Blogs I recomend

The first I recommend Vitek's blog about humor in advertising. His blog contains interesting points of view on this problematic. Not all humor is so funny...

http://funnyorannoying.blogspot.com/

The second I recommend Nikolaj's blog about Emo. This blog though me something new, I didn't even know such thing existed. It is very interesting and quite shocking.

http://emosic.blogspot.com/

The third, I recommend Adela's blog about women in media. I liked this one a lot. My blog is on similar theme but from slightly different angle. I am interested in this problematic. It gave me new information.

http://adelaunyp.wordpress.com/

The fourth blog I enjoyed was Katerine's Children and video game. It is a serious problem these days and it deserves attention.

http://childrenmedia-ekaterine.blogspot.com/

The fifth blog I recommend is Rustam's Female in Cartoons. It is an interesting view of what kids are watching these days and what shapes their perception of reality.

http://fadc09.blogspot.com/

In our society, media has become an extremely powerful force that is driving and shaping our lives and our expectation. We are gradually trying to keep up with what is called the media ‘ideal’. This concerns the life style, beauty and perfection of fake lives we can see in media. It is damaging the idea of diverse standards of beauty and shapes our minds to single stream ‘perfect’ body type. Especially for women, if this body type can’t be achieved, they feel something is wrong with them. Extreme cases lead to the feeling of worthlessness and problems such as anorexia and bulimia. Media portrays women in many ways, but mostly they have one in common: thin is beautiful, thin is perfect. The amount of airbrushing and similar processes is not considered by an ordinary woman when she is bombarded with these images every day. It is important to look more closely at this problem to see the effects and possible dangers.

However, some of the world’s most famous fashion nations such as France or Spain are beginning to take an action against overly thin models. They are concerned about the health consequences for the models, which in the end have an effect on ordinary woman as well. The trend of extreme thinness has greatly increased over past decades, and the average weight of a model is getting still lower. Just to illustrate this, normal model size in the 1950s was 8 to 10, whereas today it is 0 to 2. It is going so rapidly down, it can’t go anywhere anymore. The results of this are cases where models are starving themselves almost to death and are fainting during fashion shows. The age of the girls went rapidly down as well, and today we can see 13 years old models. As a reaction to all this, overly thin models were banned from certain fashion shows. Just recently, in 2008, France being one of the top fashion countries created guidelines promoting body diversity. This is basically the attempt to get rid of the pictures of overly thin models, which are so widespread these days. This is only an attempt to make rules; it doesn’t go as far as passing the law banning models with certain BMI (body mass index) from fashion shows. As the president of the French Fashion Federation said, he wants to educate the public. The question is: is this going to help at all? Business is business. At least, France has certain regulations for girls under 16, for example to get regular heath checkups.

For the first time in history, a plus sized model won the prestigious fashion show “America’s Next Top Model”. Maybe the world’s look on overly thin models is really about to change. It is one win, and it certainly doesn’t change the standard view of ‘perfect’ woman’s body but it is certainly a step in a different direction. Whitney Thompson made it somewhere, where only extra thin models did before. Although she is not fat, for the real woman standard, she is size 10. The comparison with today’s size 0 models is extreme. She herself believes that she can change something in the fashion world by showing that healthy weight is much better than the anorexia of models that is so common these days. It is certainly better than cases resulting to death, which for example the death of model Luisel Ramos who died during the fashion show after months of starving herself. Models like Whitney Thomson certainly have a better effect on real women, who have been bombarded for years with the fact that only thin and nothing else is beautiful. Body diversity in the fashion world is almost non-existent. I am not saying that fashion shows should be flooded with overweight people, but it is good to have some diversity. It is true that some designers and fashion shows are banning overly thin models from their shows, which in many cases, I believe, can even save many people’s lives. Tyra Banks, the host of “America’s Next Top Model”, who used to be a top model for many years herself, is leading campaigns for normal women to accept their own bodies the way they are and is fighting against the spread of anorexia among women and models. The fact that Whitney Thomson won that kind of competition shows that beauty is diverse and people in the fashion industry can and want to do something with the dangerous size 0 craziness.

I like the following article because it gives a basic information on what anorexia nervosa is, and stresses that it is also a mental, not only physical problem. We can find out basic facts that are explained by normal language, not in doctor’s terms. There are also some links for anyone that is interested in the issue more deeply. It is good to know these things, for parents or friends or women themselves that might feel they have some problems related to this. It also stresses the media’s role in the whole issue. There are videos that are attached that show some stories of real women that were suffering from this horrible disease. It is one thing to talk about a problem, and quite another to see it with one’s own eyes. I believe that such videos can help some women to ‘get scared’ before it is too late. This is the article
http://anorexia-nervosa.suite101.com/article.cfm/medias_unrealistic_body_image

The following article stresses the real reasons behind such a massive beauty industry. The reasons are economic. The fashion and beauty industries are earning a lot of money on something that is hard to achieve. They are selling dieting pills and anti-aging products to women that are constantly told that being old or overweight is bad and that it has to be reversed.
“It is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth anywhere between 40 and 100 billion US dollars a year selling temporary weight loss (90 to 95 % of dieters regain the lost weight).”
The article also mentions the danger of young girls starting at age 5 or 6 being exposed to all this. In this young age they start to think that their bodies are imperfect and develop bad habits, which creates serious problems is their later lives. It also mentions the overall effect of the absurdity of media portraits of beauty standards. It can be found on the following link.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm