Playboy made me do it

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I'm not sure what you are talking about. In the past as well as now, the ideal man has been strong and fit.

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But not with washboard abs and huge pecs and very low body fat. And a thin man without a lot of muscle could be sexy, too, like Mick Jagger. Or really large men with considerable body fat, like football players.Now that men are being shown images like Markey Marks's underwear ad all over the place they are starting to feel the pressures that women have felt.And that's why we are seeing more steriod abuse, eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and body dissatisfaction in males in our culture.

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Yes there was a broad range of body types that were found acceptable and sexy, but that is still true today with women.

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No, it really isn't. At least, not from my perspective. Sure, you can point me to those websites where the nerdy girls with glasses are featured but this seems like more of a fetish than anything else.

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The problem is that fancy philosophical figures figured that same gimmick could be used to push their fancy philosophies and legal agendas. It has had a synergistic effect within US society.

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So you say, but I'm not really buying it yet. I think it's the money that is the impetus. Capitalism combined with the lingering effects of a past where a woman's only power in a male-dominated culture was her beauty, and a more recent effects of male whim determining what they found beautiful in the female form.

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The idea is to get brand names out into the public arena. That is why they get paid so much. Yes they can help distort facts or try and create more demand for something which is not necessary.

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They cannot brainwash you, unless you let them.

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You are using purposefully extreme language to downplay advertising's highly influential role in our culture. EVERYONE, even you, is influenced by advertising and the culture, even if you are media savvy. It's just a matter of degree.You don't need to brainwash people to have a noticeable effect. Clearly, we see a measurable, noticeable negative affect upon women's self-image when they look at fashion magazines, but they are not brainwashed.However, if a person was shown thousands and thousands of such images from the time they were a small child, in many forms, it becomes part of them, and therefore perpetuated through the culture at large. But kids take what they learn from the media and apply it to themselves, which means they bring it to "real life". My niece LOVED Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera when she was 8 years old, and couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to dress like them. She loved the Olsen twins at the same time and couldn't understand why she wasn't allowed to wear high heels and tight mini dresses like they did (I think the wins were around 13 years old at the time).This girl hardly watches any TV, was going to a great elementary school, has very intelligent, involved parents who do a great job raising her, but she was still heavily influenced by the culture and wanted to be just like the pop and TV stars of the day.Was she brainwashed?

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So you agree with the antigay movement that increased tolerant messages about gays in the media, as well as depicting them in a positive light, will in fact change people to desire to be gay and try it out themselves?

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Yes, sort of.I don't think it will turn people gay who aren't, but I do think it will allow less shame to be felt if people explore homosexual feelings they already have. IOW, I believe that lots of people are capable or responding sexually to both genders and that a gay-positive culture will allow all of those people more freedom to express their sexuality.

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Or that the overt violence of US entertainment is to blame for violence within the nation?

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I think we have a greater tolerance for violence in the US, particularly anonymous violence, because of our violence-saturated media, yes. I am not sure if this means a greater amount of violence is caused by our increased callousness towards it, but it believe there is a correlation.

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The idea that beauty is the sole determiner of value is more likely instilled in children and teens by fairy tales and Disney movies, than Playboy. The women of value are always beautiful, and the men of value are always handsome. Evil is always ugly, save beauty and the beast, hunchback of Notre Dame (and I suppose Shrek).

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Don't forget, the villian in Snow white was beautiful, and actually dressed up as a ugly hag to be less threatening to give Snow White the poison apple.But in general, I agree that Disney is part of the problem.Of course, Disney movies are clearly not real people. They are cartoons. Photographs of real women are a lot easier to compare oneself to. That's why they show the before and after photographs on the weight loss and cosmetic surgery ads.

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Perhaps for continuing to have one, when it is realized that that accent is doing herself real harm and she can train herself to drop the accent.

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So then do you agree that the culture gives children a body image "accent" that is harmful? It is often at the expense of ethics, sorry. The larger the corporations are, the worse the ethics, usually.I talk to lots of business people who come through the store, attend the seminars, and also people who came to work for my company because they wanted to leave the unethical, impersonal corporate world behind.Corporations are not generally encouraged to be ethical, particularly if they are publically held. If they were, we wouldn't need government oversight, OSHA, a minimum wage law, child labor laws, anti-trust law, etc. etc. etc.I work for an ethical company, and we are unusual. That's why we get written about in the business magazines.

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Yes there is. Don't be a victim. You can be victimized and so have been a victim in the past. If you allow that to make you a victim forever, then that is you victimizing yourself. Victimhood is a word which really creeps me out.

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OK, so let me rephrase. There is no shame in having been victimized. there is also no shame in being injured, and those injuries having lasting effects. Lastly, there is no shame in never fully recovering from your injuries.You never asked to be victimized nor injured. You may be left with scars.

