Klatu verata niktu: Metablog

Talking about Impossible beauty standards...

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 16:25:58 GMT

As I was taking a blog walk, I came across this interesting post by what is obviously an intelligent and bright young lady. Here she discusses society's impossible standard of beauty and how the media (in this case glamour mags) artificially set those standards using advanced photo retouching techniques. There is also some good discussion in her comments, but I liked the post so much, I thought I'd metablog it here for my regular readers to have a look...

Impossible beauty standards... Posted February 21, 2006
After surfing through some blogs, I came across what at first seemed like a really cool website. It is the site of a guy that does photo retouching. The first thing you notice when you go to the site, is it is mostly famous and scantily clad women (easy.....down boys!!! :) The cool part is you see the final gorgeous photos, but if you move your mouse over the picture, you see what the before picture looked like. Cool huh?!?! Here a link to the site: http://glennferon.com/portfolio1/index.html

But here's the kicker, after looking at several of the before and after shots, there is a severely disturbing trend. In particular, many of the women are not only erased of wrinkles and anything that makes them look older (see Vivica Foxx - #05), but more alarming is how many of the women's waists are slimmed significantly. Compare the before and after photos of Halle Berry in the third row, third picture from the right - Red dress, #25. Her waist is shrunk on both sides, and of course, the chest area is enlarged. Serena Williams in picture #36 is also significantly shaved of excess pounds, as is the woman in photo #23. No wonder so many of us women are constantly dieting and trying to loose weight, because we are trying to live up to pictures of women who aren't real!!!!

To add insult to injury, look at the pictures of the 2 men found amongst the portfolio (Usher - #44, and guy in #12). While, yes, these men are in very good shape, you do not see their body figures enhanced at all. Usher's arm that is leaning on his knee (his left arm) could use some touch-up work in the triceps area, but that is not touched what so ever. These men are not even enhanced in the chest area, unlike many of the women - despite the fact that men who have more muscular chest are often thought to be more attractive.

Now, I am not trying to fault the guy doing the work, as he seems very good at making these people and photos to be more visually stimulating and beautiful. I'm sure he is just doing as the client asks. But think about the bigger issue here, which is these photos are viewed by our young, impressionable women who are lead to then falsely believe that to be beautiful and in demand, you must have flawless skin, a stick-thin figure, and an oversize chest! Look at all the diet aids, skin care products, and undergarments available in attempts to try and achieve these impossible goals. Perhaps this is the main contributing factor to the rise in eating disorders, depression, and even suicide among our youth. It is really a sickening trend of the world today.

So think about the next time you see some perfectly gorgeous woman in an ad or magazine - is she real or just an unachievable creation???

My comments to Christa were:

Very good post Christa, and I think it is presented in a balanced, non-accusatory way. More often than not, men get the brunt of the blame for setting unrealistic societal standards of beauty, but in reality we all do by being consumers of products that feature impossibly attractive male and female models. We are all part of the problem. Now, can we become part of the solution? The realist in me says "probably not". We are instinctually attracted to some physical ideal. This is programmed right into our genes, so while our higher mind would like to view all equally and based soley on individual merit and likeability, we will always make distinctions and discriminations based on what we consider to be "beautiful" and what is not.

Our minds are unfortunately fettered with millions of years of caveman psychology but we live in a modern, technologically and culturally advanced reality. It's going to take a long time to overcome our genetic programming, and it's going to take more than good wishes and good intentions.

What's your opinion?

So dear reader, what do you think about all this? I view this as an important ongoing societal debate which still rages from time to time... the whole body image thing and the eating disorders it is believed to cause, etc.

I am very curious to hear what you have to say on the matter.

Talking about The Sick Things We Do

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 23:19:10 GMT

I ran across this blog by a very intelligent, insightful young lady. I liked it so much that I promised to share it with my visitors. What I like about it is the raw look at the human condition. Evidently, bullshit starts very early in life.

Here is Christina's blog entry of December 23, 2005 (click on the title to see the original entry):

The Sick Things We Do

- why do we do the things we do?

- why do we want to project an image of a person that is not who we are?

- why do our actions oppose our intentions?

- why do we wait a certain number of days before calling someone, or waiting a certain amount of time before msging them to make it seem like we're busy with other things?

- we do we say no when we mean yes, and pretend that we have have other engagements when really we have nothing to do?

- why do we ignore the person we like, and act indifferent towards them when really all we want to do is be near them?

- why do we pretend not to remember someone incase they don't remember us, when really they've been on our minds since our first encouter with them?

- why do we play dumb when we already know the facts?

- why do our actions contradict our intentions?

- why do we do the sick things we do, and torment ourselves with it?

This story was too funny to pass up...

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 03:34:44 GMT

OMG, this account of a fellow bubblegum swallower is so funny that I'm on the verge of peeing myself. I realize that you may not all enjoy this kind of "toilet" humour, but I really appreciate the writing style and the magnificent life lesson being shared here by the author. Heheheh

So you know, this was a story posted on JuliaJoelle's blog here, and seems as though it was written by a friend of hers. Too funny!

For those of you who have ever known my friend Dima, this is the style and type of incident he might write about. I'll have to dig up Dima's cockroach story for you one of these days...

Quote

The bubblegum story...

This is really long, but I had a good laugh and couldn't resist but share it!

Came Here To Chew Bubblegum
07/11/2005

This is the confession of a gum-swallower. I admit it. For as long as I can remember, I have always swallowed my bubblegum instead of throwing it out. This used to be a major subject of contention with my mother when I was a child, as she was convinced that the practice would lead to my untimely demise. The gum mass was indigestible according to her, you see, and as such could not pass properly through the gastrointestinal tract. I was at great risk of numerous medical conditions because of this questionable assertion, including "twisted intestines," "stomach pileup," and choking to death on my own vomit after the bubblegum body inevitably attempts to escape through my esophagus, closing the pipes indefinitely on the way out.

Click to read the rest...