's top viewers, and the prime target audience. Perhaps this was meant to cater to the show's female audience, but I don't think so: I'm guessing this was a (relatively) straightforward Parker-Stone perspective shown, as ever, through the South Park lens. Which means that on some level, the whole unrealistic-beauty thing is of concern to the target South Park audience—witness the last scene of the episode, where Wendy, with a tear in her eye, hits "send" to circulate her edited babe pic to the entire school. It was a quiet, surprisingly sincere ending, one that echoed the ending of last week's trilogy, when the main characters decide to put down their video games and actually play with each other.
What struck me about the episode was how the ability to manipulate one's own image was seen as a psychological gold mine—none of the girls besides Wendy saw it as anything other than a way to attract attention, and maybe as a way to trick themselves into thinking they truly looked as picture-perfect as their, well, pictures. (Now, to be clear, we're talking about a student body that has previously embraced mass murder as a route to scoring XBoxes, as well as defecating out of their mouths, so I'm not trying to say that the show is remotely rooted in realism here, mkay?) The focus of the episode was not so much on the other students' dismissal of Wendy's critique but of their embrace of the ability to edit their own images. It's this that's being mocked, not Wendy—the potential narcissism that accompanies the sudden ability to look as good as your digital skills allow.
While calling out digital photography as a cesspool of narcissism is hardly new (and let's not forget that narcissism existed before social media), it's rare in the forthrightly feministy circles I tend to run in to see someone blatantly call a preoccupation with one's own image flat-out vain or narcissistic. I'm likelier to frame it in terms of social pressures, a psychic tradeoff for women's growing power in the world à la The Beauty Myth, or self-esteem or whatever. And I'm quick to defend the occasional charge of, say, makeup use as vanity (especially when it comes from men), because it is something usually leveled squarely at women. But, yes, narcissism does play a role, at least potentially—and it's interesting that this is what two male creators talking with a male audience come up with in regards to women/girls manipulating their own photos: the masses discarding the (righteous) political points surrounding the issue. It's interesting because the accusations of self-interest are still done with a relatively sympathetic hand: The girls see the rewards becoming digitally "hot" can bring them, so why wouldn't they go along with the plan? I wonder if Parker and Stone's—AND THEREFORE ALL MEN'S, ha—emotional distance from the question of visual self-representation is what allows them to squarely finger the role of self-absorption in image control. And more than that, I wonder if the reason they're looking at this topic now is because men are becoming evermore enveloped in these questions. (I see the sign on the clubhouse now: Boys allowed!)
Now, I'm hesitant to say that a single episode of a single cartoon indicates any sort of sea change for men's attitudes about beauty standards. But the first scene of the show that followed South Park last night makes me wonder. Comedy duo Key & Peele (another show that's grown on me) are walking in some sort of warehouse that's being redone with paint and plaster and the like, and a blob of paint falls on Key's shirt, right on his pecs. He smears it to the other side of his shirt, then laughs, "It's like I have two paint titties"—and then Peele suddenly can't look Key in the eyes, so transfixed is he by Key's "titties." The gag goes on just long enough, when another blob of paint falls on Peele's shirt too. The duo look up and see a painter above them, leering, "Hey, ladies!" They're literally subject to the male gaze, and they don't like it.
So I don't know, I'm drawing no Big Thoughts here, but it doesn't seem a coincidence that along with the boom in the "grooming" industry for men comes little bundles of criticism on the matter. And the only study I've found so far on the matter actually shows that that men are more likely than women to use an edited photo as their profile pictures on social networking sites. I can't help but wonder: Are men who don't necessarily identify as feminist paying more attention to appearance standards? Will the fallout be a shift in those standards, or just cleverer, deeper encoding of them? Are men likelier than women to call out vanity or narcissism in people's reactions to the beauty imperative?