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Holding on to what "knocked you down" does not help you move on and build.

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The problem is, though, that while I am pretty sure I have identified what "knocked me down" in the first place, lots of people, including you, deny it outright. You instead want to blame what got me to even realize that it wasn't me that was at fault in the first place. You would like me to reject the lifeline that Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth" threw me 15 years ago.

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She (Anna Nicole Smith) is an example of what I am talking about. I don't believe she was a playmate.

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Dude, not only was she a Playmate, she was Playmate Of the Year in 1993.What you call a "variety" of looks in Playboy pretty much look the same to me. I've flipped through it a few times and looked at the website coverpages.Come on, can you really say that the looks portrayed are widely varied? I don't mean that a few times a year they feature a black woman with hair extensions.Oh, and I found these weight ranges for 5'6" women. linl 117-154 link114-145 link125-174 link(in shoes) 120 to 133 lb light frame, 130 to 144 lb medium frame, 140 to 159 lb heavy frameSo, you can see that the average Playmate is at the very low end of normal, but only for some of the ranges. She is below normal on others. And, since we are using an average, that means that a fair portion of the playmates are actually below ideal or normal for their height.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-08-2005 09:17 AM

I may not have time to make a full reply, but I will make a few responses.

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You continue to flit between men that are found attractive and men that are found attractive as an ideal. Mick Jagger... besides his fame... is not an ideal. Huge football players are also not an ideal.

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But that's my point. Mick Jagger types and big football player types were considered very attractive by women for a long time even though they did not fit an idealized image. In fact, there wasn't much of an idea that men should or should want to strive to fit that ideal, except perhaps the ideal of being tall.

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I have know clue what you are talking about regarding Marky
Mark.

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This is the famous ad which was groundbreaking in that it was just as gratuitious and unattainable as the ads featuring women AND was supposed to appeal to everyone; women and both gay and straight men.

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It is true that there is more imagery of men for the purposes of attracting women in commerce than there was in the past, and thus more showing of ideals.

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Uh, but the Marky Mark ad is for men's underwear. It's supposed to sell to men by telling them that they will look that sexy in those undies. More to the point, it clearly is telling men what is sexy and attractive.

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It is the increased concern with physical beauty in general (look at queer eye for the straight guy) which is now accepted by men. Images themselves did nothing. Indeed I would not want to look like Marky Mark.

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If I were a man I would think that looking like Marky Mark would be pretty great. As a woman I certainly appreciate his body. Are you seriously telling me that that washboard abs and big pecs aren't totally "in" for men now?

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I would like to ask you what else is supposed to drive what men find beautiful in women except male whims?

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Let me ask you if you think that male whims are not affected by the culture they live in?In some cultures women's breasts are not considered sexual body parts in the least. Are you sugesting that each individual male in that culture came up with that idea independently from every other male in the world and that they all just happen to live in the same area is just a coincidence?

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If you view someone that you think is more beautiful than you, and dwell on that fact, then you are likely to feel down. If you don't think they are more beautiful then no matter how much everyone says so (and the pictures appear everywhere) you will likely not feel bad. In any case, dwelling on such things is the bad habit which must be addressed.

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It's not that simple. The message being put out is that it is very important to be beautiful if you want to be happy, successful, and desireable. The magazines also clearly are meant to define beauty, and they clearly do a good job with that in our culture.

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A girl found something that she thought was beautiful and interesting, and then a bunch of grownups told her it was "inappropriate" for her to find it beautiful and interesting.

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It is inappropriate for an 8 year old to want to dress and act in a way our culture perceives as extremely sexually provocative when she is 5 years away from her first period.

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She was taught (explicitly or otherwise) that looks have meaning and she would have to conform rather than simply enjoy what she liked.

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In our culture, looks do have meaning. We are very social, visual creatures who like to categorize things.If someone is walking down the street wearing a police officer's uniform, it means they are most likely a police officer.If a young woman is walking down some random street in a see-through catsuit and thigh-high patent leather spike heeled boots, it is reasonable to assume she is probably sexually available, possibly for a price.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-14-2005 10:22 AM

Of course we are attracted to beauty. That's normal and natural.But what is beauty, and why has it's definition changed so much, especially for women, over time?I disagree that the media shows us only what we want. The media is also responsible for telling us what we should want, too. It does both.For instance, holmes mentioned the bulimic Barbi twins and how unattractive he found them, despite the fact that Hefner and many others promoted them to the world as exceptionally beautiful.They were wildly successful, had swimsuit calenders, posters, were Playboy Playmates, etc., so clearly lots and lots of men found them very attractive, yet the whole time they had a terrible eating disorder.So, does this mean that lots and lots of men in America just happen to think underweight, plastic-looking women are the height of attractiveness?Or, is it possible that the culture strongly influences people from a very early age to find "socially acceptable" bodies attractive and unacceptable ones unattractive?

