"We can play sports, excel at school, go to college, aspire to -- and get -- jobs previously reserved for men, be working mothers and so forth. But in exchange, we must obsess about our faces, weight, breast size, clothing brands, decorating, perfectly calibrated child-rearing, about pleasuring men and being envied by other women."
I feel that this quote from "The Rise of Enlightened Sexism" written by Susan Douglas perfectly describes the struggle for women in our society. Today, women are expected and almost encouraged to compete with other women to be the prettiest, thinnest and most perfect human being they could be, whether that be natural or with plastic surgery. (ahem...America's Next Top Model) An example of this is the famous "Barbie" doll, where some women are going as far as using plastic surgery to look just like the doll. (http://www.bornrich.com/human-barbie-doll-holds-the-record-for-most-money-spent-on-cosmetic-surgery.html) Personally, it kinda freaks me out. But its not just women who are having this problem, men are held to "standards" for their looks too. For example, there's a man who has had many surgeries to look like a Ken doll (http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140120/loop/human-ken-doll-justin-jedlicas-dreamhouse-is-now-trump-tower). So although the media is showing women that they are making progress in some aspects, in reality we're also losing some of our ground. The media and our entire society needs to stop focusing on looks and female stereotypes in order to move forward.
- Nicole
Thanks for highlighting this quote, Nicole. The human Barbie and Ken examples show how people can take these expectations to an extreme. I wonder in what ways we all do this to a more limited extent. How much time and energy to we spend "fixing" ourselves to look a certain way. I think it's often subconscious because we don't think about all the time that it takes (maintaining hair, skin, fingernails, toenails, makeup, buying clothes, wearing clothes, etc.). Most of this stuff is considered the norm, but is there any of it that might be unnecessary? What is the point of maintaining this system?
ReplyDeleteHearing about how long it takes people to get ready and how much money people spend on the appropriate clothes to look acceptable always makes me wonder how much time and energy would be saved if we had a different set of values. Looking good is always a nice feeling but what could we as a society accomplish if it was lower on our list of values? What if things like helping others, being smart, and friendship was higher? How different would the world me?
ReplyDeleteI also have stumbled upon the real life barbie article, and it caught me off guard. I was amazed that someone could be so obsessed with an imagine that society deemed as perfect. But as I mentioned for my blog post, from what it seems like since birth, we are bombarded with all these things we need to be or aspire to be as a girl and becoming women in society. Barbie's are a huge factor that play into this perfect appearance stereotype, and its no surprise that young girls are the ones who are the most impacted by these dolls. This makes me ask the question that if they made Barbie's and more dolls appear to look more like the general public, would girls still feel as pressured to aspire to look like Barbie? Would they realize there is not one body type? And, would the girl in the article have given her whole life (time, money) to achieve what she believes is perfection?
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