Girls and Body Image

Jumper Girl and her BF, The Singer, are in the kitchen making lunch. While you might think they're standard issue prep school girls,  JG's aiming for her black belt in summer 2007, and The Singer's hapa  and opera's her game. 

They both seem to have quite positive self-concept, thank you.  But I know girls who don't worry about fitting into a quite narrow mold of appearance and attributes.

I think Motherpie's got it right.

The selling of stuff is both unreal and hyperreal.

Social influences, however, which include the media and popular/mainstream culture, may promote specific images and standards of beauty and attractiveness that contradict good health practices and one's ability to achieve a specific body type or image. U.S. society places great value on looks and exalts images unachievable by most. For example, fashion models weigh 23 percent less than the average female, although these representations are perceived to be normal

First BoingBoing linked to a nifty "evolution" video showing a model before makeup and Photoshop renders her gorgeous for a billboard, from the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign.

Reginald Pike's Yael Staav takes us from model to billboard in under 60 seconds in this impressive new spot from Dove.

Then Motherpie gave me the heads-up on the Worth1000  contest.

Hollywood is fat, and I say it's high time we put those rich celebrities on a diet, for pete's sake. Look at them, they're obese. Your job is to thin them down... with photoshop. You are to photoshop any famous person a few sizes smaller than they really are. Obviously the more challenging the target (i.e. Marlon Brando) the higher a score you will rate. A "before" picture is not required.

As I was writing this, I noticed that the TypePad featured blog was Back In Skinny Jeans.  Oh great, I thought, another anorexia-monger. Boy was I wrong.  BISJ says

Back in skinny jeans started as a personal rant about my own struggles with beauty and losing weight, the unrelenting fashion industry, and Hollywood. I wanted to share my experiences to help others, and to help heal myself. My desire here is to help other women (and men) feel good about themselves and their lives no matter what our culture "says" we have to look like. To help give perspective when we have lost it. To look at how we can grow and live in a beauty obsessed world without it making us crazy, sick, or feel unworthy. The word "skinny" also means "news, lowdown, and information". Throughout the blog, I'll also use the word skinny, depending on context, as a reference to being "in the know."

BISJ:
Smacks down Lee's soft pedo-porn campaign

Smacks down Guy LaRoche's walking skeleton model
Smacks down Karl Lagerfeld for being a "skinny smug" with distorted vision
Introduces us to Lara Kulpa, a plus-sized model --Part I and Part II

Comments

[DrumsNWhistles]

Thanks for this great post! This is a real hot button for me, since DG is a dancer...and that's a problem, even in Irish dance where the preferred look among adjudicators is that bone-thin almost-anorexic look.