Playboy made me do it

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i loose six pounds on the can. but stretched over 50 years, that .12 lbs a year. such a dramatic change!

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No kidding you lose weight easily. you're a man, probably fairly young by the sounds of it.It takes me a 7 or 8 weeks of working out 4-5 hours a week and somewhat restricting my calorie intake to lose 6 pounds.

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people do it to improve self esteem. whether or not it actually works (and i'm sure it DOES in some instances, if only because of cognitive dissonance), they think it will.

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Saying you are getting cosmetic surgery to improve your self esteem, particularly if you are under 30 years old, is just code for "I want to look like the cultural ideal because people who look like that are more accepted and get more attention."...and they would be right.

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point of fact is that most guys dont like breast implants nowadays. it's not the mainstream trend. maybe in the 80's, but not today.

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So, if that's true we'll probably see a big rash of breast reduction surgeries now, right?God, how I wish men were subjected to this crap every couple of years.

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i've heard that playboy discourages implants. but that could be wrong, as i know some playmate DO have them.

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Well, several of Playboy's most famous Playmates have them, including Pam Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith.

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is kate moss the ideal? has kate moss even been HEARD of in the last ten years?

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She was, for a while.That's the point. What are we women supposed to do when one moment we are told we are unattractive because of how we were born and a few years later, now our body type is in vogue, but not for long, in a couple more years nobody thinks you're fabulous anymore?
holy crap did anyone read this story about a rich guy with no social skills who bought women, including pornstars and Playmates, and ended up crashing and burning?

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oh, cry me a fucking river. mens are CONSTANTLY subjected to ideal images.

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No you're not.At least, not compared to what is directed at women. According to one study, there are about ten times more appearence-based ads directed towards the readers of women's magazines compared to those directed towards men in men's magazines.Images of women are used to sell everything, in both men's and women's magazines and also in supposedly non-gendered mags like Time.I'll agree there's more for men very recently, like in the last 15 years or so.

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and ours change too. and you know, us normal guys can feel like shit too when we're constantly barraged with images of thin, athletic, muscular ideal men. we know chicks like those guys better, as much as they deny it.

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That's pretty new for you boys. Sucks doesn't it?

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and you know what? we can't BUY our ideals. we have to work for them, they don't come in bags of saline.

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Yes, but a gym membership, as well as being a LOT less expensive than cosmetic surgery, is actually beneficial to your health instead of being detrimental. People who get surgery get infections and end up disfigured and even die. People who start to go to the gym get more cardiovascularly fit, stronger, lose exess weight and release endorphins into their systems.Seriously, can you name a single male model that all the women know and fawn over? I can't.

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if you weren't so shallow and self-absorbed, maybe you could see that this pressure is NOT just on women, and that it actually affects other people.

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Of course I see it. That has been one of my major points that I have repeated many times in this thread but that everyone has avoided; with the recent advent of more advertizing aimed at men which puts forth a narrow physical ideal as something to strive for, we have seen a corresponding increase in body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, fear of fat, and exessive exercising in boys and men.

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but that not everyone is so stupid that they actually believe they have to physically change themselves to be loved.

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Fat people get less love. Even a little bit fat.When they get thin, they get approval.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-18-2005 07:48 PM

Dude, it's well known that attractive people are simply treated better by everyone than average looking or unattractive people.And there are lots and lots of ADULTS under 30 who are getting surgery.I also think that there is a growing trend towards women as young as 35 getting work done on their faces to look younger.Pretty soon everyone in their 60's will think they have to look as young and skinny as the Olsen twins.

I never read cosmo.I did tead Seventeen, though, starting at about age 9.I wasn't as sophisticated about advertising back then, as a young girl.

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apparently not, as you were reading a magazine whose target audience is 8 years older than you were. if you wanna blame someone for fucking you up other than your parents, blame seventeen.

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Dude, 9 year olds ARE the target audience for Seventeen magazine. And that is the age group that loved Britney Spears and the Spice Girls.The target audience for Cosmo is around seventeen.Any girl who actually read Seventeen when she was seventeen was layghed at for reading a children's magazine.

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but let me ask another question.

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did you ever read playboy?

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A few times.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-18-2005 09:11 PM

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because preference in boob size fluctuates.

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Why does it fluctuate?

Yes, I saw my first playboy when I was about 9 years old, in the bathroom at a friend's house.And I don't see that there's all that mych difference between Cosmo and Playboy, other than the target audience.I always viewed the women in both kinds of magazines as what I was supposed to look like.

