Never thought I.dFollow

That brown chick look illegitimate.

While women's sizing is somewhat arbitrary, I'd guess that the fact that the newspaper is in Australia has something to do with it as well.

Edited, Mar 17th 2010 5:10pm by Jophiel

I was always a little surprised they picked her. Pleasantly surprised. But I also felt like some of the clothes they dressed her in were terrible.

Well, yeah, but that was part of the characterization. She wasn't supposed to be a fashion plate.

I bet he likes his women like he likes his ****** anime characters, one dimensional.

And she's still heavier than the woman in the other linked picture who is listed as being a size 14. And do you think that when she's a size 8 she's anywhere near as skinny as the size 8 in that same picture?


And heck. If that woman is a size 8, then what the hell is a size 6? Or 4? And does anything smaller than that exist? I'm thinking you end out with negative mass at some point here...

You are all missing the "conspiracy". When people buy only what they need, they consume relatively little. Advertisers and marketers realised early on that to pump up business they had to create "wants" in people. And the best "wants" to create in people, to keep them buying things, were unobtainable "wants".

Having 100,000s of images around of women - even images of women who are ostensibly targeted at men - who are held up as "beautiful", but who have bodies and faces that only occur naturally in 1 to 5% of women.....means that 95% of women will continue endlessly buying products that subliminally promise them that they can achieve that naturally unachievable look.

The simplest example of that is 15 year old models, styled, posed and photographed on the fashion pages to look like they are in their 20s or 30s, in magazines aimed at 40 year old women, with advertisements in the same magazine for make-up and skin products.

In film and images aimed at men... the woman isn't only supposed to be an object of desire for male watchers. She is also held up to be what the women watchers want to be herself.

I don't want to turn this into a wall of text. Can you get the connection that the Real Life of film stars and other celebrities is captured in media and then juxtaposed with items to sell? That stars, celebrities and models in their professional roles are juxtaposed with items to sell? The juxtaposition can be so tenuous that unless you are social-science, psychologically, or culturally savvy, you don't realise that there is an imaginary universe of glitteratti created in the human hive mind by the general media. The media pretends the imaginary, made up narrative is the real narrative. That way marketers can pretend to you that joining the imaginary world is possible by buying the right products.

Edited, Mar 18th 2010 2:26am by Aripyanfar

Pre and Post Feminism didn't make much difference to advertisers. They just had to alter their Lifestyle messages. In fact Post Feminism delivered retailers and advertisers a new market.

When aiming at women, the Ideal Lifestyle message was simply changed from being the super Wife and Mother (Beautiful for her husband, loving Nurturer for her children) to being the Super-Woman (Controlled and Competant Career Woman, Beautiful for her lover and her self, loving Nurturer for her children).

The new market was male physical attractiveness. Pre-Feminism, the Ideal Lifestyle of a man was a man who was powerful and wealthy. The principal social message in the general media when women looked at men was that the man was going to be a good provider.

When equal opportunity came along there were two changes. Women became their own providers. So men couldn't rely on a good job to get them a desirable woman, or any woman at all, any more. Secondly, women now "owned" their own sexual desires, and laid claim to deserving to be sexually satisfied. They claimed the right to have a sexually desirable man.

So pre-feminism, marketers would often stir desire in men for a product or service if it held out the illusion that they would be more career or socially worthy for spending money on it. That the product would help them climb the money and class ladder.

Post-feminism, advertisers also have the now wide open market for selling men Handsomeness, Sexiness, and Desirability. It's an equal opportunity world now, as 1-5% of the male population is air-brushed and hung up in a million places to make the other 95% of boys and men feel inadequate, and if they only buy this antiperspirant, or that pet-care product, or this lawn-mower, or that car, they'll have wash-board abs, super cut biceps, no body hair, a chiselled chin, icy blue eyes, totally symmetrical features and a full head of blonde hair.


And I can tell you right now, the same way that guys are really puzzled that these anorexic stick insects that feel like bicycle frames in bed are held up as beautiful and sexy women... many women just don't want the super-cut or icy males in the advertisements, magazines, or films.

I went to bed with a super-cut athlete once, and it was like making love with a sack of bricks. I hated it. My two long term male partners have both had muscle free flesh, one without muscles underneath, and one with muscles underneath, and that is 100% more sexually pleasing to me.

Secondly, while one of my partners was naturally hair free, except around his genitals, the other has hair pretty much everywhere. And while I love him despite the look of it in some places, I definitely love him partly because it feels good everywhere. It's soft and long enough that I run my fingers through it every where I run my fingers over his body. The feeling is incredibly pleasant, this light tickling sensation over the backs of my fingers, while my finger tips or nails delight in the feeling of his soft skin underneath. In an airy way, I get to plunge my fingers into him.

Without the shadow of a doubt. As a man, you can still get away with being short and fat and bold and arrogant and a general ****, as long as you're rich.

I did find Ari's triple wall of texts very accurate, though.

Heh, yeah. But you were all asleep! I had no one to talk to but myself.

It got redundant as she broke it down into easier to understand axioms. Good points, but the horse was dead with the first post.