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.