Destroying Ourselves

Alright... so I wrote this a while back and it's long and ranty & probably doesn't even make sense by the end because I'm terrible at keeping my ideas organized, my essays in college are horrific.  So yeah... Just a warning.

Again I'm taking a Women's Studies course.  Not my favorite class by a long shot.  Well today we were talking about how media affects women and then how it's just women being oppressed more and more.  (a little of which I believe is someone reading into ads a little too much, but whatever)  I hate this class simply because it feels like 24/7 male bashing.  It's also full of poor unsuspecting little freshies who are fresh out of Mommy & Daddy's arms to the big world on their own to develop their own ideas and opinions and they're having this crap shoved into their impressionable little heads.

*headdesk*

Yes, let's teach women to hate men, that sounds like a great idea.

Maybe I'm odd. I married a man who every day tells me I'm beautiful and looks at me with nothing but love.  (balls, now I'm tearing up, lol)  I'm not saying that women aren't oppressed or being treated unfairly in the world.  Yes I'm angered by the fact that I only make 74 cents or so to every dollar a man makes, that's unfair BUT I don't feel this is only the fault of men.  I'm also angry that women are expected to be rail thin and perfect, but this also isn't only by the fault of men.  They don't deserve to have all of that placed on their heads.

Women are largely responsible for the pressure on women to look "perfect".  Don't believe me?  Come on ladies let's be HONEST here, we've ALL done this.

You're with friends and a skinny "good looking" woman (by America's current standards) walks by.  What gets said?

Things like:

"Those can NOT be real"

"There's no way you can eat and still be that skinny"

"That's not natural."

Now a thicker woman walks by:

"Someone eats their feelings."

"Has she looked in a mirror?"

"She can't be happy looking like that."

I know this happens because I myself am guilty and I have overheard other women say these types of things every damn day.  We have all at one point talked shit about another woman for her looks for one reason or another.  We are more guilty than anyone for what ads have come to represent.

A Twitter friend Nanti_SARRMM sent me this article while I was ranting and raving on Twitter (poor Tweeps who follow me get that kind of stuff a lot, lol) Worthless Women and the Men Who Create Them and it's a great blog by a man and how they make women feel worthless and how they need to make a change to their behavior to help women realize they are NOT worthless.  And yeah, men are partially responsible for women and their skewed vision of themselves and other women, but they're not the whole problem.  Women are ridiculously critical of each other and ourselves.  I think we've all seen something we've pointed out on someone else in ourselves, which then just makes us feel worthless.

So my point, which sounded really good in my head but now doesn't seem to be being made very well as I write this, is that men are not the only ones responsible for women having a terrible self image of themselves.  Women are just as much, if not MORE, responsible than men.  ALSO, men feel pressures of advertising too.  How often is a man in an ad without a shirt, a guy that doesn't have a 6 pack?  Yeah, almost NEVER.  Both men and women are being shown what someone (who needs their damn head examined) thinks is the ideal man or woman every day.  It's all over TV, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and the internet.  Pretty much unless you're blind, or maybe Amish or something, you're going to see these things every day of your life.

and...

/rant.

Please, tell me what you think.  Are you a guy constantly feeling the pressure to be a muscular stud?  A woman sick & tired of not even being able to feel comfortable in her own skin because society keeps telling her that a healthy weight makes you unhappy?  Who do you blame?  A week or so ago my photo prof mentioned readers being upset with Sports Illustrated for using healthier models and how they lost business as a result.  Who's responsible?