Women Are Already On the Front Line!!

I am an Army, woman veteran. I was a paralegal specialist who was attached to an artillery unit. I have been part of the training, zero my weapon, and used it. I know that women aren't allowed on the "front line" but in Operation Iraq Freedom, it didn't have a "front line." Every time you went off of the military base, you were ready for action to take place. I didn't even know about the Combat Exclusion Policy until I came to school. I have friends and myself who received combat fire. To know that we weren't suppose to be on the "front line" confused me. So we weren't suppose to leave the base then. That's odd because we were out there. Female soldiers are double amputees, lost hearing, are Prisoners of War and suffer from PTSD. How is this possible if we aren't suppose to be on the "front line"? What saddens me more is that it's hard for women to claim these service-connected disabilities as combat related. It's usually falls under some fancy wording that means you know your job is going to put you in harms way and you should've done a better job protecting yourself. 

SGT Veronica - Military Police (My Bestie)

Women are already in combat. I have women who are military police, medics, and cooks, who go off of the base and has to defend themselves and there battle buddies because they are on the "front line"! So even though the law is removed, which is great for the women who are trying to claim benefits for their combat related disabilities. I still don't see the difference. One way or another, women have been on the "front line" and we have been doing a great damn job!

It is OUR Body

Body image is a huge deal to women. They can't help but compare their body with other women's bodies. If women say they don't do that and that every woman's body is beautiful just the way it is then they probably have to work at that every day to ignore the fact that their are different body types and they are all unique in some kind of way. Some women gain weight in different parts of their body. For me, I gain no my sides and my belly. Some it is their thighs and butt. We were all made unique and as a result of that we all look different. This website talks about how we are constantly overwhelmed with media telling us we have to be a certain size and shape when it really isn't how we have to be. The first page of "Women's Bodies, Women's Health" talks about all the things our bodies are capable of and what we can do with them, so why do we let media tell us what we have to do or what we are supposed to look like? We have a million different things we can choose for our bodies, so go out and find what fits your body best!

http://www.d.umn.edu/~jvaleri/dissatisfaction%20with%20bodies.htm

Love Yourself

As women we let marketing twist our minds and use the sickness of women the same as the slave owners used “her vagina, used for his sexual pleasure, was the gateway to the womb, which was his place of capital investment- the capital investment being the sex act and the resulting child the accumulated surplus, worth money on the slave market”  (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, p. 211).  Today the capital investment is women’s health and the accumulated surplus is the image portrayed to them that they spend billions of dollars trying to attain.

It’s sad that to sell clothes fashion designers want to use someone a size zero to four to promote them but at the same time they line the store shelves with the same clothes in bigger sizes.

We as women need to remember we are real and not some image conjured up and as mothers we have the responsibility to teach our daughter’s what it means to love yourself from the inside out and not spend your life chase the fantasy of others and not let the media tell them that “ only thin people are loveable, healthy, beautiful, talented, fun? (Lamm, pg. 136)

 http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/05/victoria-secret-model-kylie-bisutti-accuses-industry-promoting-eating-disorders-exploiting-young-girls/

Mannequin Agenda

An article was written this week in the New York Times talking about the recent viral picture of a new kind of mannequin displayed in Sweden. In my opinion, I think the mannequins are much more realistic than the ones we are used to seeing in our American department stores. This story I think goes hand in hand with the argument of why Barbie's body dimensions are absurd and unrealistic. Barbie's body proportions are completely out of whack and start the poor body image crisis at a young age. Mannequins, in my opinion, have the same implications. We are constantly bombarded with images that have been photoshopped and airbrushed, that we have started to believe that these images are attainable when they aren't. These sort of images influenced young girls so much that they have internalized these images and strive to appear like them. Chernik talks about in her article that when she was growing up she wanted nothing but to be thin and everything about her eventually wasted away. She battled an eating disorder until she decided that she was going to start loving her "fuller" body. I think that many women in our society, especially during their high school and college years, struggle with this concept. The new Swedish mannequins represent women more realistically. This Swedish revolution isn't the first to battle this topic, brands like Zara and Mango have started to replace their models with size 6 models. The problem I see here is that people are getting upset that they have started using bigger models. The sad fact that people "like" or want to continue to see these "famine fashion" mannequins in stores. I think the people who have complained are so jaded to think that since this is our societies image of beauty, that is correct. I hope to see more brands battling this issue moving forward and would hope that the next generations do not have such a jaded opinion of their own body image.

