The answer of course, as the video below will explain, is that most of those women don’t actually look like that either.  Most of their images have been retouched.  They aren’t normal women.  They aren’t women with 40-hour-a-week desk jobs. They aren’t women with children to raise.  They aren’t women who sit in knitting circles every week and feel the joy of creating something with their own hands. They are some marketing department’s depiction of what an ideal woman should look like. And unfortunately for me and lots of other women like me, they are nearly the only examples available of what it should look like to be a woman.

You don’t see women like me in media.  Not women who wear a size eight, have a small chest, pale skin, and a round behind.  That is not what sells all those clothes in the stores that don’t actually fit anyone.  That is not what convinces men to purchase overpriced alcohol.  That is not what drives the sale of countless gym memberships and weight loss programs. Instead you only see women like those that appear in the Athletica catalog.

And for me, and Jean Kilbourne in the video, the questions are: what is that doing to real women?  How is it affecting our self image?  What is it telling us about how we should look?  Who is it benefiting? Why aren’t more people angry about this?  And lastly, is there anyway to reverse the damage?

Related posts

• Take that! (0)
• You pucked with the wrong ice president! (1)
• Yet another iPad parody (1)
• Would you like to be my friend? Confirm or Deny? (0)
• Why I want a blackberry (0)

Fegan created an ad mimicking the Dodge ad that gives voice to the typical female response.  This makes me very happy.  Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

For reference, here is the original ad from Dodge:

Related posts

• Body Image: why media isn’t helping (1)
• Text messaging while driving equals death… or worse (1)
• Beautiful PSA (1)
• You pucked with the wrong ice president! (1)
• Yet another iPad parody (1)