You Have to Suffer to be Beautiful
I try to avoid celebrity magazines and news as much as possible… but lately it is hard to avoid the conversations surrounding them. The thing that I hate the most about these magazines, is that they mostly depict young women (Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan etc) humiliating themselves. Yes, there are some men there, but the vast majority are women… young women AND the vast majority of the consumers of these magazines are women.
I wonder why on one hand, we have this standard of beauty that is unattainable by most of the population (skinny, big boobs, plastic surgery etc) and then we relish seeing these people humiliate themselves? Is it jealousy (we think we see our husbands/boyfriends attracted to these women then are happy that they are so flawed) or some sort of female self-loathing – women hating women?
Why is there, everywhere we go, images of woman humiliating themselves… without balanced images of men doing the same thing? These celebrity news items are on TV, on the internet news sites, at the check-outs, in the newspapers, and flashed on screens in elevators and subways. Why do we need to see anyone humiliating themselves? I hate that that imagery is such a hallmark of our popular culture… and it bothers me to think about what that does to how young girls see themselves.
Whoa – hold on a second there – don’t be dragging men into your frey where they don’t belong. If we look at where these “celebrities” show up, we find them in the trash magazines and entertainment television circuit. Sadly, the majority of the readership of these magazines are women, and the majority of the viewership of these shows are women.. Given that, you would think there would be more men showcased, yet that female vs. female competitive streak rears it’s ugly head once again…
“we see our husbands/boyfriends attracted to these women” – um, last I checked, we’re with you and we’re happy so please don’t tell us what we’re attracted to and what we’re not. We’re interested in them much the same way we’re interested in car crashes and construction sites, and it lasts about the same amount of time too. It’s a very fat line between entertainment and attraction..
Yes – true – maybe it is just our perception of it. Although Brittany Spears is still up there as far as top search terms go on the internet – and considering some of the pics, I doubt that it is all women looking at them
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