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[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
What is the big mystery here?

Of course young girls have unrealistic body images. Our beauty ideal is unrealistic. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but every beholder has an opinion about what is perfect. If it's a matter of "the closer to perfect you get, the more beautiful you are," young people (and old people alike) will always have unrealistic body images. And they will always be reaching for what they can't have naturally. Hell, even Hollywood stars don't look the way they are advertised as looking. Surgery, photo manipulation, lighting, etc. helps the most beautiful people in entertainment achieve what we have set up as our ideal. And yes, it is OUR ideal. If it wasn't, people like Heather Graham would be OUT OF WORK. Hollywood doesn't create it. We do. We pay to see the people we think are beautiful.

So, the question is, how do we shift our beauty ideal to something more attainable to the majority of people (including young girls) in this country?

The answer is, you can't. That's why it's the beauty ideal.

If everyone looked like Halle Berry (<sigh>) or Ashley Judd or Julia Roberts or whatever your definition of perfection may be, those looks would be attainable and therefore common. A new beauty ideal would emerge that would be as difficult to attain as the one we have now.

The answer is that people (including these young girls of which you speak) need to deal with it. Sounds harsh, but it's not. How do you deal with it? Parents of kids whose genetic code is set to "ugly" need to stress that what is beautiful to the majority of people and what is held up as an ideal is just that. It's a made-up standard that is unattainable. Help them come to terms with who they are and what about them makes them attractive.

Now, I'm not saying people can't improve themselves. A healthy diet and exercise works for starters. But a firm dose of reality would go a long way for most little girls (boys, adults, etc.).

Thurgreed(if we can accept that not everyone can be brilliant, why is it so hard to accept that not everyone can be beautiful? Shit, yo momma came to terms with both long ago)Marshall

Well said.

I guarantee you that if America consisted of waify people and gaining weight was difficult, most of Hollywood would be fat. Our genetic codes are designed to find beauty in uniqueness.