Life or Death: Plastic Surgery in Argentina

So, I was looking up more articles on CNN to talk about an ran across this story about this model in Argentina who had plastic surgery on her butt and died from the surgery. The former Miss Argentina was only 37. If this doesn't make young girls and women run away from plastic surgery, I don't know what will. This is an epidemic amoung women. Never wanting to accept the way they look, females (and some males) turn to plastic surgery to give them the false sense of beauty society pushes in their faces on a daily basis. Many of thes women are paying with their lives. Apparently "In recent years, Argentina has become an international destination for plastic surgery. The costs of such procedures there are much lower than in other countries." So since the United States makes plastic surgery harder to attain, everyone turns toward foreign countries who have far less advanced systems of sanitation and who have doctors who aren't licensed. According to CNN, "Medical tourism has seen a huge jump over the past decade, and is projected to be a $100 billion global industry by 2010, according to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions." These numbers are alarming to me. Especially since I saw the Tyra Show a few weeks ago that delt with the same subject. A woman on her show almost died when she went overseas to get butt injections. Her "doctor" injected hot gel into her butt and gave her an oral anticeptic only and it took forever. I'm sorry, but to me, that seems like torture. The woman later regreted making that decision.

More Violence

I had read in the USA Today yesterday about the four police officers that were slane as they were preparing for their shifts. This crime occured on Sunday in Seattle, Washington. Apparently (on Monday) the police department had a suspect in mind that they wanted for questioning, his name is Maurice Clemmons. Who, apparently had been granted clemmency by Mike Huckabee even though this man had been "accused of child rape and assaulting a police officer". Clearly, this man was not all there. I mean, I'm against the death penalty, but I do believe that if you do the crime you must do the time. It's these tragedies that happen after a politician makes a dumb mistake that can be avoided by simply applying the law. Although the law is flawed, it is there to keep good people like "Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; Officer Ronald Owens, 37; Officer Tina Griswold, 40; and Officer Greg Richards, 42" from dying. By the way, all of these men and women had children and families. I just think that violence is something that we should try to avoid at all cost. I also think that it's important to keep evil people like Maurice Clemmons off of the streets and rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated. Today, Maurice Clemmons what killed by a Seattle police officer who found a running car that had been stolen (in the possession of Clemmons) Clemmons came out of a building and started running by which the officer shot and killed him. So, long story short.. violence begets violence and more people die as a result.

Precious

Over Thanksgiving break my mom and I had anticipated seeing the movie "Precious" staring Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, and Mariah Carey. I loved the movie. After reading "Push" which is what the movie is based on (almost word-for-word) I was hooked. Although the book is extremely graphic and written from Precious' (Sidibe's) point of view (broken English, very dramatic dialogue) you get the gist of the life of a teenage girl stuck in a world of abuse, incest, cultural, and economic struggles. In the movie, Precious' life is played out in a way that shows the very lowest of the low as far as people and ethics go. I really don't want to give away the movie because I think that everyone should see it. But the most profound moment for me in the movie (or at least one of the most profound moments) was when Precious was doing her hair in the mirror and saw a white female looking back at her. This showed how deluted her sense of beauty was. This really hit home to me because I remember as a child rapping a scarf around my head and letting it hang because I wanted my hair to flow like a white girl's hair. My mother did the same when she was young. It's not that I wanted to be white.. it's that...the hair type was what was considered to be beautiful.

The "Allure"

I was checking my mail today and finally received my first free issue of "Allure" magazine. I had put in the promotional code into the website for Tampax and got 10 free issues. (Allure was the only remotely appealing one considering the selection included magazines for teenage girls.) Now, initially I had a preconceived notion about this magazine...some involved thinking the magazine was just a glimpse into the materialistic world of Hollywood. Sadly, as I flipped through page after page of advertisements for overpriced perfume, cologne, make-up, clothing, and jewelry I realized that my notions were right on point.

In Women's Studies, we had watched a movie called "Killing Us Softly" and it was mainly about how bad advertisements have gotten as far as women are concerned. Sex, money, and body image are some of the things highlighted in the December 2009 issue of Allure magazine. I had even seen some women...I repeat...WOMEN dressed as children or dolls with mangled legs trying to sell Juicy Couture (pg 135) to women who apparently find children and dolls appealing enough to want to buy this product. I was also shocked at the amount of sickly looking "models" if you can call them that (pg 150). They are so thin that Holocaust comes to mind. The true tragedy is that these magazines are not directed toward my women of my age, they are directed at young teenage girls who have yet to figure out who they are. They are directed at them because they are the most vulnerable. Advertisers figure that since they are the audience that's weak enough for us to manipulate, they are the perfect audience to advertise to. I think it's time to make a change.

