Playboy made me do it

I don't buy those kinds of clothes, but the truth is that a woman who doesn't dress well will not be promoted in a job, or even hired. I have always had jobs in which it didn't much matter what I wore or the uniform was a t-shirt. Although I generally hate the clothes that the "Guess" brandname sells, they actually do have their women's jeans sized by waist size, which was a godsend for me. I am not fat but I am short-waisted and carry almost all of my extra weight in my waist. Most other brands were WAY too big in the rear and thigh if they fit my waist or hips. These fit me really well and I keep buying them because of the greater choice.Part of "dressing well" is the right nails, hair, skin, makeup, and body shape.Thin and beautiful (that narrow definition)=success and happiness in our culture for women. A woman is judged much harsher for being unattractive than a man is.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-17-2005 03:02 PM

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well here's an idea. maybe women are actually superficial and shallow. afterall, the men in this thread have already voiced their opinions on the matter.

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Yeah.Why don't you ask women who don't wear makeup, don't dress in style, and don't pay attention to their hairstyle and find out how much attention they get from men, or how likely it is they get hired for a high-powered job, let's say?

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afterall, they say that women wear makeup for other women; men don't really care.

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HAHAHAHA!Men care, believe me. That's why a man's head will snap around if he sees a well-dressed, stacked, nicely coiffed, well-put together woman if she walks by and won't look twice at the women who aren't.

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so maybe the problem is not men looking at women, or men's expectations of women -- but womens' competitiveness.

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Sure, the problem has been internalized by women, it's true, like the practice of FGM is perpetuated by the women.However, it didn't start with women. It started with females who were the property of men.

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Well my gf doesn't wear makeup, doesn't dress in style, and doesn't pay much attention to hair styles (though obviously she doesn't let it look bad), and she gets plenty of attention. She also has armpit hair that shows and does not shave her legs.

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Your clues about men are simply clueless.

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Has she tried to get a professional business-type job looking like that? Like in an office situation?I mean, more power to her, absolutely, but I have NEVER been talking about just your taste, holmes. Your individual taste is irrelevant, particularly because we all know that you have tastes far outside the mainstream regarding many things. (Except for your inexplicable enjoyment of the dreadful TV show, JAG)My points have always been referring to the majority of people, and if you were to stop patting yourself on the back for liking something different what the masses like, you might have noticed that.

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My guess is you ain't rubbernecking on men that look like they flip burgers for a living, unless its in case they are going to attack you.

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Hahahaha!I work at a deli, holmes. I work with some very good looking men, and let's see, they sell cheese and salami, or they receive and put away merchandise (porters), they sell food over the phone, or they make espresso and serve people pastries.And, most of all, guess what my husband was doing at McDonald's just before we got married?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-18-2005 09:16 AM

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in 50 years, that's a rather small change, don't you think?

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No.According to several ideal height/weight charts I consulted there should be at least a 6 pound increase in weight with a 2 pound increase in height.

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except that, and you'll have to take my word for this as a male, big boobs are out. the trend right now is actual smaller and average breasts. it's been well known for years that women do not get breast implants for men, they get them for themselves. it's generally a self-esteem or self-confidence thing.

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Yeah. The same can be said of an asian woman getting her eyelids fixed or a buttock implant to make herself look more caucasian. She's just doing it to boost her self esteem, but why is her self-esteem linked to not having a flatter ass or less asian-looking eyes?She has internalized the expectation that she meet a certain ideal, even if it means risking general anaesthesia and spending a lot of money.Oh, and actually, studies show that self-esteem does not automatically improve after cosmetic surgery.

Well, I think she's make it into playboy, but only if she got implants.She's pretty close to the current ideal, yes, and she's certainly tall and skinny enough to model.

Oh, so she's only 5'2" and 95 pounds?The minimum height of a fashion model is 5'8" and her average weight is 108-125 pounds.Now, imagine a woman the same weight as your friend, but five inches taller.That's Kate Moss.(I just realized that I had some bad information about Moss's height upthread. She is 5'7", not 5'10")

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my 95lb friend doesn't wear makeup (except for pictures), doesn't dress in style, doesn't pay much attention to her hair style, and gets hit on all the time.