The link to the article http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/18/business/la-fi-mo-swedish-mannequins-20130318.

How you look is up to you or society?

        I came across this photo while scrolling on Pinterest and to be honest it frightened me how true this was.  This picture emulates our societies obsession with beauty and how women who do not wear makeup out in public are sometimes scrutinized and described as "sickly" and "not healthy looking".  The varying levels of beauty in this photo made me think of the poem we read in the class the other day regarding makeup and outside beauty.  The blogger who wrote the poem, Kelly Brake, stated,"So ultra bright would be their smile, so lovely their complexion, their confianza based on someone else's fashion and their mascara'd mascaras hiding the cascaras that hide their ser?".   I felt like the blogger was trying to explain that women in the media and magazines are portrayed as perfection behind layers of makeup and that has become the ideal of American beauty.  

      I am personally a huge fan of makeup.  I absolutely love it.  I love that you can create different looks with different colors and techniques that accentuate various parts of your face.  I do not, however, believe that every woman needs makeup and should not leave the house without it.  I think makeup, like everything else a person decides to put on their body, is a personal choice and should not be judged upon by anyone else.  I am firm in the belief that if an individual is happy with how they look, that is genuinely all that matters. 

http://www.dumpaday.com/random-pictures/funny-pictures/funny-pictures-of-the-day-100-pics-3/attachment/putting-on-makeup/

New Barbie on the Block?

Unrealistic ideals of beauty and body image have infiltrated the minds of America’s youth, following them into adulthood.  Innocently enough, as young children we play with dolls and Barbies—and as the toy section is gendered, young boys are taught to play with their action figures—but these toys set unrealistic expectations of how our bodies should look: Barbies all have small feet, small waists, and large chests; they wear lots of makeup and have “perfect” hair; the action figures marketed to young boys all have muscular builds and are either heroes or manual laborers.  These childhood toys have largely contributed to the distorted standards of beauty and body image that we have in western culture.  Beauty ideals that exist in our western culture are damaging to young men and women.  Barbie dolls and other toys or shows marketed to young women set “an ideal of beauty defined as thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual, with flawless skin and well-groomed hair” and can lead to eating disorders or self hatred if one does not quite fit with the ideals (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 210).

 

Not to worry; there’s a new Barbie soon to be hitting the shelves now!  This new doll is based off of the proportions of the average woman with the slogan “Averageis beautiful.”  While I do have a few things to say about that slogan, let’s focus on the positives.  Having a doll on the shelves that sends the positive message to girls—that curves are okay—is a HUGE step in our society.  In comparison to normal Barbies, this average doll wears little makeup and more sensible clothing while promoting healthy diet and exercise.  Dolls of the past like Bratz Dolls provided girls with a broader range of beauty images than the typical Barbie.  They had big heads, were multicultural, and were not buxom.  These dolls were eventually taken off the shelves and the creator was sewed for many conflicts with the creators of Barbie.  Another doll is now trying to change the standards of beauty once again.  What do you think; will this new doll be part of the solution to resolving beauty and body image distortion? 

Perfection Is Not Beauty

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/lingerie-brand-aerie-isnt-retouching-their-models-with-photo

Body image has become a sort of obsession within our culture. With the technology boom of mass media came with it a dark side. Media is obsessed with skinny. Skinny is advertised with models posing for Vogue, diet commercials, and ad campaigns photo shopping models into the cookie cutter images they think is “perfect”.  Even though most company’s follow this sort of trend, Aerie has branched out and shown us a light at the end of this tunnel of oppression.

The lingerie brand, Aerie, is not retouching their models for their ad campaigns. All the advertisements that you see are untouched and as is. The real beauty is displayed instead of masked behind digitally edited versions of themselves. In the text “It’s a Big Fat Revolution”, the author says that the cultural standard of society is that fat is ugly. The author goes on to say, “unhappiness is not a result of my fat, it’s a result of a society that tells me I’m bad”. Whether it’s fat on your stomach or on your sides embrace your curves. They call them love handles for a reason! Love your body and love who you are. Aerie is showing many girls that they are beautiful the way they were each uniquely created. Own individualism and gain the confidence of your body to show the world that perfection is not beauty.