Comments on: Quick hits: The physical cost of beauty

By: akasha824

akasha824 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:06:26 +0000

i]I know you know this, but it’s always worth a reminder: these images are lying to you. Ads are lying to you. Magazines are lying to you. Posters are lying to you.[/i] — sad part about it is that, that’s how they sell. they lie to sell.

as an advertising graduate and former practioner, i have long realized that truth.

sad but true. people now tend to judge by what they see from the outside.

By: Kara

Kara — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:05:30 +0000

I hope constantly that there will come a day in my lifetime where a woman is not told that her self worth is equal to her waist line. I am hopelessly frustrated with the media images of what a ‘real woman’ is supposed to look like.

And I thought it was so great that Dove had the Campaign for Real Beauty, until I found out a couple months ago that Dove is owned by Unilever. The same company that owns Axe. I’ll never buy Dove products again.

It’s just proof that they really don’t care about the messages they send to and about women, it all boils down to money.

By: Lidon

Lidon — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:39:50 +0000

DRST: “Just look at what happened to Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Love Hewitt, two significantly less talented women, when they were just photographed in an unflattering way.

“…But I’m not an actress and I have no idea how I would behave if I was coping with that standard, what I would do to meet it, what decisions I would make in that situation, with that kind of public, intense and monetary pressure at work on me.”

Yeah, but there still is some level of personal responsibility as well. And as long as these women continue to enable and encourage it, then it continues on. There’s too much enabling and encouraging all around. I typically don’t even watch movies, or TV, because the vast majority of them are a waste of time for me. And although it’s totally fucked up with the backlash against Jessica Simpson, I don’t particularly feel sorry for her because she was taking advantage of this current system, and benefitting from it, just fine. She was in part responsible for all of those airbrushed images of herself marketed everywhere for young girls to compare themselves to. So she stopped feeding the monster and now it bit her, but why feed it to begin with?

By: Bev

Bev — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:11:24 +0000

lol… Eucritta, I linked the darn thing, and I didn’t read it all either! I gave up about half way through, when I could no longer decipher what she was actually trying to SAY.

By: iheartchocolat

iheartchocolat — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:23:41 +0000

Just wanted to chime in with some comments above, that I don’t exercise as much as I probably “should” because there are so many other things I’d rather be doing with my time, that I don’t have time for as it is. And this is the number one reason for not going to the gym, even though several people have said, even if I pay for it you won’t go??? No. It’s a waste of your money and my time….because every second will be spent with me thinking, what else could I be doing that would make me so much happier. I prefer mental health over physical, I suppose.

By: Eucritta

Eucritta — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:37:39 +0000

Bev, I didn’t read all of the article you linked — I gave up at the point where Orbach began to just plain make shit up, such as her claim that the ‘circle’ graphed from consumption of low-fat milk ‘would’ correspond with the ‘circle’ of recent obesity. IMHO, it’s never a good sign when someone blatantly pulls data out of their ass to bolster an argument.

By: thegirlfrommarz

thegirlfrommarz — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:11:40 +0000

lauredhel – I just read your post on issues with Jezebel and am seriously, seriously disappointed with them. I hadn’t noticed the ableism (ah, the blinding power of privilege…), but I am usually pretty alert to the use of “retard” as an insult, which I hate, and hadn’t seen it. Grrr.

By: thegirlfrommarz

thegirlfrommarz — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:56:25 +0000

Tru Blu xx – I can’t see a difference either (and since the “before” dress is much nicer, to my mind, I thought it was the after pic until I read the captions. DRST nailed it upthread:

And randomly: not to be stereotypical but what is up with that dress the DM reporter is wearing in the second photo? How in the world is that outfit showing off her “new physique” when it obscures her body from mid-thigh to upper waist? Not to mention she’s got her arms pinned behind her. Whoever took those photos will never make a career out of the before & after shots. They look like they should be reversed.

By: Tru Blu xx

Tru Blu xx — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:44:17 +0000

The ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos….can anyone else not really see any difference? Sure, the lighting, dresses and poses are different, but to me the journalist looks pretty much the same in both shots – except possibly the strained looking smile in the ‘after’ one – probably denoting that a) she’s sucking in her tummy, and/or b) the poor maid’s totally knackered!

Articles like this one just make me feel sooooooooooooo glad and relieved that I gave all this sort of rubbish up.

By: Curvygirl

Curvygirl — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:35:27 +0000

I meant that article – not ‘her’ article. D’oh!