MANIKINZ!

So, my friend and I just happen to be talking about body image and got into a discussion about manikins. We had just gotten back from the mall and made an observation about all of the manikins that were on display. They're all, if not mostly female. I wonder why that is. Maybe because females are suppose to look like these manikins. Maybe this is the image that is popular now-a-days. Although I find this logic to be completely insane because the manikins don't represent a woman. Real women have curves, real women aren't that small...at least most women aren't that small and if they are that small no woman has that type of proportion. The reason why this stands out in my mind as a good subject for a blog is because of the Old Navy commercials where they've completely gotten rid of their human models and replaced them with manikins who are the "perfect" client. They have the perfect body type that will never change over time. The manikins will always stay the same age, same weight, no blemishes, they will never get any wrinkles, they will never give you any lip, and most important of all, they're cheap. It just makes me irritated because it's as if now real people aren't good enough to be models anymore because this warped vision of what beauty is. The human body can only go so far.
Another thing that I've notice about female manikins is that many of them don't have heads, but if you look at some of the male manikins, they have heads. Once again making the female body less than human, making it just another object. I see it as something of an underhanded imagery that portrays women in a less than human.

What a Stupid B*tch

Not too long ago, my roommate and I had watched an episode of South Park, not really because we wanted to, but because there was nothing else on. I'm not a big fan of South Park mainly because of its crude and dark humor. But this episode in particular was interesting because it was talking about boobs. I mean, considering I have them, I wanted to know what new contraversal things the creaters of South Park had to say about this classic female feature. (This episode is called, "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society".) So in this episode, Bebe is just an average girl in elementary school until she starts to grow breasts and somehow, the boys in the school think she's cool all of a sudden and the reason is because she has grown boobs. The boys of the school start to argue about who gets to be her friend and who gets to do stuff with her and she ends up not liking all of the attention she's getting for her "growth" so she consults a doctor. When she goes to the doctor, she asks him for a breast reduction (which of course is ridiculous) and the doctor says that's crazy, so he tells her she can bet implants instead, because implants are better. She refuses and decides the next day to wear a box over her chest so that the guys will treat her normally again. Meanwhile, one of the boys in the class becomes obsessed with boobies and can't stop drawing them and his girlfriend gets jealous of the other girl because her chest is growing. So the jealous girl goes to the doctor and gets implants thinking they will make her popular too. So when the girl enters the classroom, she sees the box covered girl and flaunts her new breasts and one of the boys in the class laughs in her face and while grabbing her boob yells, "What a stupid bitch".
I think that this episode is the perfect example of our society. Everyone is so obsessed with popularity and beauty that many females feel inadequate therefore they feel the need to change what they look like with surgery and when the surgery is over, they are expecting everyone to love them, but in fact everyone just laughs in their face.

The Plastics

My roommate and I were looking at some pictures online of celebrities when we happened to stumble upon some before and after pictures. These before and after pictures were the most terrifying pictures I had ever seen. I truly do not understand why women (and some men now) feel the need to go under the knife so that they can make themselves fit what society wants them to be. No one is perfect so why chase after something that does not exist? Some of the celebrities that were listed were some of the most beautiful people before they decided they were flawed. I think there's a lesson to be learned from all of this. I mean, when you really think about it, surgery can't really fix anything. It won't make you any prettier because as soon as you get some implants or straighten your nose, or get your face lifted you will still feel insecure on the inside. I know it sounds really cheesy but that's the truth. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the surgery is all for nothing because we all get old and gravity takes over no matter what.

Chubby Chasers

Now-a-days, everyone is worried about the way they look. Unfortunately, many Americans suffer from obesity and as a result of that, their children are becoming obese too. This topic came up when I was reading the October 16-18, 2009 issue of USA TODAY on page 10A. The article was called, "To Stop Childhood Obesity, Look to Parents" by Mike Bartholomew, a pediatrician from Bismark, North Dakota. He was voicing his opinion on how parents should stop blaming the manufacturers for making fatty foods and start taking up some of the responsibility for their overweight children. I thought this article was interesting because it is so true. If you look at it, food is a choice. (Specifically what we choose to eat) What the parent eats, the child eats too and we already know about the greasy oversized portions that we Americans enjoy. It's to be expected that the number of overweight children is on the rise. This takes me back to the days before the Maury Show was nothing but pregnancy tests and who is the father of my baby. Back when Maury cared about the people who came on his show...but anyway, that's another story. He had a few babies on his show. The reason they were on there was because these babies were extremely overweight. I'm talking 90 lb year old babies who could barely walk. Now, in my opinion all the blame goes to the parents for making those toddlers that huge. I mean, they're too young to drive up to the McDonald's or to drive to the grocery store to pick up family sized chips, Halloween candy, and Oatmeal Cream Pies.

