In view of Hollywood’s eternal trend of making their celebrities skinnier and more youthful-looking every day, thus making us normal women feel worse about ourselves, the time has come to fight back and change the way we relate to our bodies and understand the concept of beauty.
First things first. As women, beauty is an issue for us. We like to feel beautiful; it's part of our female inner workings. The problem is that the beauty standards the media has imprinted into our brains have very little to do with the average woman. They are, at best, impossible and fascist standards. Women have become enslaved to them.
The long road back from slavery is possible. It mainly involves saying no to the system and trying to change the way you perceive your body and those of the women that surround you. More often it would seem beauty is a competition with other women instead of a nice gesture to our guys or a nice gesture to ourselves.
Make beauty a thing of gestures more than a competition. Understand that we all can be beautiful, even though we haven't lost those five pounds.
The following are some tips that have proven helpful to the guinea pigs my friends and I are:
1. When standing in front of a mirror and taking a look at what you think are “problem areas” (problem areas according to the media’s beauty standards), focus on your dazzling smile, killer hair, and great cleavage instead of how you don’t have great abs.
2. Take a good look at Rubens’ nudes and Renoir’s bathing beauties. You will find they are beautiful. If you look like that, you too are beautiful!
3. Apply make-up (but not in an amateur way; browse the ‘net for information on techniques that will suit you). The high you get from seeing your face come to life is unbeatable.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
I suppose caring about what men think is part of the problem, but if you just can't let go of that, please realize that there's a circular thing going on. Women think men want thin women because advertising presents thin women because advertisers think men want thin women because movies present thin women because movie-makers think men want thin women, and on and on it goes. I'm sure there are plenty of men out there who really are stuck on the idea that thin is beautiful; how could there not be, with how much media sources push that image? But many men, maybe most men, aren't actually drawn to the thinnest girls in town.
More important than your weight is how you view yourself, because that shapes your attitude. A girl whose confident in herself easily overcomes 20-30 pounds of "extra" weight in a heartbeat, or more. And in the end, most guys realize that even if they choose to idealize self-starvation, it takes a model-shaped man to win a model-shaped woman, so we focus on things other than weight. Hair, smile, eyes -- things like that.
Reject the idea that you've got to starve yourself to make men take a second look. It's rubbish.
2 - Arch Conservative
Believe you are beautiful.
You're kidding right?
I'd bet cold hard cash that if some scientific study were done to measure the happiness of middle aged women who "thought beautiful" against the happiness of middle aged women who got boob jobs..the second group would be much happier.
I'm not saying it's right but that is the way it is. We can deny it all we want but the way in which we percieve others to percieve us is a large factor in our decisions and happiness. A new set of sweater puppies will always make a women feel better about herself than abunch of useless psycho mumbo jumbo.
3 - melvin polatnick
Heavy women have to face reality;men expect a women to be shapely before they are willing to have a serious relationship or even date them.But men soon realize that shapely women are in demand and unless they are willing to wait in a long line for a date,they will never date that shapely women.A hungry man will never wait until filet mignon is available,he will settle for less than a choice cut.The heavy women is less than that choice cut,but she can now be in the position to fill the hungry mans needs.Romance and than love will be the outcome for the heavy women and the hungry man.The shapely women might still be out there interviewing all the men that are waiting in line to make love to her.But with so many men to choose from she winds up confused and never finds the right guy.The moral of the story is the turtle can beat the rabbit in the race for the right man.
4 - Martin Snytsheuvel
Well Saint this is a very good and accurate well written article. The points you make are excellent.
Youth and less weight is a great place to be when you are there of course but it does appear as we get older the continuation of looking 22 at 45 becomes extremely difficult if possible at all for both men and women.
I think what you say here is look the best you can at your present age and enjoy life and who you are. I think on the other side as well your husband or boyfriend must also embrace you for the person you are and not who you were at one time years ago. I as a man have embraced my wife for 25 years and appreciated her beauty as a teen, her twenties, and thirties and now into her early forties. Is she the same person that I met back in the early eighties? Absolutely not, she’s better! Is her appearance the same as it was then. In one way it is. That is from the fact that she was beautiful then and beautiful now. Are the "problem areas" evident in her appearance today? Yes there are but it is many years and two children later. I don’t think any of us do not change as we age. I embrace change and reality. I think realistic expectations are the catalyst of a great long term relationship.
The availability and application of make up is definitely a plus and should be taken advantage of.
Buying appropriate clothing is so correct. Women I think can look sexy especially when they buy attention getting clothes like Saint suggests.
Being beautiful and attractive is so easy when avoiding this mis conception of the impossible beauty. Many men find curvey woman sexy and yes much like Renoir and Rueben’s models.
Saint says,” Understand that the most important part of beauty comes from within. Outer beauty fades through time, but inner beauty lasts throughout your whole life.”
