I'm working on a paper for Western Humanities that addresses the ethical issue of airbrushing from the perspectives of writers we've looked at thus far--Locke, Franklin, Wollstonecraft, etc. It's an interesting assignment, but reading articles about airbrushing while looking at botched photoshop jobs of women is reinforcing the fact that my brain has been effectively tuned into the lie of fashion advertising. When I see a "photograph" of a woman whose head is wider than her hips, my first thought is Huh, lucky bitch instead of OH MY GOD THAT IS CLEARLY UNNATURAL AND ANATOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. The reigning image of beauty is that of marzipan pulled taut over a wire hanger. I hate that it's a problem in our society, and I hate that I feed into it.One of the most disheartening things I read was that even the recent Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" that featured 'real-sized' women used airbrushing to smooth things out. Apparently, one of the goals of human perfectibility is to become aerodynamic. My goal? To rewire my brain so that when it processes an image of a woman whose cheeks have been hollowed out with an ice cream scooper, I can recognize its inanity.
2 comments:
That picture is so disgusting! When I see woman photoshopped like that, or even skeletal women in real life, I cringe and tend to be more repulsed than jealous... I'm happy with my cozy body type! yay!
Anyway, that is a really cool paper topic! Good luck with writing it!
"The reigning image of beauty is that of marzipan pulled taut over a wire hanger."
Even when you're irritated, you are such a freaking POET! If anyone can start changing things, you can :)
P.S. It's asking me to type "saliti." That is most definitely not a word.
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