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bladesparkOkay, the "skinny is beautiful" media thing has officially jumped the shark. Gone beyond the pale. Passed the point of no return. Because apparently this woman is supposed to disgust you. Go, clicky, look. Then come back and read. (Er, clicky leads to gal clad only in strategically placed rose petals, may not be SFW in some workplaces.)
I am more or less straight, when Aidan's not doing the talking. (Probably a Kinsey 1, and a 2-3 when Aidan and/or Yin are around.) But that first girl especially is hot. Holy CRAP is she hot. She's supposed to be disgustingly overweight? What? She is drool-worthy even for people who do not have a BWW fetish. She has hips! She is gorgeous!
Media people have lost touch with reality. They spend so much time in their little marketing world, surrounded by yes men and crazy people who think a size 6 is overweight, that they no longer have any idea what real people like. (Heavens! A size six! I've been one, it was during my stick period, when I was too stressed to eat, and when I did eat I was too broke to have anything other than Ramen. I was too thin!)
Here's a clue, media people. Real people like real people. People who look like themselves. People who are beautiful in many ways, but who do not need to be airbrushed to be so! People who are thin and fat and in between, who are short and tall and dark and blonde and pierced and not, and everything. We may be momentarily attracted to a perfectly symmetrical face on a magazine cover, but it does not make any real impact on our minds. You want to capture our attention, well... you need something real. And that's the problem, isn't it? You don't know what real is. You try to manufacture reality, you try to be hip and cool and down with us homies, and you fail utterly, because you are not real.
Screw the ad campaign and the diet youghurt, I will take that lady with the rose petals right there. Mrow! (Hush, Aidan.) She looks pretty real to me. And if my not eating the diet yougurt means I look like her, I am not going to mind one bit! (Although I won't, I put my fat on in funny places...)
I am more or less straight, when Aidan's not doing the talking. (Probably a Kinsey 1, and a 2-3 when Aidan and/or Yin are around.) But that first girl especially is hot. Holy CRAP is she hot. She's supposed to be disgustingly overweight? What? She is drool-worthy even for people who do not have a BWW fetish. She has hips! She is gorgeous!
Media people have lost touch with reality. They spend so much time in their little marketing world, surrounded by yes men and crazy people who think a size 6 is overweight, that they no longer have any idea what real people like. (Heavens! A size six! I've been one, it was during my stick period, when I was too stressed to eat, and when I did eat I was too broke to have anything other than Ramen. I was too thin!)
Here's a clue, media people. Real people like real people. People who look like themselves. People who are beautiful in many ways, but who do not need to be airbrushed to be so! People who are thin and fat and in between, who are short and tall and dark and blonde and pierced and not, and everything. We may be momentarily attracted to a perfectly symmetrical face on a magazine cover, but it does not make any real impact on our minds. You want to capture our attention, well... you need something real. And that's the problem, isn't it? You don't know what real is. You try to manufacture reality, you try to be hip and cool and down with us homies, and you fail utterly, because you are not real.
Screw the ad campaign and the diet youghurt, I will take that lady with the rose petals right there. Mrow! (Hush, Aidan.) She looks pretty real to me. And if my not eating the diet yougurt means I look like her, I am not going to mind one bit! (Although I won't, I put my fat on in funny places...)
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:04 am (UTC)Kat
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:11 am (UTC)--Mav
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:18 am (UTC)did you read their tagline? Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.
MENS preference will never change?? NO. how about, "Hollywood's will never change"?
im sickened.
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:22 am (UTC)And further, they've done studies where men are given pictures to sort according to preference of models, sans head (so you can't tell who the model was, thus preventing you from choosing the ones you 'should' like). The winner? Cindy Crawford. The loser? Kate Moss. (Cindy was the most curved model in the list; it was a few years ago when they were still big, so.)
It turns out normal men like curves. The thin-is-beautiful is entirely media-based.
That girl does not need a diet of low-fat yogurt. She needs a ticket to NZ. ¬¬
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:37 am (UTC)That woman is not fat - not even remotely. Are the people who made that add on drugs, or something? Good Lord!
The whole "stick thin is teh gorgeous", as you said, is not based on reality. Because honestly, most people are not as skinny as Nicole Richie unless they're sick, malnourished, or have just come out of hospital.
My aunt (on my father's side) is pretty skinny - but she doesn't look unhealthy, she just looks naturally skinny, and like she enjoys excercising a lot (she's fairly muscular).
I could say a lot more about the stupid little quip at the end of the advert about "men's preferances" - but I won't bore you with it. :P
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Date: 2007-06-21 05:52 am (UTC)Media is insane @_@
The first girl and the last girl are OMG hot... I mean wow....
But since media influeces culture, many many flock-minded people will go along with it.