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same with most of the girls i know who don't pay much attention to those things.

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But do they get hired for high-powered, professional jobs?And I never paid attention to those things and I didn't get hit on.I didn't start getting hit on until I started paying closer attention to my hairstyle, my makeup (the little that I wear), my clothing, and my weight.

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so no, men don't care. i can't believe you're even debating this with me. i'm a man. i don't care. other men here are voicing very similar opinions. tell me, as a woman, what can you possibly know about what men are thinking about?

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There is what men say, and then there is what they do.I had a conversation with a male friend at work about how his sister in law is a very petite woman who had recently decided to get big breast implants. He said her husband tries to dissuade her from getting them and that my friend didn't like big breasts himself, and he would try to discourage his small breasted wife from getting them, so he really didn't understand it.But then a few weeks later, after he had been to see his family, I spoke with him again and he mentioned that he saw her new "assets" for the first time and that they were "incredible" and "spectacular".I asked him point blank if he thought she looked really good, and he said "Sure, she looks fantastic!"So, all of that talk about not understanding why she would get implants was silly, wasn't it?

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yes. people who dress badly like slobs tend to leave a poor impression at job interviews.

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Hold on.I never said anything about looking like a slob.I said "dress well", meaning business attire.That generally means a skirt (or trousers), pumps, panntyhose, a good hairstyle, makeup, the right bag, etc.And it is common in our culture to associate thinness with compentency. By contrast, someone who is heavier is associated with an inability to control themselves.(Which is funny when you realize that many young women use cigarettes to lose and keep weight off, becoming addicted in the process)

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do yourself a huge favor, and watch "what not to wear" on tlc sometime. they routinely dress people with funny body shapes in good clothes, and every one of them pulls it off. body shape has NOTHING to do with dressing well.

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I watch that show all the time. I get tips.Of course, they do tell people who are tall and thin that they will be easy to shop for because they can "wear anything they want to".

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the media has oversimplified the matter, but if you watch all the godawful lifetime-style biographies (which have managed to be fairly truthful with family histories) these women (like pena's wife) are seeking to control something -anything- in their lives, not fawning over kate moss.

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Then why have I read APA papers which clearly state that the media image of a thin ideal has a significant effect on what starts many girls and women on the road to anorexia and bulimia?Why do we see so much disordered eating habits among girls and women in cultures that value thinness? Why do we see so much of it among models, singers and actresses where appearance and thinness is so emphasized? Why are we seeing more eating disorders in men and boys these days?I am not saying that everyone who wants to look like a model ends up with an eating disorder, and I am not saying that there aren't cases where wanting to look like a model never entered into the equation for a given sufferer, but you cannot say that our culture's thin ideal has nothing at all to do with he commonality of the problem.I had an friend in college who freaked out over getting a little bit of cellulite on her thighs when she was 20 years old that she ate nothing but three bowls of oatmeal a day until it went away. She was an actress and model who is really beautiful and used her looks to great advantage to get what she wanted.

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i characterize eating as boring.

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Wow, you must not put any effort at all into finding good quality food, then. Or perhaps you have some medical problem that makes it difficult for you to taste properly or something?There is great food out there, you just have to make the effort to learn what it is and how to find and prepare it.

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i'm 5'3" and weigh 150lbs. i find your attempt at a diagnosis stupid. that characterization was probably some kind of misquote... that's the media for you.

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Read what I write. It was an interview. Moss's comment was printed verbatim.And where do you get that I was diagnosing anything?

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i find it amusing how people denegrate the media for its images but don't do the same for its 'information' which they later quote to serve their purposes.

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Um, I quoted studies, not the media"

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eating is boring.

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No, it isn't.

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everything tastes the same

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Are you sure that you don't have a medical problem that has affected your taste perception?Are you telling me that you think a ripe banana tastes the same as a free-range egg fried in good butter?

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and half the food out there is italian

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What the hell are you talking about?Where do you live, in some podunk little town in the middle of nowhere?

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and there's nothing new

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How many cookbooks do you own?

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and not enough vegetables

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What are you talking about? What do you call the "produce section" at your local grocery store? Is it empty all the time?

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and it's all too expensive. food is very boring.