I also believe that men like woman are not maintaining the “CHIPPENDALES” look, if they ever had it, so make sure what’s good for the gander has to be great for the goose. I would like to add, insist that your significant other respect and appreciate you each and every day and if that isn’t the case “Go Shopping” for a new man! There are allot of good men out there why settle for less! Feel great about yourself and remove any negative influences that may surround you.
5 - Jane
I agree with everything that is mentioned on the top. Especially with the make-up. It feels fantastic to actually see your face come to life when you're applying make-up to it. Even if you're applying the bare minimum of it. Also HAVE to agree with your TV watching... nothing gives you a bigger tummy and thighs than sitting in front of a TV for hours. But one thing you didn't seem to mention is hair. I think hair is another important part of self-esteem issues. Even if you had a killer body and everything was great, without the right kind of hair style, I don't think it'll work out. There's a hair style that I personally liked from "Shear Genius" that aired on Wednesday at 10pm on Bravo. It's a short cut but really flashy. Right now, they're giving away a trip to NYC for a full make-over. I know this because I work with them. Check out http://condenast.eprize.net/alluresheargenius/?affiliate_id=1d. Good Luck!!!
6 - Summer
I think the article was great! :) You know what? I wear clothes for me first (that make me feel stylish and good about myself) not for any guy and I don't dress skimpy like most girls in my school! I am curvy but I work out because I am an athlete in training and someday hope to make a career out of it, not because I want a guy to notice me. I barley wear no make-up and my friends and I have all come up this idea: we have to write two great things on a peice of paper to everyone in our group and then pass it to the person you wrote it for during classes. At lunch time we all get together and read it together! It's a confidence booster.
7 - Mary
I believe if a woman is ready to do something about her weight or her body image (other than just complain about it), the best thing to do is exercise instead of liposuction or plastic surgery. Those things just aren't natural, and why drain fat out of your body when you can turn it into lean muscle? Out of the 25 shoes I have, my favorite are my running shoes.
Feeling beautiful also needs to include the beauty within that we express through talent. I'm an artist and I express my inner beauty through my art. When people like it, it's a confidence booster! Beauty is inside and out, and we (especially the media) need to realize that beauty is not only physical.
8 - Betty
Inner beauty is key as is loving ourselves. We wouldn't mistreat a friend the way we mistreat our ankles, knees, hips, heart, organs, etc. by burdening them with extra weight. We do a blog for teens to try and help them learn to love themselves healthy and the messages that we post help me too. Ghandi said "Be the change you want to see in the world" ... we can be the change to a healthier us.
9 - innerbeauty
this article is superficial and does not teach a person to gain confidence though other aspects of there lives but is just looking at a persons appearance to find confidence. it contradicts itself by saying dont have high expectations for your beauty but then goes and says buy clothes and put on makeup to feel good. at the end of the day if you dont feel good on the outside then you will not feel good on the outside.
10 - Jeannie Danna
all women are beautiful
11 - Cindy
This article has the right idea that something needs to change. I like this part:
The long road back from slavery is possible. It mainly involves saying no to the system and trying to change the way you perceive your body and those of the women that surround you.
But the article doesn't go far enough. Are we to take the long road back from slavery by continuing to promote the ideas of the slavemaster? (to continue the analogy)
As women, the author states, "beauty is an issue for us."
Why is beauty an issue for us? Who made it an issue? Why do we continue to accept it as an issue? What is the effect of continuing to accept things the way they are--on ourselves, other women, our daughters and sons.
Things don't change until we change. Why should we allow cosmetic companies and clothing manufacturers and diet sellers to choose what will be our issues--how we will see ourselves? Beauty is not an issue unless you accept that it is.
If beauty is not based only on what we are instead of what we look like, it is our enemy. Reject the the conventions of superficial and stereotyped beauty. Imagine a world without these judgments and then make it so by embracing that change.
12 - I disagree
Seriously, you'll just making a person act delusional with this psycho babble crap. You're gonna make a 300 pound cow think she's hot with this article. Seriously, I don't get this relationship or self-esteem crap, every statement contradicts with the other. It makes me feel worse about myself, like I have the one with problems, Men should take a good look at themselves because they're the reason why women feel like shit, they deserve to get toyed around.
13 - Danielle
Ok so, one thing is why is it that it is only weight that is the issue that gets spoken about, there are other problems that make people feel like complete crap.. like cellulite and small breasts. Maybe if in every single TV show, Movie, or commercial there wasnt some perfect woman walking around half naked I would feel a bit better abiout myself.
14 - HD
Exactly. The problem is that TV makes us feel crappy about ourselves by parading women with looks that for most of us are impossible to achieve.
It's really sad for us normal-looking women out there. Check out Glamour's cover issue (online) on plus size models, those are "real beauties" with real bodies.