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I don't think kids are that much affected by cosmetic ads.

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Based upon what data do you think this?I found the following: linklinklink

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Which one is a image of an actual real human being and which one is a painting of an imaginary goddess?Gods are, by nature, perfect and their perfection is unattainable by humans. It's easy to understand that a painting is purely an idea, able to be manipulated.Other human beings, and the woman in your photos, are actual, real people, despite the photographic manipulation. In addition, it is not at all obvious to young people (or many adults) that the photos are being manipulated. I mean,. it's mot like they have a warning label: "Model in picture doesn't actually look anything like this picture. Please do not attempt this at home."The companies selling such imagery, including Playboy, want men and women to think that these are real perfect specimens.

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I guess I don't think 'beauty,' as in facial beauty, has changed overmuch through time.

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Well, there's skin color, too.And there is actually a great deal of variation in what constitutes a beautiful face among cultures; broad nose or pointy, high cheekbones or round face, curly hair or straight (long or short), etc.The only thing that is consistent has to do with the symmetry of facial features, and that is an evolutionary preference due to assymetry being an indication of disease or birth defect.That being said, humans are extremely visual creatures which appear to have a particular region of the brain dedicated solely to identifying human faces.

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What I think has changed over time, and which may be culturally controlled, is body shape. Some cultures value/favor larger women, others favor tall women, and others favor petite women.

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I think it's very much culturally controlled. That's why we see so much more rapid change in preferred body shape as mass media has become more prevalent.

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Why the differences? Possibly due to very sensible reasons. Women with large hips and breasts appear to be better mothers and in a culture that values and respects motherhood, those women become the ideal. In a culture that values and respects strength, perhaps tall and muscular women are the ideal. In a culture that values hardiness, perhaps petite women become the ideal.

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Except that when you look at our US history, the changes in popular body shape for women coincided with where the greater society wanted and what was going on in the culture around them. In the 20's for example, during the first wave of modern feminism, style dictated a very thin, flat-chested, gangly boylike figure. In the 30's and 40's, a strong, sturdy but womanly body was preferred, because we needed both Rosie the Riveter to keep the country moving and we needed Betty Grable's womanly curves to keep the troops inspired. Then in the 50's women were relegated back to a restricted role in the home and expected to pump out babies after the war, so Marilyn Monroe with her very full, hyper-womanly figure became the one to emulate. Then the 60's and 70's rolled around again with the second wave of feminism and, just like in the 20's, Twiggy and other defeminized women who were extremely thin and boylike became the ideal. The 80's was a brief moment where a relatively normal body was popular as the aerobics and fitness craze took off, but then in the 90's we're back to Kate Moss and the "heroin chic" waif look.There has just begun a bit of advertising which features women of normal size, and even big women (Queen Latifah). I was just in NYC on business and there was a big billboard campaign for some underwear company that had a bunch of women of various normal sizes standing there in panties and bras. I had never seen a size 10 woman in her underwear in an ad, let alone a 14 or a 16. It looks strange, but great.

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These days, our culture, and others, value fitness and we've determined that slimmer women are more healthy than larger women.

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But "fitness" is different from "thinness".Most models are skinny, not fit. They have no muscle. They are frail looking, not fit.Is this woman "fit"?

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I'd have to say those women just had the right people working for them.

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So do you therefore believe, unlike holmes, that the media and can convince you that you should find something attractive?

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Men just love women.

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Meh.I think men love women's bodies. I don't think many men love women as people all that much.

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Since they are visually stimulated, they love looking at women. To them, they're just nice bodies, faces, boobs, butts.

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Ick.Talk about dehumanization.

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Who they go home to or choose to marry are often nothing like those calendar girls.

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Is that because they don't want that or because they can't get that?

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If men were truly influenced by Playboy, fat and/or ugly women would never date, marry, or have children. Since that if far from the case, it's obvious most men are not overly affected by what they see on the media.

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Many fat and ugly women have never dated, married, or had children. The same is true for men, but it is less so for them.If you think that men are not overly affected by what they see in the media, then why is there an increase in eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and body dissatisfaction among boys and men these days?

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In my opinion, women are their own worst enemies. We attack each other's beauty, fitness level, hair color, etc. far more than men do. We buy those stupid glam magazines that tell us not to wear undersized bathing suits and then on the next page find a women in an undersized bathing suit. We undermine our own self-worth by kowtowing to the media.

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I agree. It's similar to how in cultures that prectice FGM, it's the women that perpetuate the custom. Once you get enough buy in, a group willself-police.

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so you admit then that the playboy ideal is more based in reality?

