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Member (Idle past 5847 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Playboy made me do it | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
I have already agreed that if a child's only cultural experiences and social environment was modern media, they would have a skewed conception about reality. 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?
It's a "the entire culture made me do it" argument. quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: So then do you agree that the culture gives children a body image "accent" that is harmful?
I think that is really unfair. Not all corporations are bad. Not even the majority of them. While they are all about making profits, it does not have to be at the expense of ethics. 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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 frame So, 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
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I may not have time to make a full reply, but I will make a few responses.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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?
quote: 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?
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Based upon what data do you think this? I found the following:
link Weaned on Sesame Street and reading Seventeen from the ages of 10 or 11, adolescent girls "are tuned into the subliminal and superliminal messages of the media (which is) everywhere today," says Michael Levine, a psychologist and media activist with a 15-year-old daughter at Kenyon College in Ohio. Here are the "in-your-face" messages they absorb: Beauty is a woman's principal project in life. Slenderness is crucial for success and goodness. Image is really substance. Women are naturally self-conscious and anxious about, and bound up with, their bodies. Fat is a transparent sign of personal responsibility for weakness, failure and helplessness. A willing and winning woman can transform and renew herself through the technology of fashion, dieting and rigorous exercise. "They tend to set up a conditioning that facilitates negative body imaging and a strange relationship with one's body," Levine states. "If you want a recipe for the loss of who you are as a person, focus on boys, mirrors, size and scales." link Studies of prime-time television indicate that programs are dominated by people with thin body types and thinness is consistently associated with favorable personality traits. Similarly, those who say they've been diagnosed with an eating disorder report being highly influenced by fashion models. Forty-three percent compare themselves to models in magazines; 45 percent scrutinize the shapes of models. Forty-nine percent say very thin models make them feel insecure about themselves, and 48 percent say they "make me want to lose weight to be like them." Clearly, body satisfaction, a rather rare commodity, confers relative immunity to media influence. But the existence of a large number of women who are drawn to media imagery but resent the unreality of those images is cause for concern. It suggests they are experiencing an uncomfortable level of entrapment. We wonder how long it will take for their resentment to be unleashed full force on the fashion industry and/or the media -- and in what form. Psychiatrists and psychologists have also weighed in on the meaning of body image issues. At the 1996 meeting of the American Psychological Association, Yale psychiatrist Alan Feingold, M.D, received an award for detailing differences in body-image pressures on men and women. Dr. Feingold contends that pressure on women to look good is not only growing but reflects intensified competition for dwindling resources; after all, looks confer a kind of status to women. While body hatred tends to stay at about the same level as women age, today's young women may be more vulnerable to self-disparagement as they get older. They are being initiated into feelings of body dissatisfaction at a tender age, and this early programming may be difficult to undo. link Survey, correlational, randomized control, and covariance structure modeling investigations indicate that the media are a significant factor in the development and maintenance of eating and shape-related disorders. One specific individual difference variable, internalization of societal pressures regarding prevailing standards of attractiveness, appears to moderate or even mediate the media's effects on women's body satisfaction and eating dysfunction. Problematic media messages inherent in existing media portrayals of eating disorders are apparent, leading researchers to pinpoint intervention strategies that might counteract such viewpoints. Social activism and social marketing approaches are suggested as methods for fighting negative media messages. The media itself is one potential vehicle for communicating productive, accurate, and deglamorized messages about eating and shape-related disorders.
This hypothesis blames the changing cultural trends in female body shape for why women strive to be thin. Thinness and fragility became feminine ideals in the nineteenth century amongst middle class women. In the 1960s and 1970s, models such as Twiggy were given a high profile and their svelte-like appearance became a part of popular culture (Hepworth 1999). Not only has this ideal continued to be very prominent in modern Western culture but it is now supported by a mass media (Ponto 1995) and a multimillion dollar diet industry. 'Calorie-counting', 'dieting' and 'weight-watching' have become idioms of the language of an industry that has encouraged a preoccupation with dieting and slimness amongst Western women (Hepworth 1999). As a corollary to these cultural values, the expected cultural reasons to be given by an anorectic individual (for their deliberate food refusal) are based on a fear of fatness and a wish to be thin in order to live up to these social ideals. The thinness-as-beauty hypothesis is so popular that fat-phobia has been included in diagnostic criteria used to diagnose anorectics.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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"?
quote: So do you therefore believe, unlike holmes, that the media and can convince you that you should find something attractive?
quote: Meh. I think men love women's bodies. I don't think many men love women as people all that much.
quote: Ick. Talk about dehumanization.
quote: Is that because they don't want that or because they can't get that?
quote: 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?
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: link Women had 87 percent of cosmetic procedures. The number of procedures performed on women was nearly 7.2 million, an increase of 16 percent from 2002. The top five surgical cosmetic procedures for women in 2003 were: liposuction (322,975 and 84 percent of liposuction total); breast augmentation (280,401); eyelid surgery (216,829 and 81 percent of total); breast reduction (147,173); and rhinoplasty (119,047 and 69 percent of total). The number of surgical procedures for women increased 11 percent overall from 2002. Men had 13 percent of cosmetic procedures, up 1 percent from 2002. The number of procedures performed on men was nearly 1.1 million, an increase of 31 percent from 2002. The top five surgical cosmetic procedures for men in 2003 were: liposuction (61,646 and 16 percent of liposuction total); rhinoplasty (53,376 and 31 percent of total); eyelid surgery (50,798 and 19 percent of total); breast reduction to treat enlarged male breasts (22,049); and hair transplantation (14,891 and 90 percent of total). Surgical procedures for men increased 22 percent overall from 2002. Yep, liposuction is the most popular procedure, but fake boobs are pretty close behind. However, there's more info:
The 19-34 age group had nearly 2 million cosmetic procedures, and 24 percent of all procedures. The most popular surgical procedure in this age group was breast augmentation (150,208 and 54 percent of the breast augmentation total). quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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?
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