Asma II

            One blog post was simply not enough to properly convey all the info I gained from when I interviewed Asma. Asma is the exact opposite of how most Middle Eastern women her age act. My grandmother for example has been asking me and my brothers when we’re going to get married since we were 13 whereas Asma’s been warning us to take very good care of any girls we’re in a relationship with, otherwise she’ll, “box our heads in.”

            She’s extremely pro women and to this day surprises me with how open minded she is. Another of my interview questions was about the difference between the relationship between men and women when she was my age and nowadays. She said, “It’s getting better because women have jobs but I still don’t think we’re equal to men when it comes to income.” Which is extremely similar to Naomi Wolf’s vies in her book, “Women are shown either to receive less than men, or to get nothing at all. That is still true”(49).

            Another question I asked was on the subject of beauty. “What do you think true beauty is?” I asked, to which she responded, “that’s for everyone to decide for themselves.” This quote kind of blew my mind and I have a feeling that Naomi Wolf would agree with Asma because in her book she says, “Why that one?” referring to the vague nature of beauty. She also discusses how the ‘perfect face’ is only ‘the perfect face’ because millions of women are looking at it and the marketing industry itself is calling it ‘the perfect face’ (71).

            Lastly, I asked her about how she was treated in Lebanon as a politically active woman, showing up to the male dominated protests of the time. She responded by talking about how she wasn’t accepted and sometimes even abused just for showing up. Attractive women weren’t supposed to try and be on the same level as men, which echoes the double standard that Naomi wolf talks about in The Beauty Myth when she says, “Women are allowed a mind or a body, but not both” (59).

            I got lucky that I even knew Asma, she was the perfect person to interview on this subject. She has never bought into the beauty myth, and she didn’t need a book to tell her what was wrong with it, all she needed was her life experience. If you ask me that shows me just how false the beauty myth is and how much awareness needs to be spread.

Women Holding Women Back

            We were first introduced to the concept of women holding women back in The Handmaid’s Tale when we were introduced to the Aunts that taught the Handmaids how they should act as well as what their lives will become.

            Women, just like men are connected to one another, whether it be through common goals, the formation of communities, protest, or even something as minor as group trips to the bathroom, but Naomi Wolf thinks that the public behavior of women is one of the factors that is holding them down.

            Granted, Naomi Wolf mostly talks about how men and industries are keeping women down but she also discusses how women are doing it to themselves. She says that, “beauty thinking urges women to approach each other as possible adversaries until they know they are friends” which to me seems like a completely unhealthy outlook on one another (75).

            You can see the downside of such views in communities just like ASL. The girls that attend school here are a lot more clique oriented then the boys are. I’m a guy, and I can safely say that it is very rare to find another guy that attends this school that I would find it awkward to talk to, get along with, or even work with. However I can’t say the same for the girls. A female friend was complaining to me about her work partner for a certain class, when I asked what was wrong with her partner she said, ”nothing, I just don’t know her at all”. I told her she should just get to know her and she just told me that I “didn’t understand”.

            This negative effect of the beauty myth is one of the most common that I come into contact with as I do it on a daily basis, but Wolf claims that there’s a simple solution. “Though women have networks of intimate friends, the myth, and women’s conditions until recently, have kept women from learning how to do something that makes all male social change possible: How to identify with unknown other women in a way that ins not personal.” (75)

            If you ask me that’s the best solution, but the only way we can reach that is to get rid of the beauty myth and I honestly have no idea how we would go about doing that, which is why I’m really looking forward to the last chapter of our book.

The Beauty Myth in Movies

Last week, my mother has gotten really into the legally blonde movies. She asked me to watch with her for a while so I obliged. I was tired and lying down on the couch with the movie droning on in the background. I was about to sneak a quick nap in, but the movie seemed to jump out at me. The beauty myth jumped out of the screen and slapped me in the face.

Elle Woods, the main character of the movie is a ditzy blonde stereotype trying to be a lawyer. Granted this movie is all about overcoming stereotypes about being attractive. Men and women persecute her alike for being ‘too pretty to be a lawyer’, and she eventually overcomes this barrier (the whole plot of the movie).

