Fantasy beauty, fiction, and the real world

[dvl_spencer]

You may have recently seen the mini-uproar about the distorted Ralph Lauren ad, which had bloggers and most sensible people outraged over the continuing insanity about perceptions of female beauty.

Poking around articles about the ad led me to other articles on the fashion industry and pressures on women to attain impossible ideals. Some folks

Comments

[andolinn]

Hmmmm... Well first of all who is it exactly who thinks that there is anything at all attractive about Photoshop!woman? She's gross. Like a sick thing, about to fall over from anorexia. Truly, that's my gut response to her.

I concur completely that the image of female beauty is a male way of responding to the threat of powerful women.

And I also concur that women are complicit in putting themselves down. As Eleanor Roosevelt said,

"Noone can make you feel inferior without your permission."

It is beholden upon older women to recognize the fashion/make-up/clothing industry for what it is - just another mechanism for selling things - and reject it so that we can help young women come to see themselves reasonably and love themselves for who they are.

That said, a girl born in the year 2000 has a 39% chance of developing Type 2 Diabetes. (Yeah - terrifying.) So we do want to teach responsible, healthy eating habits as well.

As for your question on fictional characters, I like realistic characters. "Perfect" people are rarely happy, go thru as much emotional torment over looks, being loved etc. as the rest of us. Why not write someone that we could actually hope to aspire to be, someone who isn't beautiful but who is hugely lovable anyway.

[dvl_spencer]

I believe all of the praise for the Photoshop!woman that I saw was in the comments section, largely from guys, though some from women. A few of those could very well have been trolls trying to stir up trouble--I was happy to see they were largely ignored. But it was upsetting to me that Ralph Lauren's first response was to send DMCA notices to the blogs who criticized the ad, and only when the furor grew larger did they finally say "Oops, maybe this image wasn't the best idea, sorry."

Eleanor Roosevelt was very wise, but it takes a lot of strength to resist the crowd of voices telling you you're inferior. It's also hard to overcome the power of the media and Hollywood--even when you know everyone is too thin or has had too much plastic surgery, when it's all you see day in and day out--a normal woman on TV starts to look odd. Even when you know they shouldn't. It's scary.

I have extra difficulty because I actually love fashion and make-up. But I like it in the way of "Look the best you can look", rather than "Look like someone else, who's smaller and younger".

I think that there are a lot of factors contributing to unhealthy eating, but I definitely think a part of it is backlash from this kind of pressure. Some of the girls starve themselves to try and reach "perfection", while others get depressed and eat because they know they'll never attain that ideal.

I love that you used Trinity for your icon. Talk about a kick-ass character. I loved that a woman started off The Matrix, and she was also responsible for saving the hero's life. She's noble and strong and beautiful in a unique way. We need more like her.

[dvl_spencer]

And I should have said "male hero", because Trinity is also a hero in the story, even though she's not "The One".

[andolinn]

I think that resisting is a matter of practice as much as anything else. I think that we all need to start using a bit more critical thinking in our lives (on everything and not just advertising) and actually start questioning images/products/purchasing paradigms. I think that would have prevented the current economic meltdown as well as self-hatred.

If you continually look at images that are presented and judge them, you develop a better perspective from which to see yourself. Especially if you think of the torture that models put themselves through for that 'perfect image'. (Or, well the photoshopping...)

I think that one of the reasons why I don't watch a lot of network TV anymore is that I really hate the way the women look...they're not real!

I love fashion too. But not runway fashion which is just bizarre. But I love going to Macy's and I am able to sort through the 50% which is weird crap and the 40% that would look great on someone with a different figure and get to that 10% that actually enhances the way I look. Really, my closet is stuffed. LOL

I love Trinity. And Aeryn Sun. And Delenn. I always loved Sci Fi as a girl, because the women there had no limits. As a child my ideal heroines were beautiful. Interestingly, now beauty matters so much less and character is all important.

I think that's what I was trying to say above. I have read slash fics about footie players that I don't find that phyically attractive written by great authors and fallen in love, because the characterizations were so fascinating.

[dvl_spencer]

I think you're right that there's a correlation between peeps buying into ad messages and the whole credit/mortgage crisis. People are sheep, basically, and that's where the problems coming in. The real problem is that so many don't realize they're sheep--they think the ideas they have about life are their own, not realizing the pressure of all those subliminal (and overt) messages.

That video actually astounded both me and hubby. I always knew that they photoshopped models, to shave off pounds or remove blemishes, etc., but never in a million years did I think that they elongated necks and made eyes bigger and all that. It scared the crap out of me, frankly. And I'll definitely look at images with a more discerning eye now.

I'm finding myself less and less interested in movies, too, because of how women look. It actually makes me cringe when I see their bones jutting out of their chest. The sad fact is that I actually seek out films that don't have women in them, because I can't stand how they look/act, which then sets women back even farther.

I love Macy's too, though it is tough sometimes to look at all the pretty stuff that *could* look good on me if they actually made it past a size 10. The discrimination in the fashion industry is appalling.

I liked sci-fi/fantasy when I was young, too. A lot of my friends were reading Harlequins, and I was reading DragonLance and Madeline L'Engle stuff. I probably didn't realize it at the time, but it was because the heroines were more on equal footing and quite frankly the heros were more interesting too.

I still do enjoy the pretteh, as most humans do, but you are right. I've read some unattractive slash pairings, too, and when it's written well it's awesome. Though I still can't stomach Gimli/Leggy...heh. It's my own personal bias that I can't overcome. :P