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High quality ingredients do cost more, but they usually taste much better. Don't buy low-quality food from crappy restaurants. Buy the highest quality ingredients you can afford and learn to prepare them properly and you will enjoy it more.Duh.

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any doctor who would advise the eating of unhealthy foods just to 'fatten someone up' is not practicing properly.

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Cheese isn't unhealthy.An occasional ice cream sundae isn't unhealthy either. Having low blood pressure and being underweight is unhealthy.

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perhaps your friend isn't eating often enough or in large enough portions, but packing her with fatty dairy products is silly. (note: i like dairy and i'm not one of those weird omg not cow milk people.)

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So, you slam me above for thinking that maybe, a fashion model who is 5'7" and 95 pounds who has described eating as "boring" just might have an eating disorder, then turn around and give your uninformed diagnosis of my friend's condition. Fantastic.

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the media is not an information source. it's an entertainment entity. if people wanted to see ordinary people, then the media would show it.

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They did, and it was one of the highest rated shows ever.Remember the first season of Survivor?All ordinary people. Now that show and all of it's copycats have much more beautiful people in their casts.

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but people don't want ordinary. if they did, they could walk outside. the tv is a fantasy box. its characters are fantastic and so is everything else on it. people want to buy fantasy and sensation precisely because it's NOT ordinary. and the media (being a capitalist venture) sells people what they want to buy.

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It also creates needs in people. A big, big part of successful marketing is telling people what they should want.

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all the focus on the media and its 'negative' portrayal of women has given people an excuse to ignore the fact that fat isn't healthy.

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Where do normal weight 6 year old girls get the idea that they are too fat and should be on a diet?And a study recently came out that showed that middle aged women who our culture considers slightly overweight generally are healthier than thinner women, are less prone to chonic disease and osteoperosis, and live longer than thinner women.

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yeah sure a little rounded is fine

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Says who?"A little rounded" in my high school got girls a lot of grief, as did being big breasted, flat chested, big nosed, and too tall.

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if you wanna fix feeling bad about yourself, get off your lazy bum and make yourself different.

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I generally enjoy what my body can do but not especially what it looks like. I have a very, very hard time viewing myself as others see me.

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don't starve yourself, move your butt. screw what you think people think.

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Jesus, I work out like 3 days a week, I'm on my feet all day and I lift heavy boxes up and down stairs, too. I get lots of exercise.Several men in this thread have very nicely told me that I am attractive, and I sometimes feel that I am, but damn, it is really, really hard to shake my early life experiences with being told, both directly and indirectly, that I was most definitely not.

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i have a friend who is probably just under being characterized as obese. she did martial arts (and was on her way to the olympics) until her ankles gave out. she ate healthily and exercised all the time and was still big. she felt great about herself. and it showed. she always looked amazing and she taught me that image is a projection. body image is something you create in your head.

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On this we agree.

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the rare occasions where poor body image reflects specific abuse is more related to parental abuse than popular culture. if parents tell children that they have to be pretty to be loved, that's not the fault of the media, but of shitty parenting.

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My parents never told me that overtly, but they certainly didn't make it a secret that how I looked was more important than how my brother looked. They also made a big deal out of my sister's weight (she sounds a lot like your martial artist friend in body type) but didn't say anything about my brother's tooth gap or "man breasts". The sister that got the most approval and attention was the tall thin blonde one who danced and was a pom pom girl. I was heavily pressured by my mother to try out for the squad every single year even though it was clear that I had little interest. Oh, and they used to weigh the pompom girls every week to make sure they weren't getting too fat.

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if you think that you are worthless because of your body then that is something that you did and not something that someone drove into you.

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Nope. That's something I'm working to unlearn from my childhood. It was most definitely something that the culture drove into me.

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i'm not terribly fond of my figure, but i know that i need to start exercising again. i don't hate myself because i've gotten lazy, i just think i'm a bit lazy. i am still a sensual and worthwhile person and i use my body to the best extent i can.

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Wow, what a ringing endorsement for self-acceptance. No offense meant.

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Well she hasn't wanted one, so no she hasn't tried. That is to say at an office 9-5 type thing. She has worked for a business that had her out in the public eye and she began to move upward before she went into modeling with that same exact look.