How Dark is Your Skin?

Racism within the Black Community, many people of other ethnic backgrounds are unaware of this epidemic. This unknown or rarely talked about epidemic is based on biases and differences in the "darkness" of one's complection. I personally think that we as African-Americans (Black Americans, what have you) have enough to worry about on a daily basis without worrying about that. I personally experience this kind of ignorance on a daily basis. I am a light-skinned African-American female who has a lot of caucasian friends who also plays the viola in the symphony orchestra; now because of that a lot of darker skinned females don't want to have anything to do with me because they think I'm a sell out. One of my ex-friends had told me that when she first met me, she automatically didn't like me because of my complection. A light skinned girl is thought of as stuck up, "bougie", or "too good". Dark skinned girls are thought of as ghetto, mean, and aggressive.

I suppose all of this comes as the after affects of slavery. For all of those who are unaware, the lighter skinned Africans were kept in the house to take care of the househould chores and the children and the darker skinned Africans were kept out in the field doing all of the hard, back-breaking work in the fields. The slave owner would often favor the lighter slaves over the darker ones simply because there was a possibility that they could have "white blood" in them. Over the years, it has been thought that lighter skinned girls are more wanted and that they are prettier and that darker skinned girls are the undesireable ones. The same goes for males. Darker males are seen more as the trouble maker. Which is totally wrong. Each person has their own identity and it's not fair for others to judge you on how dark or light your skin is, even within their own race.

MEDIA and Our Lives

WHAT IS A ROLE MODEL? According to http://www.merriam-webster.com/,
Main Entry: role model
Function: noun
Date: 1957
: a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others

FEMALES AND BODY IMAGE
Yes, I said females and not young girls or girls in general. Women of every age have issues with their bodies. Have you ever wondered why that is? I have one enormous answer to that question, an answer that everyone knows about and sees on a daily basis. Every time you walk out of the door to go to work, every time you sit down on your couch, everytime you read a magazine. What is this word? MEDIA.

THE MEDIA'S EVIL PLOT TO ROBOTIZE THE EVERYDAY
MEDIA. Still a shocker? No. We all know of the way the media portrays life. A fake life, absent of God, full of materialistic, misogynistic, racists perverts whose main goal in life is to create a world that does not exist. A world where everyone is tan, blonde, and "perfect" in everyway.

REALITY CHECK... NO ONE IS PERFECT
We all have flaws. Yet people reach, stretch, climb over people, bite and claw over this vision of perfection. What do you think of when you hear these words: plastic surgery, thin, model, teeth, and sexy? The Media thinks of MONEY when they hear those words. They bank on the insecurities of people.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING
Role models. Who do you think of when you hear role model? I was watching tv in my dorm thinking about what to write when I came on here and I passed by Vh1's Real Chance of Love 2 and couldn't believe my eyes. Women fighting each other for a couple of men who don't really want them in the first place. People say that men want to stay with a good girl, but they want to play with the bad ones. So WHY do we continue to dumb ourselves down, sex oursleves up and fight for something that's not concrete? Because the Media is all up in our faces everyday telling us that slutty is the way to go. Don't be smart because sexy and pretty is better.

THE TYRA SHOW
As I have said before, females need a role model. I think that some of the episodes (not all, but some) are good for young girls (of whom it is directed). One episode in particular I saw quite a bit ago was about Toddlers in Tiaras. She pointed out the difference between Natural Beauty Pageants and Glitz Beauty Pageants. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fRCH-Ru8dY) One of the girls, when asked if she would rather be pretty or smart and she said, "Pretty".

SO......
I leave you with this question. Who do you want your daughter to imitate? Mylie Cyrus and her stipper pole, reality show hoes, the ever disappearing Barbie, or her mommy and daddy?
Who do you as an adult fashion your life after? Don't let the Media tell you what life and beauty are. Decide that for yourself.

Love always
Syd

Is Feminism the real "F" Word?

