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The average ideal will always be narrowly defined.
That's not true at all.
It wasn't for men, holmes, until the last 20 years or so.
There was a much wider range of male body types which were considered attractive and sexy. Now things are getting narrower for the men, and we see the resulting body dissatisfaction and abuse of steroids and incidence of eating disorders in boys and men as a result.
2) women are heavily pressured by the culture to meet that narrowly-defined ideal and are heavily rewarded when they do meet it,
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That is part of the progressive movement's effects in the US.
Bullshit. Footbinding in China is the result of the progressive movement's effects in the US? Female Genitial Mutilation in Africa? Corsets in Europe?
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Perfection to a common standard or failure. I agree it is a problem and the first part of the solution is to reject the mindset championed fron the late 1800s by conservative and liberal groups alike that society can figure out what is best for humans and humans must meet that goal.
Look, I think you are indulging in sophistry here.
You don't need fancy philosophy to figure out that if you can convince people they are inadequate, then you can sell them stuff that will make them more socially acceptable.
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That includes traditional feminists which accepted most of the patriarchal premises, and today forces women to see themselves as victims and essentially feeds women ego boosters if they see themselves as victims.
If advertising didn't work, then advertising agencies wouldn't be paid such large amounts of money.
It is natural and human nature for children to absorb what is expected of them from the culture around them.
3) There is a multi-billion dollar industry devoted to helping women meet that goal, including helping them think that spending huge sums of money to take drastic, life-threatening measures to try to attain the unattainable is perfectly normal.
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That's a market.
Which has been created.
Children aren't born believing that their bodies are inadequate. They have to be taught that. We love TV, capitalism and corporate influence in this country, so it's those three things that teach us the most about what is considered physically beautiful.
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If a woman decides to believe what others tell her, rather than thinking for herself, then that is her problem.
That's like blaming a child who was raised in the south for having a southern accent.
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I am not about to buy into the "magazines made me do it" argument. You are beginning to cross the line into full blown advocacy that censorship should be allowed because reading something will cause people to do things they would not ordinarily do.
It's not a "magazines made me do it" argument.
It's a "the entire culture made me do it" argument.
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This is especially true of its effects on a section of the feminist movement which itself has used capitalist advertising techniques to sell itself by victimizing women and convincing them that they are the way to remove feelings of unworth set upon them by the rest of society and its imagery. Don't you get that that is what is being said? You are made the victim, convinced to play that role, so that you can submit to their cure? It is pure snakeoil.
But what if we actually ARE victims? Corporations don't particulary care about ethics or people, they just care about making profits.
If girls are being hurt by this culture, then they ARE victims.
Now, that doesn't mean they can't recover, but they were injured regardless. There is no shame in victimhood.
Don't you think I would love to completely erase my negative body obsessions and feel really confident and positive? I do feel great sometimes, and I consider that a victory, but I had to do the work to make that possible all on my own, as an adult, after the damage had been done. It's a lot more difficult to repair than build right in the first place.
Frankly, I am insulted that you are basically denying my experience. I have a pretty good idea where my body image problems come from. And they are not my fault. I was just a little kid, or a teenager. I was impressionable, and my peers and the culture told me what I should believe about myself.
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I suppose the nice thing about the past is that the ideals were always embodied by gods. It was hard to feel bad about not reaching those heights. Now we feel that we ourselves can become gods, we are thus deluded, and so are to blame when we don't reach that status. That delusion comes not from the press, but from instruction by our parents and society at large. It is the environment we live in.
Right.
Society at large.
It is the environment we live in are born in and are raised in.
The environment we live in here in the US screams at us from nearly every rooftop that our physical appearence (particularly for women) is of very high importance, and that normal female body fat is to be feared and hated.
You say that you are trying to reject that culture, and so am I, but it's hard, isn't it? It's hard for everybody, holmes, and most people just don't even try to reject it. They are totally bought in, have never questioned why they feel that they must conform, or struggle with feeling inadequate their whole lives, and that's understandable. We're raised to be consumers, after all.
It's similar to people who were beaten as a child and figure "Well, I turned out OK, so it must not have been that bad a thing to do to me."
This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-06-2005 10:21 AM
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