Saturday, June 23, 2012

Screw you media, and the horse you rode in on...

If there's one thing that all women know, it's that the media sucks.  It sucks like a five dollar hooker ... badly.

Now I could give you any number of reasons why it sucks so badly, but we all know what irks us the most, what affects us the most, what they spend the most time and effort controlling.

Body image.

But recently I found this series of old newspaper ads showing that while the media has always controlled the way women see themselves and how they want to look, the victims used to be a wee bit different.

It would seem that back in the day it wasn't popular to be skinny.  Who knew!  If these ads are anything to go on, women didn't want to be thin, they wanted to be curvy.  And why?  

Because the media told them to.

I guess it's nothing new.  We've always been able to see through art what people of any particular time considered to be the ideal feminine shape.  All you have to do is look at paintings of Elizabethan women to know they liked them back then with no eyebrows and high foreheads, or in the Renaissance period they liked them on the plump side and usually holding a naked chubby baby or being ravaged by a couple of soldiers.

But those images, while interesting and probably important, I'm pretty sure didn't have as much of an impact on the common woman.  After all, what did it matter what the women in those expensive paintings looked like if you were a normal person?  You had a living to make and a family to feed.  Besides, it wasn't like you'd see pictures like that very often.

But in the last hundred years our methods of communication have improved, which has allowed the media to become more powerful and more invasive.  We can't escape them anymore.  They're everywhere and, whether we like to admit it or not, we pay attention to and value what they tell us.  It's seriously fucked up.

I think that's why I find these old ads so interesting.  As a curvy girl myself, I find it fascinating to think that back in the day there were ads offering to help women put on weight.  Ads actually telling women that men wouldn't find them attractive if they were too skinny.  My first thought was "Right on!" followed by a fist pump, but it only took me a few minutes to realise the reality of it.

These ads aren't any better than ours.  They're just another way of telling women that they're not good enough the way that they are, and should change to suit some all knowing social opinion.

Isn't it interesting how, generation after generation, we just keep letting ourselves be victims of this emotionally manipulative abuse.  Makes you wonder what in fifty years time the media will be telling our daughters and granddaughters they should look like, doesn't it.

17 comments:

  1. I think people should learn to egnore the media, and just think for themselves.

    But also being really thin isn't healthy so these ads are actually better then the ads today, cause they're a more healthy shape.

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    1. I couldn't help laughing at them a little, all those bits in the ads about "gain weight without overeating", I know something that does that too. It's called chocolate.

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  2. I do my best to ignore the media. Easier said than done. If only the media could simply show a wide variety of women so we can see that it's okay to be who we are. Unfortunately, I don't see that coming anytime soon. Thanks for showing the old ads. That was definitely interesting!

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    1. They're fascinating, aren't they! I also like the old cigarette ads. So many of them have doctors actually recommending smoking as a cure for stress!

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  3. Ah, playing on everyone's fears, and who has more fears than women? We all worry if we're attractive, or still attractive, and we all have some body part we hate, even if we don't admit it. And the media like to remind us about it all the time.

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    1. It's ridiculous, isn't it, how they can keep us coming back by making us feel bad about ourselves. It's like we're in an abusive relationship with the media.

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  4. Oh come on, how do you know how well a $5.00 hooker sucks?

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    1. Simple economic principles. I'm assuming if they sucked well, they'd be charging more than $5 ... unless they were a not for profit hooker, of course.

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  5. Women must find the courage to ignore these expectations and just be ourselves. The media won't change or do it for us.

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    1. Very true. I think the hardest part though is that fact that it's not enough to reject the media once, you have to keep doing it every day.

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  6. Being Mexican, I received a lot of pressure from family and telenovelas to gain weight. I saw doctors and nutritionists in hopes that they would help me please others. Eventually, I became exhausted by it all, and stopped caring so much.

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    1. I always watch people who are obsessed with their body image and wonder how they get the energy to be so focussed on it. Seems so tiring.

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    1. I've always been of the opinion that I have a body rather than I AM my body. It's an important distinction to make, I think.

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  8. I have 2 little girls. It is becoming harder to shield them from the fucked-upness that is the media. But I honestly do my best. I find it sad that I even have to in the first place.

    Hugs!

    Valerie

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    1. It sucks, but I guess that it's just something that everyone has to face and decide how they're going to deal with it. Your girls will face it too, and I'm sure they'll come out the other side deciding that the media can go screw themselves.

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  9. But then there is a fine line too because even back then they were talking about things for when you are plump! So apparently there is this tiny little area of perfection that is close to impossible to reach (if not completely impossible). My son hangs out with me, my friends and his teenage girl friends and our issues too much and he's now got a saying that makes me laugh so hard "Just eat the damn cake"

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