Why is it important that they be promoting the same image?OTOH, all three are pretty similar.Long legs, tan, quite slim (though not as skinny as the models are these days), and young. Two out of the three are also blonde.And the ages seem pretty similar. I doubt there's more than 5 or 6 years between the model on the cover of Seventeen and the other two.

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advertisement is not the only thing where image is enforced.

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Of course. But can you imagine a men's magazine with page after page of ads for weight loss, wrinkle cream, fake tanner, undergarments to make their guts stick out less, and lots and lots of skin tight, revealing clothing?

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what about john wayne/james bond movies (etc) and professional sports?

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Sports stars and famous actors are famous for being skilled at something or being a hero. That's why you can have many boys who admire and want to emulate somebody like John Elway even though he's not particularly attractive.My point in bringing up models is that they are famous and desired solely for being physically beautiful.Nobody knows any male models, do they?

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how about this. when are boys picked on the most by other boys for being overweight? in high school? no. boys establish their social structure in elementary school. at least girls get a chance to establish a healthy self-image (influenced by parents) prior to middle and high school.

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There's a pretty good body of evidence which points to a general sharp decline in positive self-image in girls right around puberty which is much greater than that of boys. Many girls struggle at this time, even if they have been raised in a good home environment.

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men have been in competition based on prowess for how many thousands of years. but what has always been at stake for them has been life, not self-esteem.

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And that's why it's new, and that's why it sucks.Now, a narrow standard of physical beauty, which you may or may not be born with and can do little about if you aren't, is becoming an issue with men and boys in our culture where before it was accomplishements, skill, abundent resources and prowess that was the standard.

Well, perhaps you are more skilled at seeing minute differences in women's bodies, but I really don't see much difference between all of them.Sure, the POTY is more well-endowed (don't her natural breasts look strange these days?), but they are all slender, long-legged, tan (sorry, they are all tan, it's just a matter of small degree. None of them are NOT tan), and two of them are blonde.The Seventeen model just looks a bit younger, and is obviously fully clothed.Here is a more recent cover of Seventeen Hair magazine.Remember, the target audience of this magazine is young girls, not teenagers.

Both of those pictures are from times when we certainly had an entertainment industry. We had the movies.When you think about why preferences fluctuate so much, you will understand my argument.

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if you weren't so shallow and self-absorbed, maybe you could see that this pressure is NOT just on women, and that it actually affects other people.

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Of course I see it. That has been one of my major points that I have repeated many times in this thread but that everyone has avoided; with the recent advent of more advertizing aimed at men which puts forth a narrow physical ideal as something to strive for, we have seen a corresponding increase in body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, fear of fat, and exessive exercising in boys and men.

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not all advertising is aimed at men -- the most plainly damaging are the ones AIMED AT WOMEN.

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Damaging to whom? I don't quite follow your meaning.

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we're not avoiding it. and we're not saying that media puts forth an unhealthy repitition of the ideal. we're saying that it's not the only cause, that this happened for a long time, and that playboy in particular is not even a major source of it.

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Has it really happened for a long time, though?Has it really been the case that men and boys have have always had a narrow standard of physical beauty that they felt pressure to strive for?

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you seem bent on sticking blame for something, schraf.

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Understanding, mostly, is what I'm bent upon.

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blame it on society,

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How about "blame mass media and advertising?"

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and blame society on playboy.

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Playboy is a part of society. A very well-known, iconic part of society that, in part, defines for society what is beautiful and sexy in a women's appearence.All I'm saying is that many things in our culture conspire to make everyone (these days) feel insecure and inadequate WRT body image, it begins at a very young age, and Playboy is part of it.

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you're waging a very narrow-minded war here. just women's images, that somehow when shown brainwash young girls who obviously can't think for themselves.

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Like I said, there's no notice on those images that say;"Warning: model doesn't actually look as she appears in this picture. The image has been digitally altered. Do not attempt to look like this because it's not possible."Look, as a culture we start sending messages about what is expected of people from the very moment they are born. Parents unsonsciously (and consciously) treat male and female infants differently, for example.Why is it so radical an idea that children are sent messages by the culture regarding how they are supposed to look and act?

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it's so pervasive that magazines are now running young girl's lives, like some kind of cult.

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I never said anything remotely like that.

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free will? ha. flush that down the toilet with your vomit and dignity, girls. and blame it all on a magazine you read once or twice as a young girl.

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I don't blame it all on that. It was significant, though.

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because obviously, sexy women were never seen in the media or arts before playboy.

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There is a big difference between sexy women in the arts (as in paintings)which hung in people's homes and photographs of actual women used to sell products reaching many millions of people once a month.