Earlier in the week, we watched this movie called, "I Was a Teenage Feminist". Yet again, I was shocked by how much I did not now about feminist. For as long as I can remember, I have had this thought that being a feminist was something that was negative. My thinking was that all feminists were gay, hated men and refused to shave their legs. This is false. It may be true for some of the radicals out there, but it made me think about the true meaning of being a feminist. The real meaning is " 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests" according to merriam-webster.com.

In the movie, abortion was a huge topic toward the end. Abortion is a really sticky topic to cover. My opinion on the subject is this... I am first and foremost Pro-Life, but I do believe that women should have the right to decide. I know it seems like I'm contradicting myself, but that's how I feel. Babies should not be killed because the parents (and I do mean parents because it takes two to tango if you know what I mean) made a mistake. I think that if the decision was made not to use some kind of contraceptive and pregnancy was the result then it's the responsibility of the parent/parents to man and/or woman up and handle that responsibility. Now, if the woman decides to go through with an abortion then that's a choice that she will have to live with. So I guess in a nutshell if you have a baby and you don't want it, the best choices from a moral and Christian standpoint are 1)Keep it and 2)Give it up for adoption but you are a human being and as such, you have the right to abort it if you want to, but it's still murder never-the-less.

I think this world would be so much better without inequality. I know for a fact that many people have this same view. That's one of the goals of feminists as I am slowly realizing. I think it's going to take a long time to achieve those goals though. Many of those goals are just within reach. For example, many women have careers now, but they are not as well paying as a man's career. Then there's the whole Glass Ceiling problem keeping women from being in the top positions in the business world. My boyfriend and I had a conversation about women in the workfield. I wanted to get his opinion on the difference between hiring women vs hiring men. His opinion was that if he were an employer for a physically demanding business he would hire the man first because men are naturally stronger than women. So my response to that was "What if the woman was completely parallel to the man mentally and physically". He responded with, "I would still pick the man." When I asked him why, he said, "Because a man's stength is superior to that of a woman". I think that if a woman can parallel a man in anycase then it should be a toss up at to who should get the job....that's comletely fair. If equality exists, (which it does) it should be available for everyone.

I had just heard via youtube.com about Maia Campbell and how she was caught high on drugs prostituting. Her face was everywhere and some derogatory comments were made about her. People were completely ruthless calling her everything in the book. The most shocking part about the whole situation was the fact that there are plenty of male ex-childhood celebrities that have gone on the wrong path, and yet she was outed.

Thanks for reading

Love always

Syd

Gettin' Personal

Hello all, Sydney here..also know as Syd to those who prefer the informal. I am a Music Education Major on the Integrated Track here at WKU. I came here because I was told WKU was the best university for music in Kentucky by my beloved orchestra director Dr. Benson. I love music. It is my everything under God, my mother, and family (friends included). My primary instrument is the Viola. (A lot of people don't know what that is...but, it looks like a Violin, but it goes an octave lower and it is slightly bigger...and you play it just like a Violin) I have played the viola for about 8 years now and I absolutely love it. I think the second instrument I would claim would be vocal, and then the Piano. I have a very artsy background. I paint, draw, write poetry, decorate, play and sing music. I love all kinds of music from classical to bluegrass. I love talking about things that are not superficial, things that take a lot of thought and soul searching. I also love talking about silly things too. One can not be serious 24/7 or at least should not be serious 24/7.



I am truly excited to be taking Women's Studies this semester. I think it is going to be an interesting class. I have learned so much already that I was completely in the dark about. I honestly thought that the class would be mainly about menstrual cycles and how bad men are and how abortion is the way to go. But it has definitely turned out to be so much more. I can't wait to learn even more about society, gender study, and race. I have so many opinions about the whole society subject. For example, people are extra shallow now-a-days. We are so worried about self image that our little girls, who are perfectly healthy, look at the women on television who are going on diets (saying that skinny and slutty are the way to go) and say, "Mommy I want to go on a diet so I can be pretty too," and the age of 6. That is really mind blowing. Don't even get me started on the whole Toddlers In Tiaras. One word describes this show...SICK!



Some of the things I have learned already are the way women have pretty much been seen as too weak and too frail to be able to do much. Especially in the not so distant past. We women have rights now, but we are still seen as weak and delicate. We women are not as weak as some may think, actually we are really strong. In some cases stronger than men. (the whole pain threshold along with many other things) I guess I can consider myself to be a feminist in that I want equality for the sexes. I have realized, though, that there are certain things that women can do that men can't do and certain things that men can do that women can't do. That's just a reality, but neither should be descriminated against simply because of their sex.



That is just a little snippet about me, who I am, and what I think about.

Thank you for reading.

Love always



Syd