The Sociology of Female Body Image

[curiouscliche]

Disclaimer: This entry is focused almost entirely on the dynamics of heterosexual attraction. Obviously, it is important to examine attraction between all genders, but I’m focusing on the heterosexual attraction of men towards women for two reasons. First, heterosexuality is the only thing I can write about from personal experience. Second, the

Comments

[fucking_shut_up]

well, yes. It's also worth mentioning that Straightness comes from the same media hegemony.

[dialogue_mono]

haha that's a whole nother story

Vince man -- did I ever tell you about the other Vince I know? He's a 40-year-old fuzzy-bearded pot-smoking hippy whom we have affectionately dubbed the Garden gnome --

my question, I guess, is do men really internalize media images? I'm pretty much a 'size 10' and, well, I find that my sex life is just dandy so far as the hetro half of it goes.. personally, I think it's just as likely that straight men are wired to find certain characteristics attractive, especially from an evolutionary standpoint, as it is that men take their cues from outside sources. Certainly, some of your points make sense. Confidence is attractive, and straight women surely draw confidence both from sexual successes with men and from positive ego-stroking from outside sources like friends and social standards of beauty, and lose confidence with lack of sexual success, etc. But I question whether you can draw such strong, even causal relationships, from the media to women's confidence, to men's sexual success, to men's

[curiouscliche]

I think that’s a really good point; most men don’t internalize these images (I certainly don’t. P.S. You’re hot). At the same time, some do, and it seems like the number is growing. What pissed me off and made me write this was when I heard about some of the ridiculous responses to the new Dove ad campaign by some straight, white males from the Chicago Sun Times. http://www.msmusings.net/archives/2005/07/ive_mentioned_t.html... )

[dialogue_mono]

that's a well-written review of it all. I hadn't heard anything about it. Thanks for posting!

The other Vince is like you'd be if you went grey and got bitter about how little your government loves you. Or.. more bitter.

[dialogue_mono]

what I find particularly humorous is that the page where Roeper says that stupid stuff has ads at the bottom by Gooogle, or whatnot, and one of the ads is for thongs

[fucking_shut_up]

----If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist -- well yes, I'm a man. --------

Hey Roeper, remember when Siskel was still alive and no one gave a shit about you?? Yeah, don't be generalizing male experiance based on your own superunderqualified-for-your-current-job/never-learned-how-to-write-anything-interesting opinion. When you can review a movie and tell me anything useful about its quality, come back and generalize something, and we'll go from there. Until then, get your vastly overstayed its welcome replacement ass back into its obscurity hole. that would be lovely.