I hate to sell us out, Ladies, but the fact is We Are F-ing Crazy. Not “crazy” in that “She’s off the hook!” way that carries somewhat of a positive connotation, suggesting power and a no-bullshit attitude. Nope. Full-on, fucked in the head, distorted perspective of reality, padded walls & buckled jackets type of “crazy”. It is hard to deny this fact when you stop & consider the way we see ourselves, each other, the whole of woman-hood. Who else but the truly crazy hate their bodies the way we do & try everything in their power to force their figures into impossible shapes and sizes? Who else but the mentally ill would subject themselves to such levels of self loathing rooted in aspects of our physical appearances that we have no control over? Is it not abnormal to have such distorted visions of ourselves, to be blind to our own fabulousness because one minor flaw sticks out in our minds above all else? What about the way we detach ourselves from our bodies? As if the mind & the bod were mutually exclusive entities; one having to babysit & regulate the other, which never seems to project the person we are inside no matter how little we eat, how much we spend on our beauty regime, or what ridiculous women’s magazine “advice” we follow to the letter. It’s not like being a female is one long trip to Wakko World; don’t get me wrong! At some point after high school is over, you learn to give yourself a break now & again. BUT, it never really goes away does it? You still have spats of the “crazy” & you still judge other females by the book’s cover, so to speak. Self-loathing is either less extreme these days or it’s so much a part of your day-to-day that you notice it less than you used to, but either way it’s still hanging around; dictating your wardrobe choices, shot-calling when it comes to how much time you spend “getting ready”, and regulating when it is that you draw attention to yourself. I mean, shit! Look at the way advertisers speak to our inner crazy person to convince us to purchase their crap! Even they know what is going on in our heads, just how distorted our body image actually is, even if we aren’t all that quick to admit it out loud.
This one here is an ad for breast augmentation. Look how happy & healthy (& scar free) she is with her new fake tits! Don’t you want to be happy & secure enough to frolic about top-less? Yeah? Then buy you some silicone falsies, undergo a notoriously painful surgery that will increase the likelihood of breast cancer going undetected in it’s early (& easiest to treat) stages, run a 25-40% chance of having to undergo a second surgery to correct issues associated with the initial implants, and get used to the idea that your formerly normal breasts may now “leak”, “rupture”, “deflate”, “harden” from the presence of scar tissue around the implant, or result in irreparable nerve damage! Maybe even develop a Connective Tissue Disease! Still smiling? Despite the availability of this kind of vital risk information (here’s the FDA’s page on the subject), a whopping 399,440 women in the United States still bought into the bullshit in 2007. It is projected that over the course of the next five years, up to 179,748 of those ladies will undergo a reoperation to deal with complications (this is the FDA’s conservative estimate, BTW). Sounds like self-destructive crazy bullshit, don’t it?
And what about the mind-fuck we’re handed where food is concerned? The first ad, for Calvin Klein panty hose, just screams “Suck it in!” and we all know that bitch*** ain’t in need of the tummy & bottom control panels described in the ad copy. Is that even the lower half of a woman? A definite lack of curvature, a signature trait of the human female, makes me wonder. The second ad is accompanied by the copy “The pair you wear to cooking class will also look fabulous at your weight loss seminar.” WTF? Seriously? Can you sell us shoes minus the food/weight issues, please? And what would that slim woman be doing at a weight loss seminar? Anyone? If she’s in need of a fatty seminar, I’m way over due. The third ad sells us chocolate as a substitute for another guilty pleasure, expensive shoes. Not chocolate for it’s own sake, y’know cause it’s chocolate & tastes good? Nope, Hershey’s would rather appeal to our fucked up system of rewards be being “good girls”. Behaved yourself? Alright, you can indulge in a pair of shoes or a chocolate bar (just ONE though, fatty-fat-fat!). I mean, a food item can be associated with any other set of wants & desires EXCEPT those associated with eating. God forbid you acknowledge the candy for what it is! If you thought about the neurotic assumptions behind all these ads; that you might eat something & therefore need an excuse or explanation for your behavior, that you might have (ekk!) curves as a result of that eating, that you apparently only wear shoes to places associated with food or fasting; you might be taken aback by the Anti-Fatty messages being (excuse me) shoved down your throat. Or you might just (sorry) ingest the Skinny Minnie Ideology, just like the 75% of Glamour Magazine readers who think their “too fat”. Even you smart chicks aren’t above the bullshit on this one – a study of Stanford undergraduate & graduate students found 68% of their sample group felt worse about their looks after exposure to ads like the ones above. Even more annoying is the discovery that as we age, we tend to compare ourselves to advertising models more often & since we’re less likely to bare a resemblance, we’re more likely to be disheartened & depressed by the imagery. *sigh*
***See? Hostility much?
Is it really surprising that we see ourselves as a mish-mosh of woman pieces rather than whole female humans? And is it too much to ask y’all in the ad world to hook us up with an entire woman in a mo’ fucking ad? This bits & pieces shit is creepy & it’s gotta’ go, y’all. Might have been “cutting edge” way back when, but I think we can agree that it’s tired now. Thanks for the complex though!
And finally, my most favorite line of crap that I am as likely as any other broad to buy into…
The Photo Shopped Skin in Beauty Product Advertisements! Never a flaw! Not in the teen years, the twenties, thirties, on up to however fucking old Diane Keaton is in those fucking L'Oreal ads. My bucks fly like confetti when these ads invade my space & I’m not even gonna’ front by telling you I don’t believe the crap I’m told in the ad copy. In fact, it’s probably the only bullshit I believe at face value, without question; it’s sort of my theological belief – that said beauty product shall bestow promised results upon the believer, Amen!
Crazy bitches or what? Honestly?
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