Quote:
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
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It is amazing the way times have changed. I was specifically concerned with all the eating disorders going around which were bad when I was in school but now we have anorexic celebs. I watch sorority life, when I can remember its on, and marvel how different college kids are now than when I was in college. Like I remmeber the first time I learneed aobut the existence of implants. I was a sophomore in college (!) and was reading some schlock like cosmo and this girlfriend of my roommate said to me that the girl on the cover wasnt real and I was like, huh? She said, you cant be that skinny and have enormous breasts. Nobody in real life does. Which was true. Plenty of skinny anorexics but none with an enormous rack. I think half of the girls in my college went through bulimia, anorexia and a combo of both and I think the impossible standards of mags like cosmo are probably a part of it ( i guess daddy issues are too but I never understood that). Now it seems like a lot more girls in college would want to actually take the drastic steps to be like that. When we were in college, nobody would consider doinga boob surgery. Maybe we might go jogging or to the gym. But, even for the easting disorder people, surgery wouldnt even occur to you.
Now these college girls dont really seem to party, probably bc its fattening and they have to go to the gym. apparently they all know what tit surgery is bc it is so in our face and these ideals are just all over the place. and i bet a bunch of them have actually done it or thought to do it. I bet eating disorders are up a huge amount and they were bad back in my day.
I dont know if this is bv of the explosion of cable, the internet, and the magazine industry or what, but I am definitely glad I am not 18 in these days. And I would worry for my daughter that times are gonna be tough and no matter how grounded my husband and Imight try to raise her, there are a lot of bad outside inflouences looking to prey on her sense of self worth so that she risks her health to achieve an ideal that just cant be acheived without surgery, a personal trainer three hours a day or just plain good luck if you are halle berry. I guess the good news is that the plastic people will never approach the beauty of the naturally endowed bc manmade changes just dont look as real and good; and maybe she can realize that she should work with what she has. Sadly its hard to ingrain that in a teenager.
seems like girls today are now under the impression that if they werent born beautiful on the outside they can make themselves that way through manmade means, rather than accept that they will never be beautiful or learning to love their unique looks. Like with those Italian chicks from MBA= Denise and Jill. They probably used to have mediterranean noses that were probably better suited for their faces. but (insert name of lovely actress or model) has a pert little nose, so these gals went and got prepackaged noses that dont suit them and just make them look off somehow. Its too bad.