There's this new diet pill we're selling at Walgreens called Alli, the only FDA approved diet pill. It just recently became non-prescription, and it has all sorts of warnings on it about it's side effects and how you should be at *least* 20 pounds overweight to even think about trying it, in fact, it's tagline is "Before you start, be sure" O.o ad yet, it's hordes, literally hordes of skinny people that are buyig this crap! It's flying right off the shelf! It's..... very scary actually o.O
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Date: 2007-06-21 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 11:35 am (UTC)Besides, every straight man I know would agree with it.
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Date: 2007-06-21 12:16 pm (UTC)You know, since I moved in with Tech, I've stopped watching tv. I don't read magazines in which the 'thin' image is predominant. Because honestly, seeing stuff like that makes me feel bad.
Our downstairs neighbors BOTH fit the 'skinny is beautiful' type, and those girls can't even defend themselves in a fight (one got jumped in the parking lot) because they barely have any muscle over their bones. And when I think about that, I realize maybe I'm better off being bigger then some. I'm not fat, but I'm built sturdy enough to take care of myself at least.
...It's just getting really, really sad.
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Date: 2007-06-21 12:39 pm (UTC)This reminds me of an MTV skit where there were doing music videos of "full figured" (which the implication was "fat") women. And they used... Shakira. SHAKIRA! They considered Shakira to be fat!
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Date: 2007-06-21 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 01:22 pm (UTC)How dare people make such assumptions and implications about how people should be, how they should feel about themselves, and how they should feel toward each other. But then I guess it wouldn't be the media if they didn't. Social pressure and guilt sells products.
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Date: 2007-06-21 03:01 pm (UTC)2: Preferences are much more individual than many people realise, and many seem to be culturally derived- african girls wouldn't stretch their necks with wooden rings unless that rated very highly locally. Look at pre-raphaelite art, or figurines recovered from ancient sites, and you'll soon discover that the ideal of feminine beauty ain't what it used to be, not by a loooong way.
3: Humans have a looong childhood compared to most species, so behaviour that is usually instinctive, we have to learn. And, believe it or not, this includes sexual attraction. Much like ducklings "imprinting" on the first moving object they see, humans have to be taught what they are and what they need. This process can occasionally go wrong, and when it does, fetishism is the result: To clarify, I use "fetish" to mean an object or situation without which an individual cannot function sexually (kinky likes and desires are fine and dandy, but when you'd rather get down with the shoe than the owner things are indisputably out of kilter). When I was a schoolboy, this imprinting was available from the top shelf of your local newsagent- a lad of 12 had no excuse for not knowing what was hot and not. I know you have reservations about porn*, but in this case I believe it does (or at least did) fulfil a useful social role PROVIDED the idea of beauty it offers for delectation, imagination (and any other word that rhymes...) is realistic and natural, because that's what today's 12 year-olds will be dreaming of tonight and looking for tomorrow. If what they're looking for doesn't exist, PROBLEM.
To illustrate; when I was a snotty schooboy, sneaking peeks at "adult art" comics when the shopkeeper wasn't looking (waay back in the mid 80s), the fashion in ladies' hair downstairs was pretty much au naturel- trimmed along the bikini line perhaps. These days, although without buying some research material and conducting extensive studies I couldn't say for certain, I guess the social pressure to look more airbrushed is pretty intense: Certainly beauty salon windows are full of banners hard-selling Brazilian Waxes and the like, and I guess girls wouldn't be paying hard earned cash, sweat and tears (well, it certainly SOUNDS painful to me) for services like that if they didn't feel it was necessary. So I can only assume it's so.
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Date: 2007-06-21 06:22 pm (UTC)<< Straight man.
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Date: 2007-06-21 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 08:23 pm (UTC)I am disgusted not by the woman, but by the ad execs who came up with that tagline. Truly horrific.
OMFG
Date: 2007-06-21 09:15 pm (UTC)umm..
Date: 2007-06-21 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 09:52 pm (UTC)Their attitude is part of why I'm so desperate to get my weight down to something reasonable. Apparently I lost some weight in NZ. Fried fish + hiking = win! :D
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Date: 2007-06-21 10:09 pm (UTC)If that's what you regard as an average guy, it doesn't change the fact that such an attitude is shallow and stupid.
My ideal man is one who cares for me, understands me, and is willing to put up with and pamper me. His weight has nothing to do with it, and it happens that I found the things I wanted in a guy who weighs 260 or so. That has nothing to do with it. If you are choosing your partner with weight and/or looks as the primary thing you want, you are a shallow idiot, average or not.
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Date: 2007-06-21 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 10:30 pm (UTC)Not fine for men.
Men are like women. Anybody who tries to tell you that we are fundamentally different in how we think is full of it. We are socialized to be different, but so far EVERY little "men think like X, women think like Y" test, statement, article, and quiz I have EVER seen, I am on the men's side, not the women's. I think like a man, this has been proved over and over and over, I've had female friends tell me this.
Men do not have "different priorities" If a man is judging what he wants in a mate entirely in looks, it is called "shallow" same as it would be in a woman.