Extra! Extra! This is NOT empowering!

[dramaqueen_23]

Everything...everything about this article pisses me off!

I have to assume that this is the latest in the proliferation of media pieces promoting "healthy body image." Unfortunately, once again they've got it all wrong.

Comments

[bruiseblue]

Real studies, very rigorous scholarly ones with citations and everything, have consistently found for a hundred years that it's not a woman's size that matters, it's her hip to waist ratio. You have the ideal ratio at any size.
Cultures that like bigger women and cultures who prefer petite women both prefer the same hip to waist ratio. Psychologists and Anthropologists who've studied this separately came to the same findings, even.

I can't remember what the idea ratio is, but I've had it at various sizes and times in my life. And anyway, that's what the hind brain likes - men you'd want to love aren't ruled by that part of their brain.

What really gets you noticed is confidence, I firmly believe, regardless of what you look like, what you wear, how big your waist is, etc.

Sometimes I enforce a media blackout when all of the 'love yourself anyway' ads become too much. I highly recommend it.

[dramaqueen_23]

Sometimes I enforce a media blackout when all of the 'love yourself anyway' ads become too much. I highly recommend it.

I may have to institute something similar. This is seriously harshing my zen!

[bruiseblue]

What irks me is that all of the bigger ladies on those ads always have perfect skin, hair, makeup, no wiggly jigglyparts - they're not even real fat ladies!

And of course, they can only get that way by using those products that are advertised. If they used some other soap, they wouldn't qualify.
so annoying!

[dramaqueen_23]

Ninety-nine percent of the time, it isn't even the product. It's the illusions of make-up and photo editing designed to make us believe it's the result of the product.

[bruiseblue]

Well of course. You and I know that, but so many people fall for it.

It's not the reality that bugs me so much as the ad's assertions that it IS the product.

Or, more insidious, that the certain type of person who chooses that product is just naturally more pretty/hot/outgoing/successful whatever. The 'lifestyle' ads make me craziest.

[dramaqueen_23]

The 'lifestyle' ads make me craziest.

Me too! "You're not just buying a product, you're buying a personality!" Blech!

[bruiseblue]

Worse still, "IF you had a personality, you'd already be buying this product."

Or, "If you buy this product, it'll reflect to others your fabulous personality."

All about sucking up to the ego.