This is all fine and dandy, but there were some sexist undertones in the movie. For example, at the end of the film, she breaks up her boyfriend and shows that she’s independent, but then she ruins it by saying, “I've been waiting for a long time for you to say that. But if I'm going to be a partner in a law firm by the time I'm 30, I need a boyfriend who's not such a complete bonehead.” She literally states that she needs a man in her life if she’s going to achieve her goals.

            This is bad enough in itself but throughout the entire movie all the characters are fixated on beauty. If they’re jealous, they’re jealous because they’re not as pretty as her. Elle says things like, “Curls weren’t a good look for her. She didn’t have your bone structure.” And  “Oh, I like your outfit too, except when I dress up as a frigid bitch, I try not to look so constipated. “

            People are called  ‘shallow’ for judging her for being too pretty, but she’s justified when she insults people for being less attractive then her. Another thing I noticed is that nobody in the movie is remotely offended by this system and my mom wasn’t aware of these undertones in the movie until I told her about them. She says things like “I object!” when a man whistles at her, and she does it as a joke. There’s no inclination towards change.

            This movie and others like it show that it isn’t just the advertising that supports the beauty myth, but movies too.

Vanity

I noticed something the other day while I was on the bus. People continuously look at themselves. At night, when you can see your reflection in the glass, it’s nearly impossible to not look at yourself. It’s human nature. Everyone looks once in a while and they always do a certain pose or facial expression that they use when they look at themselves, and it’s quite funny to see.

The point that I’m trying to get at here is that everyone is more obsessed with the way they look then they would care to admit. It’s pretty embarrassing to be caught checking yourself out. People are vain in every way that you can imagine, whether it’s the way they look, personal achievements, or just the way they live their life. In The Beauty Myth, Wolf discusses “the area of appearance that seems to be one where women feel they can most easily exert some control over how they will be responded to.” (43) Somebody might be judged for taking too much pride in their appearance, but it’s true that people will judge you based on appearance. Anything from what you’re wearing to the color of your skin, it changes the way people perceive you.

“To tell a woman she is ugly can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly.” (36) This quote from The Beauty Myth what a huge affect other people’s opinions can have on a person, and the way somebody looks is a huge factor in what people think of them. If you tell someone something negative about them, they’re probably gonna end up thinking about how they can fix that part of themselves for hours, if not days. So when the marketing industry not only implies that there’s something wrong with women if they don’t look like the women in their ads but also offers them a solution then they’ll get customers. I’m not saying anything is wrong with taking care of your appearance, I’m just saying it’s not right to judge people based on it.

So how can we fix this? How can we stop people from judging others based on appearance? I’m never 100% certain about anything I suggest for the entirety of the world but if I had to suggest one thing, I would try and eliminate stereotypes. Stereotypes of all kinds are what us judge without knowing one another and I really think that if stereotypes became a thing of the past, then people would stop worrying so much about how people view them. 

Asma

            Asmahan Tsoi is a family friend. We just call her Asma. She’s lived all around the world and really is like a grandmother to me. She was born in Iraq and is currently living in London. A lot of the questions that I asked her related to her childhood and the issues currently present in the Middle East regarding gender roles, stereotypes, and politics in general.  She’s led a very interesting, independent, and worthwhile life so far. Her childhood in Iraq was a very happy one, as she was born into a wealthy Iraqi family,

“We were a very wealthy family and although there were plenty of businesswomen that had careers in nearly every field, she was a housewife. Most women of considerable wealth were at the time.”

            I asked her why the wealthy women were mostly housewives and she went on to describe the diversity in Iraq, “there were jews, christians, muslims, and anything else you could imagine. It’s just that the muslims held most of the wealth, we were there first.”

            Asma was a happy child and her childhood was quite normal in her memory, but what really changed her life was when her family insisted that she get married. Of course, she did what they asked not being sure what else she could do.

