Our table on “How The Social Media Affects Women” was a big hit. In my opinion, it was THE biggest hit. I read the article in The Breeze by Tom Pompey and frankly, I wish I could put my 2 cents in. My fellow classmates and I set up the tables (1A did their own) , set up the music, got the bagels, coffee and tea and broke EVERYTHING down afterwards. We were more enthused and apparently wanted that ‘A’ badly!

In conclusion, the students that visited out stand agreed with the “crap” that broadcasts women as such an inferior. We have to change the standards of beauty that society has stuck by for so many years. By the way, did you know it’s healthier to eat a donut with multicolored sprinkles and chocolate than a multi-grain bagel with cream cheese (even the fat free kind)?!

This is me. =)

As a woman, it’s hard to live life when there’s a constant cloud of smoke in your eyes. One thing is for sure, getting past all the illusions and learning to love yourself is when you can start to truly live.

Pulling research together with my group has opened my eyes a bit when it comes to beauty for women. I see the outside, which does matter to me, then i see the inward beauty that brings out the personality in someone. Reading articles and vying pictures on beautiful actresses and models, i realize that its human nature to look for outward beauty. But it can also be dangerous. I never understood what its like to be behind the face of a woman, but after reading our research, i see the masks that are put on to wear for beauty and show.

I want to send a positive message to all women.  That you need to focus on your inner beauty than from there your outer beauty will expose itself.  Doing something about this issue is key and my group and I have taken the first step to make a change. 

Many girls and women feel excluded from society’s stereotype of ideal beauty.

In fact a study commissioned by DOVE, we found that only 2% of women around the world feel comfortable describing themselves as beautiful! The current recipe for ideal beauty has the following ingredients: a beautiful woman must be extremely tall and very thin, have small hips but a big bust. She has large eyes, large lips and a small nose. We are so used to seeing this beauty stereotype in the media that we assume that such features have always been considered ideal.

Think again.

Curvy didn’t always mean “fat” and “thin” didn’t always mean anything other than underweight and underfed. In fact, wide hips and bottoms were once so prized that women hid their unfashionably slim hips beneath bustles, an undergarment that tied at the waist and padded their backsides with rolls stuffed with cork, horsehair or down. In the 1880′s bustles were so flamboyantly huge that “it was popularly declared a tea-tray could be comfortably rested on it.”

At one time, smaller breasts reigned as the ideal. Women did not wear push up bras or get breast implants: they sought breast flatteners. Early corsets flattened breasts and pushed them to the side, the better to highlight the beauty found further south in wide hips. In the 1920s, the ideal of beauty for the flappers was the flat chest; to the newly emancipated women of the 1920′s breast implants would have been hideous.

The fashionable face also changes through time. One of the legendary beauties of all times was Cleopatra, the last queen of ancient Egypt and the lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Newly authenticated portraits show that Cleopatra was not a beauty by current standards – she was too short, too fat, and her nose was too big. Cleopatra was barely 5 feet tall (average for her time) and had rings of fat around her neck, called “Venus rings” by art historians. Her nose was prominent and long with a pronounced downward curve.

Full-lipped beauties like Angelina Jolie would have been out of favor in England of the eighteenth century. At that time, Sir Henry Beaumont said that in the ideal feminine face “the mouth should be small… a truly pretty mouth is like a rose-bud that is beginning to blow.”
This brief tour of the fashionable face and body has one major take away lesson: ideals of beauty change and beauty is and always has been a moving target.

Prominent noses or button noses, thin or plump, big breasted or flat chested, curvy or petite, straight hair or ringlets a diversity of features have been the ideal of beauty at one time or another in history. Be yourself and prize the features you have and feel confident in the skin you are in.

Sources
Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest
C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes. NY: DOVEr, 1992.
Richard Corson, Fashions in Makeup: From Ancient to Modern Times. London: Peter Owen, 1972
Harold Koda, Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.

Our blog is mainly targeted for women.  As a group we are sick of what the social standard of beauty is.  We want to let women know that what we see in the social media is not what we need to become.  It’s not normal to be 100 pounds and be 5’10″.  Beauty lies within yourself, and a women has the power to do anything, and as you begin to love yourself for who you are and what you look like.  Women can start the process of Doing It Yourself.  This is the point Chris Calrsson makes in Nowtopia. Happiness rely’s on oneself of doing it yourself.  Once we achieve that we can truly find happiness all around us.

Ana Carolina Reston, 21, was a Brazilian fashion model who worked on runways around the world. She also appeared in print ads, showing off the creations of top fashion designers such as Giorgio Armani. She always looked poised and in control, but her life away from the runway was anything but controlled. Her desire to stay thin turned into an eating disorder. She existed on apples and tomatoes, and her weight plunged to a dangerous level. Finally, her body just gave up. Despite the efforts of doctors, she died. At the time of her death, the 5-foot 8-inch model weighed a scant 88 pounds. Her body mass index (BMI) was 13.4, so low that the World Health Organization classifies it as dangerously thin. BMI is a calculation that measures body fat based on height and weight.

The Skinny on Models. (2007, January). Current Events, 106(15), 7.  Retrieved November 24, 2009, from Children’s Module. (Document ID: 1193787311).