Beauty.
If you look up the word beauty in a dictionary there will probably be lots of definitions. But the one I immediately noticed was: "A very attractive and well-formed woman."
Can anyone give a definition of that? No. What is attractive to one person may be unattractive to another. But be as that may all women strive to be beautiful - to be an attractive and well-formed woman. But what will people do to reach their goal? More importantly what does this fight for beauty and perfection do to our society?
What made me think about all of this was Gok Wan's Body Confidence Class which you can see above. In fact I've thought about this many times. But I've never imagined it was this bad.
The magazines and the movie makers make a perfect poster woman and man. They take the flaws on their bodies and photoshop them. As Gok Wan shows the girls in the clip Keira Knightly is a good example of it. This makes the girls think that they need big breasts and a thin as a stick body.
But is it only the girls' and women's thoughts of how the body of a woman should look like? No. I believe that it also affects the way boys and men look at the body of a woman. They expect a girl to be skinny, have big breasts and look like Keira Knightly, Megan Fox and so on.
The way magazines and movies portrait the women and the expectations of how to look from the men, makes a young girl strive even more to look like the women she sees on the cover of Vogue, Elle and what else magazines she might read. But we are not all born with a super skinny body. And even those who are strive to be even skinnier. How many girls does not struggle with eating disorders because she feels fat even though she's actually underweight?
All of these expectations have consequences. Like self-harm, eating disorders, bad confidence and the list goes on. But as can be seen in the clip it is not only girls who suffers under these expectations. It's also the boys. They have a lot to live up to. The men on adverts and movies has six-packs and big muscles and this is what the girls want. So just like the girls they strive to achieve the perfect, the ideal body.
As an example for both I can use some incidents from my every day life. My sister goes around saying she's fat and how she wishes her thighs were thinner. All because of what she sees in the television and in the magazines. She's nowhere near fat! In fact she is underweight. I try and try to make her understand that she's perfect the way she is, but who wants to hear that from someone who once said the same thing?
As for the boys. I overheard some girls, who had just seen the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, say that they did not think Daniel Radcliffe was 'hot' because he is 'chubby.' I thought about it for a second and couldn't say I thought the same. I didn't think more about it before I talked to a friend about it. She said: "They only say he's chubby because he doesn't have a six-pack! And Why is it that guys need to have a six-pack?! Those who does not have a six-pack but muscles on their arms and legs.. They are the hot guys!" And I could only agree.
Now. Sorry for the long entry but now my question to all of you reading this is: Do you think that all of this poster perfect body ruins the way people look at their body?
I have talked to many guys about this exact topic and the most interesting thing of it all? Well they want the normal girl with a smile in her eye and good heart, but yet again "how are we supposed to know"? We can't because of the media telling us otherwise. Maybe and only maybe these guys will become more and more attractive to us girls, but I'm in doubt. I want a guy with muscles is - but I don't want a guy who is more feminin than me. I want to be someones princess and not someones rebound. Yet again the one with Daniel Radcliff, it is a tuff call because when you watch movies the guys have more muscles than they can bear but why is it thatso many of these guys are the one the girls yearn for? Well they are perfect, the perfect fantasy. But is fantasy supposed to become reality?
SvarSlet