Cosmopolitan Part 3

Throughout reading the Beauty Myth and watching the movie Killing us Softly 4, I have found another connection between both of these and magazines. In the Beauty Myth it says "woman are allowed a mind or a body but just not both" and with stereotypes in our society there is "beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty" (pg. 59). Kean Kilbourne then goes on to say in her video that in many magazines when intelligence is being displayed it is portrayed in the magazine as ugly. The picture of the woman withholding the intelligence is usually wearing glasses, has no make-up on, and is wearing plain and boring clothing. It is made to look like she has no substance and beauty just because she is smart. Along with a lot of other things in magazines I notice these things but don't really take a second look, but after watching Killing us Softly it has given me a new perspective on things. I also came to realize that it is exactly the same in movies. There are movies where there is a smart girl who again like in the magazines wears no make-up, dresses poorly, and usually has her hair all messy and tied up and she gets a make-over. They put her in more feminine clothes, make her hair look nice, and put on a lot of make-up and then all of a sudden she is the most popular girl and all the guys are looking at her. Then when she starts meeting guys and talking to them if she ever says anything smart the guys give her a weird look and seem turned off, so she says something stupid and they're happy again. I can name numerous movies where this happens and it's crazy that society and the media has started to make intelligence seem unattractive and boring and stupidity as sexy and beautiful. When in reality a lot of men actually look for a girl who has a brain and that they can have a real conversation with. Many girls actually dress up and take on the intelligent role, for example as the sexy librarian or the classic school girl, and men love it. I asked a few guys I know why they find the dressing up so appealing and they all said pretty much the same thing. One reason they like it is because she adds an edgy and more seductive side to the intelligence aspect of women. Another reason is because they have a woman they find attractive beforehand, and when she puts on the role of a intelligent woman they have the ultimate package, a beautiful and attractive intelligent woman. I find it interesting that they want the smarts and the good looks however, in movies and magazines and books men are made out to not like both. They either want an intelligent woman or a "beautiful" woman, yet most guys (not all) want a little bit of both not either or. It's sad that the movies and the media make everything out to be different than it really is, it slowly starts to get women to believe it and starts to get a lot of men to believe that's the way they should view girls. It's a lose-lose for everyone really.

Cosmopolitan Part 2

Continuing from my last post about the magazine I found it interesting that in The Beauty Myth it also talked about models and how "the weight of fashion models  plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women and eating disorders rose exponentially" (pg. 11). We actually watched a movie in my English class the other day Killing us Softly 4 and the creator of the film Kean Kilbourne said "They are starting to not use models that are to thin, and some magazines don't use professional models they just use average people". My school newspaper actually wrote an article a few months ago about how common anorexia and bulimia are in my school, and how there are far more people that we would have suspected to be suffering from one of them. One of my best friends was anorexic a few years ago and has forever been scared and obsessed with losing weight and watching what she eats. She has been on multiple diets in the past year and has gone from eating eggs, salads, and rice to eating nothing but fruits and vegetables. She reads things like Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Vogue, Woman's Fitness and much more and really takes to heart a lot of what she sees in the magazines. There is a line in the Beauty Myth that reminds me of her, "woman would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal" (pg. 10). She constantly looks on the internet to find pictures of the body she wants and continues to pick on herself on a daily basis. She is one of those people who have come subdued by the concept of "thinspiration", and it has really become the only thing she thinks about. I have become her support system, and even though I don't mind being there for her and helping her out it's almost an overwhelming task on my part and she has slowly made life harder for both her and me. I've never really been one of those people that envies the models in magazines and actually takes to heart a lot of advertisements out there. But it gets harder and harder not to look at those things when I am with someone everyday that obsesses over it and constantly talks about losing weight and her eating habits.
I feel like at this point I have lost my friend to the media and there is no way of getting her back.

Cosmopolitan Vs. The Beauty Myth

On the plane last weekend coming home from a school trip I was sitting next to one of my teachers reading a Cosmopolitan magazine. I tend to pick up a Cosmo whenever I travel but I don't even read half of whats actually in the magazine, I more just flip through the pages and read the few things that pop out and seem interesting. My teacher looked over and started laughing when he realized it was a Cosmo and made a sly comment. When I was done reading the Cosmo I put it away and took out the book I am now reading for my English class, The Beauty Myth. My teacher then looked over and me again, started laughing, and said "Only a teenager would go from reading a Cosmopolitan to the Beauty Myth". I had no idea what he was talking about or what he meant about that since I hadn't even opened the book yet and had absolutely no idea what it was about. Once started to read it, on the first page there was the line "Many are so ashamed to admit that such trivial concerns- to do with physical appearance, bodies, faces, hair, clothes- matter so much" (pg 9). After reading that line I knew exactly what my teacher was talking about. That line made me think of the Cosmo and I realized that that is what the entire magazine is about. The magazine has pages about fashion, make-up, hair products, sex, workout methods etc. The entire magazine is about what the book is trying to say has become so important in our society and something that a lot of people have become obsessed with such trivial things. I found it very interesting that my teacher made the comment because I would have never have put two and two together on my own, to me I just went from a little bit of entertaining light reading to something I  have to read for my English class. After getting further into the Beauty Myth it made me realize that I have become like many people who obsess and think about all the trivial things that don't really matter just because it's what I read about, talk about with friends and family, and am surrounded with. Being in high school all these little things are taken way out of proportion and become our worst enemies, unless we can get everything perfect. We can never be perfect though, so all of us are always worrying and obsessing over one little thing that in reality doesn't really matter. And to think about it we can't even do anything about half of the things we concern ourselves with no matter how much we try. It's just another stress in our life that we put on ourselves and it could easily be taken away if we took a step back and realized how unimportant everything really is.