On the Couch with Gail Saltz, M.D. | A Mental Health Blog at iVillage.com
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Retouched Redbook Cover
Redbook's new cover features a very retouched version of Faith Hill. Every part of her body was made slimmer. Talk about your quest for unrealistic perfection! Is this what women of America really want to see and embrace?
I think magazines may be underrating women. I think that women would buy a magazine with Faith Hill on the cover because in addition to being naturally beautiful, she is a very talented song-writer, singer and performer, passionate about her work, has maintained a marriage in a business where few do and is therefore a very inspirational and attractive package.
Why on earth does her arm need to be super-skinny to make people want to buy the magazine?
Women who are smart enough and deep enough to know that physical beauty is not by any means the most important part of the package need to make their voice heard. We need to tell the world that we value wisdom, passion, creativity, drive, nurturing, strength and a whole host of other vital characteristics, and THAT is what makes a woman attractive.
Media will only sell what we buy and girls will only emulate what they are being told is important. We owe it to ourselves and future generations of women to be forthright in our desire to place value on who we are, not what we look like.
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A standing ovation for Gail Saltz!
We do owe it to ourselves and our daughters to be more vocal about values!
Kids are home for the summer and many of them eat breakfast to the sounds of The Today Show. What message are they getting when they hear the men on the program making lecherous comments about the perfect female bodies modeling bathing suits...and asking the control room to repeatedly rerun the footage of those perfect bodies?
The men making these comments are old enough to be the fathers of these girls. Do they want other men making sexual comments about their daughters?
In addition to transmitting shallow values based on appearance, The Today Show appears to sanction men preying on young girls.
Some parents are at home to negate the negative, some aren't. Some have seen the negative too often and have decided to switch to other networks.
The perfectly made up women in stilettos on The Today Show also need to take a stand against taking part in valuing appearance above all else.
Agree
Thank you, Dr. Gail!
You are one brave lady for daring to speak out.
However, does being,
"forthright in our desire to place value on who we are, not what we look like",
have any practical value?
The sad truth about the reality we are all trapped in, is that we are only a disposable commodity in the eyes of the huge, powerful corporate entities that own everything but our souls. And, that as we, "place value on who we are...", and begin to act accordingly, THEY will only commence to bring in more "manageable" replacements. This world is an employers market, in which the supply is carefully managed to VASTLY exceed any demand (while culling out any potentially rebellious males, via wars [women make more docile, productive slaves]).
Unless, of course, one day the entire planet collectively agrees to take a child production hiatus, and put the population back to numbers closer to those that our ancestors evolved to be happy in.
(Don't hold your breath, this is definitely NOT in the corporate interest.)
If there wasn't the pollutants, and the over-the-counter remedies, and the pressure to eat foods with preservatives, and the desire to smoke, we wouldn't need make-up kits. Even women wouldn't.
Bruce