Nothing passive about it

[wombat_socho]

A feast of links from Rachel's joint:

Natural beauty is the myth; what fashion & celebrity magazines sell is the hard truth, that anyone can be beautiful with enough time, money and effort. This reminds me of one woman's comment in Camille Paglia's MIT Lecture: "You have to spend an hour in the gym, an hour getting cleaned up and dressed - there's nothing passive about it!"

Become an hero while seeing the world: the ten most dangerous roads.

Hatchetations.

Ursula LeGuin, Hans Christian Andersen, and The Wind in the Willows - the good and bad of childrens' fantasy. I remember seeing a presentation of "The Little Match Girl" on TV years ago, with Danny Kaye playing the part of Andersen, and all the alarm bells were going off. It seemed hideously sad and wrong to me, not the sort of thing children should be watching at all. Then again, the original Grimm's Fairy Tales weren't meant for children either, as Jin-Roh reminds us with its recounting of the original Little Red Riding Hood tale.

Comments

[433.livejournal.com]

I so agree with that "natural beauty" point.

Guess what? Just as how some people are born short and some tall, some smart and some dumb...there are ome good-looking people and some ugly people out there. Shocking!

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Word. Personally, I think looks are overrated, but then given my appearance what would you expect me to say? ^_^

[materia-indigo.livejournal.com]

The Beauty Myth article raises an interesting point, but two other points come to mind:

1: In fashion magazines, most or all of the spreads are likely heavily doctored, so what you see ain't what you can get.

2: These magazines encourage women to spend excessive (IMHO) time and resources in the pursuit of vanity. I admittedly spend some of my time and resources in said pursuit, but I keep the expenditure pretty moderate by American standards. If a woman spends two hours a day at the gym and "cleaning up," that's two hours that she doesn't spend reading, writing, painting, praying, playing with her children.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Your point about the pics in fashion magazines (and mens' magazines, for that matter) is well taken. Applying the RL equivalent of an airbrush to one's body is hideously expensive, even with today's advances and competition in the cosmetic surgery market.

I look at the amount of time/money actresses, models and singers spend on this sort of thing as being over on the far right end of the bell curve. Most women I know (and most of the women I see downtown in the corporate world) don't spend anywhere near that amount of time on exercise, makeup, etc., especially married women with children. As you imply, there just isn't time for that, especially if you're trying to maintain a healthy interior life. Keep in mind that Paglia's audience at MIT were mostly single men and women.

[materia-indigo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to add ... the money a woman spends on her appearance leaves less for anime and manga.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. ^_^