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Yes, but that doesn't make it better.Not coming close to the beauty standard of a Goddess is understandable.I mean, it's a god.The fact that the Playboy ideal is based in reality implies that it is attainable at all. That woman is a real woman, therefore attainable.You are using as examples these paintings by Boticelli and Raphael to comare to the mass media images in Playboy. There was no mass media back then, those paintings weren't being used to sell anything, and were not available to the vast, vast majority of people.In the painters' lifetimes, I'd be surprised if a couple of hundred people saw those paintings.Playboy's circulation is 4.5 million worldwide.

So, are you actually telling me that you don't think that these women's bodies don't look all that different?: This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-16-2005 08:51 AM

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here's of course where the turnabout comes into play. playboy picked up where pinups left off. and the trends are all the same -- healty, curvy women, often volumptuous. round hips, larger breasts. very stylized poses. it's all the same stuff, really.

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Actually, the average Playmate has far fewer curves than the average woman.Today playmates are two inches taller than when the magazine started, yet they are only one pound heavier, their bust and hip measurements are smaller, and their waist measurements are larger.They have gotten less voluptuous and more boy-like with narrower hips, a lotthinner, and taller.

It just so happens that I was channel surfing this morning and came across some show on ET about Playboy magazine. I only caught the end but someone from the magazine was talking about how they choose Playmates from all of the beautiful women that want to be in the magazine.She said that the trick is to convince the public that there is something special and unique about the model.I am sorry that I can only write this right now. I have to be at work in a half an hour.

Very funny.Yes, were talking about an inch or two, because even though the women have gotten taller, their weight has essentially stayed the same.Now, the slender hips, flat stomach, and very thin arms and thighs are still in fashion, but with big breasts. That's why fake breasts are so common among many models, actresses, and singers.Is this woman homely? She'd never, ever get into Playboy. She is more indicative of the average, normal weight woman: Compared to many models, the poty is a little more curvy, but she still has little in the way of hips. And that airbrushed pic of her with the hula skirt is creepy. She looks deformed.

But it's not purely eye candy.Most women and girls are raised to believe that they should strive to look like that. By both the culture and their families and friends.They get highly rewarded when they do.

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Well this is interesting. We are talking about ideals. Are ideals supposed to be the average person. Are we all supposed to be holding as more or most attractive, the average person?

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Of course you're right.The issue with me is that if Kate Winslet wasn't already a star when that pic had been taken, she never would have become one, or at least it would have been highly, highly unlikely. She was carrying a lot of baby weight in that picture but I can remember TV and magazines commenting on how "large" she was even when she was in Titanic.

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And I might add that despite your lamenting that there is all this iconography of thinness which you claim is forcing everyone to try and be like, the fact is that the average person is not only becoming heavier in general, but actually unhealthfully heavy.

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It's certainly true that Americans are getting fatter. But I never claimed that everyone actually took a lot of action in their lives to be thin. What I claimed was that the mass culture beauty ideal is very narrowly defined and that people feel inadequate if they do not meet it.Look, I can probably find dozens of quotes from the most famous supermodels, actresses, singers, and others who are cosidered incredibly beautiful yet are highly critical of and are negative towards their bodies. This has to come from somewhere.Lots of girls and women with eating disorders like anorexia and buimia report wanting to look like models. A significant percentage of girls as young as 6 years old think they are too fat and are on self-imposed diets.5-10 million women and girls struggle with eating disorders in the US.

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It is true that we are seeing more cases of people with disorders related to weight, but it is actually in both directions, not just one. It might be interesting to know if more people are having liposuction as a body altering procedure rather than breast implants.

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linkYep, liposuction is the most popular procedure, but fake boobs are pretty close behind. However, there's more info:

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What seems to be the REAL problem is that people are becoming excessive in whatever they do and not being able to discern between fantasy and reality. They don't accept the limits of reality. They don't accept moderation as a fact of reality.

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I'd certainly agree with that.However, I am still pretty convinced that the culture is much, much harder on women regarding their appearence and is relentless in hammering home the idea that to fit the beauty image the companies put out is to be happy, successful, and desired.

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Earlier you showed a photo of Kate Moss. Now I am unsure if she has an eating disorder, but there are people that are naturally slim and so look like her.

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She had a problem with drugs and she chain smoked for sure. I also read an interview with her in which she characterized eating as "boring". I find that comment suspicious.

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Are you suggesting that society should find them unattractive and repulsive and that such thin people should gorge in order just to pack on pounds, perhaps engage in plastic surgery to look like your average person?

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No. I do know someone who was very thin (but not 5'10" and 95 pounds like Moss) and her doctor did advise her to eat things like ice cream and cheese and other calorie dense food because she was underweight and it was not healthy. I don't think Moss was healthy.I think that the media, particularly fashion, should allow a greater representation of body types.

I am horrified.What's next, an operation to eliminate the gag reflex so every woman can deep throat during oral sex with a man?