            She was married at a very young age, but soon ran away to Lebanon where she was able to find secretary work. This was where she met my mom. My mom was trying to rent an apartment in Lebanon, but no one would let her rent an apartment without a man living in the apartment. After a couple months of couch surfing my mom finally found Asma. She was the only person in Lebanon that would rent a flat to a single woman in her twenties.

            Asma met a young businessman while there, and that’s where she gets her last name. They’re still married and have 3 kids, 2 of which have kids of their own. Not only this, but Asma was able to break free from the constraints that Islam put on women and she converted to Catholicism. She’s not only one of the bravest people I know, but one of the kindest. To me, she was an independent woman before people even knew what it meant.

           

Killing Us Softly Part 2

            One of the strangest aspects about the issues brought up in Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 is one of awareness. After all, se says “that things aren’t getting better and that they’re getting worse”. This is her fourth movie on the subject and she claims that she still needs to educate the world on the dangers of the beauty myth in advertising.

            What surprises me about this is that nothing about the advertising industry is a secret. Men and women alike know that the Photoshop is used widespread across the world for digital imaging, but people still try and attain the impossible standard of beauty that they see in advertisements. Is it our fault that the beauty myth is still around? I don’t think we should blame ourselves. I think that certain advertisements, standards, and images have been implanted into our minds from a young age and we’ve just become more and more accustomed to them. We would all consider ourselves ‘used to’ the sexual imagery presented to us daily, but if the ads shown to us were taken to another country, for example Saudia Arabia or Iran, we’d get a completely different reaction. They’re used to women covering themselves to show humility and we’re used to almost the exact opposite. So what is it that makes this beauty myth seem so permanent?

            In my humble opinion, it’s the youth being exposed to this kind of imagery that makes it seem like it’s a permanent fixture in our culture. It’s those that don’t take in advertisements within the right context. A lack of education is what makes these ads so dangerous. If one truly thinks that a model is what every woman should aspire to look like but isn’t educated about the use of photoshop, or genetic differences in body type, then they will become self-conscious about the way that they look.

            There’s no other way to put it. Since we can’t exactly change the way people market their products, we have to change the way that we view them, and not just from an adult point of view, but also from as young as we can start educating ourselves about it. Jean Kilbourne describes this type of education as “Media Literacy” in her presentation and she even says that they’ve got a few classes running, but what we need is more than a few classes, we need to make it common knowledge.

Killing Us Softly

            Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 demonstrates, through advertisements, the unhealthy aspects of our culture. She discusses Weight, health, dietary choices, brands, and advertising’s affects on both men and women, and why we need to change what’s being shown to our not only us, but our children as well.

            Personally, I was shocked by some of the content that was being presented and discussed, granted not by some of the newer content (since I’ve been exposed to similar things my whole life), but I was shocked when I was presented with ads like the ‘innocence is sexier than you think’ campaign as well as the use of Photoshop. It truly frightened me to see that they were able to use the body parts of different women to create the face and body of an entirely new woman. It’s no wonder our image of beauty has been distorted overtime. We’ve been exposed to what Kilbourne calls “the same rare body type which has become the norm in advertising”.

            Another thing that stood out to me was the sexualization and taboo nature of food in advertising. We shouldn’t couple digitally enhanced models with a radically different and unhealthy view of food. It leads to a widespread lack of self-confidence, eating disorders, and worst of all depression. These aren’t the messages we should be broadcasting. The compulsive pursuit of an impossible standard of beauty amongst women is a direct result of exactly this kind of marketing.

            After watching this presentation I can actually say that I’ve now more fully understood what we’ve been discussing as well as reading in class. The Beauty Myth tells us the media’s affects on us but Kilbourne shows us. The disturbing yet truthful imagery she shows us is the only way that, as she puts it, we can “increase awareness and lead to global changes”, and I for one completely agree with her.

            The objectification and infantilization of women may not be the direct cause of violence, but it definitely doesn’t help. Not only this, but all these negative sides of marketing industry are only there for one thing, profit. Are we really so blind as a culture that we can’t demand reform or regulation? There is definitely a way, and it is definitely the time, yet even with all the activist groups out there battling against this we still aren’t seeing any change, and to me that’s just wrong.