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Well, if someone's hired her as a model, then her body and features are likely to fit the cultural ideal more closely than most. That's great for her but but that's just an accident of birth.

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Yeah, people pay money to look at someone like that. And she made very good money, and is now working her way into a career in neurology and no one is giving her any problems... except interestingly enough European guys for her armpit hair.

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Well, shit, of course if she's in a nerdy, sciency field her appearence doesn't matter as much. But that's not most of the world.

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I was aware that you meant people beyond just me.

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specifically, I was talking about "most people".

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While she has what would certainly be called an "alternative" style, she is attractive to many many guys. Some hit on her right in front of me.

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It must make you feel very proud to be with a woman like that.

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By the way, she said she thought you were hot.

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Tell her thanks from me, will you? That's very nice of her to say so.

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A deli is not flipping burgers,

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It's really not that different. It's still meat and cheese between two pieces of bread.IOW, it's not IBM.

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and there is a difference between doing that as a living and looking like the stereotype of doing that for a living.

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Well, they all pretty much look like that all the time. Jeans, Chuck Taylors and combat boots, tattoos and piercings, t-shirts and shaved heads.

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If your husband had looked like an unkempt shapeless guy with no possible future but flipping burgers, would you have noticed him?

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That's what he always looked like, pretty much. T-shirts, flannel shirts, jeans, not thin or fat, although he does have great broad shoulders. I saw a picture of him before I went out on our blind date, and to be honest I thought he was OK looking but not incredible or anything. He was making a wierd face instead of smiling.I think he wore jeans and a polo shirt on that date.Of course, I went out with him again because we had such a fabulous time talking and we had a great deal in common, including our senses of humor.

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Well could it be that you are not understanding what is actually being stated?

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Of course.Could it be that you disagree with the statements because you don't like what is being said?

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Or could it be that certain groups of psychologists and psychiatrists have a stake in the capitalist "get healthy" goldmine which has a stake in everyone being victims?

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Oh, right, a conspiracy of scientists to withold The Truth from the public.Where have I heard that argument before?...

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All you have shown here (in links) is that there is a correlation between the girls with eating disorders, and use of imagery by these girls to dwell on and beat themselves with. That does not answer what causative role. if any, those images play.

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Where do normal weight 6 year old girls get the idea that they are fat and need to be on a diet? What about normal weight preteen girls? Or teenage and college age women? A significant portion of normal weight girls and women believe they are too fat.Where do they get that idea?

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The fact that the majority of society is getting larger and unhealthier in a obese, overeating manner, despite being immersed in the same imagery, is a large counterargument to any causative role.

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5-10 million women and girls in the US are anorexic or bulimic.That's not a small number.

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Brennas explanation for the causative nature of eating disorders remains a valid one.

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Of course it's valid.But it still doesn't explain where normal weight 6 year olds get the idea that they are too fat.I can distinctly remember hanging out with some girlfriends in a park when I was around 10 years old and being self-conscious of how my thighs spread out when I sat on the seat of the swing. I was not at all, in any way, pudgy when I was little. In fact, I was quite skinny and had a raging metabolism that needed to be fed copious amounts of food every 4 hours or I would get queasy and sometimes faint.Nobody in my family was dieting at the time, and nobody ever told me I was fat, so where did I get the idea that my thighs shouldn't spread out like that?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-18-2005 12:16 PM

Are all of these papers wrong because the researchers are greedy and want to hide The Truth? linkThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-18-2005 01:03 PM

This was my comment: I note that nobody but you in this thread has acknowldged it.

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it is apparent to me that the source of your issue is with parents. the media did not make your parents mistreat you.

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They are a big part of it, but so is Seventeen magazine and my experiences with boys and men.

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american culture did not force your parents to only value the superficial.

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They demanded good grades as well, but of course american culture taught my parents that the superficial was important.They were Catholics raised in the 1950's for fuck's sake. Putting up a front of domestic bliss and family perfection while reality was far from perfect was the name of the game back then.

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there's an awful lot of very small and very slender women in india. why don't you mine me some stats about eating disorders there (among the higher classes).

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India Times Article