No one is a 36-26-negative 4!

In class today we divided into groups and designed posters of the ideal male or female. There was a discrepency for the females as to whether or not use the media's image as well. Therefore, every group depecting the females did break it up between our ideal woman and the media's skewed view of who is beautiful. So, as you can imagine, a lot of the words on our posters were confident, happy with body, hardworking, intelligent, creative, independent, and all the other words that just scream feminist (right?). On the other side of the poster or if you were creative enough to draw a 2 faced person (I guess we aren't our ideal women because we were not creative enough to think of this haha), words/ features drawn represented blonde, enhanced curves, super skinny waist, silent (oh yes, God forbid you ever disagree with social norms or worse, a man), ditzy, and all those other features we are supposed to just magically have. Fine, but Laura Coleman doesn't want to date you. Realistically, who looks like that? Even the models and movie stars had to diet or have surgery to look THAT perfect. It is unnatural. And the kick of it is, that it is a fact that ugly, obese women don't get the good jobs, hence--bad pay. Fantastic.
Valenti spells it out for us in much more colorful words, but she really has a good point. We are always told there is something wrong with us. Feminism should be about equality and progression but it is look at as such a negative thing.

Now just to make the women feel worse about themselves, let's compare these images to the male: Brave, strong, handsome, good driver, chivilrous, hardworking, knows how to drink, Brad Pitt..the list just goes on to more masculine qualites. Hold on a second, all of the words are in one color and there is no dividing line between truth and reality. What does this mean? ..That men in the media turly do depict the ideal man in reality? Really? That doesn't seem very fair. This was just one silly assignment that seemed to give us a glimpse into all the issues women face.

Oh no, here comes the feminist talking. But wait, maybe even the image of feminist is unclear. I mentioned in class when we were analyzing the reason for different things on the posters, that all the traits of the ideal woman are not anything but an attempt toward equality. Think about it, look at pay rates between the sexes, the way women have to behave to be respected, the expectations of the nurturing, caring mother.... The term "equality" is over-used and under-appreciated. Oh but such is life.

I am hoping that future discussions and reading disprove this overly pescimistic post but until then that's all she wrote. So I guess the moral of this depressing reflection is: If you aren't a 36-26-negative 4, either stop eating or accept your minimum wage job and find a good psychologist.