Unfortunately for Melinda the dreadful scenario she writes about is the INEVITABLE historical result of the psychotic split in the attitude to the body, and hence women altogether, that MISINFORMED the old time "religious" mind that Melinda champions.
The mind that sees "sin" in peoples under-wear.

That psychotic split is the ROOT cause of ALL of our seemingly intractable social problems, including pornogaphy and world-wide terrorism and warfare---the war against the body, or the war of "spirit" vs "flesh".

Both terrorists and pornographers are crippled in their capacity to feel. They both totally objectify their victims, and of course invent bizarre explanations to justify their actions.

In one way or another these three references address the origins & consequences of this psychotic split.

1. http://www.dabase.org/2armP1.htm#ch2
2. http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/jesusandme.html
3. http://www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006.pdf

Ref # 3 was spoken at the time of the Stone Buddhas incident in Afghanistan. The psychotic sex-paranoid Talibans that did that vandalism share the same "spirit" vs "flesh" mind that is a feature of all right wing religionists---it is just a matter of degree and current cultural circumstances.

For all our advances in human rights and dignity that we have achieved in our Western civilisation, it is downright disgusting that the dignity of women as a whole, as opposed to an individual's right to degrade themselves for profit and entertainment, takes second place to the right for male titillation and commerce.

Before you jump on the 'but these women do so voluntarily and are paid' meme, the fact is that it has created, no incorrect, has maintained the apartheid system for women where you are 'good' or 'bad'. A normal, healthy woman to be taken seriously and with respect, has to downplay her sexuality to almost non-existence, has to downplay her body to gain "respect". For example, the female body has breasts, they protrude from our body (and some protrude more than others). That is our natural shape. Healthy men and women have sex drives that just do their thing (at any time any place I feel like hmmm, right now). The female is NOT designed to advertise to the male sexual receptiveness - the breasts do not visibly change, the vulva does not visibly change. The basis for men being visual is based not on nature, but on cultural restrictions placed on women in hiding them.

The reasoning for this objectification is based on the myth of testosterone and the "right" of men to fiddle with themselves 24/7 at their whim. It's a huge money earner, and woman's dignity comes second. The majority of decent men who do not proscribe to this, are loudly silent in actually trying to prohibit our public space from this conditioning of both men and women, boys and girls, to the sexual function of women to arouse activity in flaccid penis's.

One of the most foul components of this industry: the role the "progressive" feminists have played in turning the movement, (well not exactly a movement now as it's very disjointed), full circle. Volunteer female sexual slavery by the few conditioning the many to it's acceptance. See how many parents are happy to sexualise their young girls, and think nothing of it.

The previous posts lay the blame squarely on the pornographers and men.

Whilst not being a frequent viewer of porn, the one thing that I can comment on is that the stick insects you see on the runways and fashion magazines are not featured in porn.

Men while visually stimulated are not the ones pushing for the 00 figures.

My daughter in choosing her appearance is more worried about what her girl friends think than the boys.

The focus for change should then be on the girls' and womens' magazines and other female based opinion generators. The feminists need to wind their necks in and get their own house in order.

I get a little tired of what may be serious issues treated with ridiculous solutions. The proposal of a mandatory "positive body image program"? A "crack down" on "degrading and objectified images". Who is going to determine the content of this compulsory subject? Who determines what is degrading or objectified? Do I trust the capacity of the artcile's author, for example, to make such an opinion for me or anyone else? Actually, no I don't.

The sort of argument that denies intelligence and agency to indivdiuals on the claim that images are "sexualised" or even "pornographic" remind me a little how, in the past, some claimed that masturbation was indeed worse than all the diseases known, worse than murder, worse than war. Such suggestions were not the rantings of common lunatics, but rather from supposedly erudate individuals:

"Masturbation outrages nature's sexual ordinances more than any or all the other forms of sexual sin man can perpetrate and inflicts consequences the most terrible. It is man's sin of sins, and vice of vices; and has caused incomparably more sexual dilapidation, paralysis and disease, as well as demoralization, than all the other sexual depravities combined ... Pile all the other evils together - drunkenness upon all cheateries, swindlings, robberies, and murders; and tobacco upon both, for it is the greatest scourge; and all sickness, diseases and pestilences upon them all; and war as the cap-sheaf of them all - and all combined cause not a tithe as much human deterioration and misery as does this secret sin."

(Professor O.S. Fowler, cited in Malfadden, "The Suberb Virility of Manhood", 1904, pp.72-73).

Strange, very strange.

Research shows?

Skinny women in media causing anorexia = myth?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3060191.ece

Yet this author suggest that "Research Shows" that the media causes anorexia.

"What ever!"

I do however recall females I had known in the past complain bitterly about how their fathers didn't allow them to get their ears pierced until they were at least 14 or 16, and they weren't allowed to wear makeup until they were that old.

Now that I am older, I understand why!

Sure the current generation is faced with access to instant media, like no other generation before them. However like previous generations before them, the change from childhood into puberty can bring challanges to how one feels about the changes that happen.

In fact some, lets say adult women remain locked into the teenage years because of the way they continually engaged in constant self-surveillance and self-criticism.

So I doubt much has changed in the last 50 or 60 years.

The author, along with other women-who-call-themselves-feminists wanted a more liberal society, down with the patraichial restrictions. The only thing someone forgot to tell them, is be careful for what you ask for, because you just may get it.

Interestingly the Liberals want to blame this on the media, when liberalism has had no small part to play in the construction of todays society. So now we have Liberal preeching conservatism just like their parents.

If you you don't want a brazilian Melinda then don't get one.

When people are free Melinda then they will do things that you don't like do you want to reduce those freedoms? Where will you stop? Get over yourself Melinda. Women are free these days and if they choose to do these things then that's their right get over it. My wife doesn't wear makeup, doesn't do fashion and would rather help me in the shed then knite a jumper. I didn't make her do these things she made up her own mind. Why not let others do the same. Whya are religious nuts always trying to lord over everyone else?

I hate to ever have to agree with Melinda about anything however I too would like to see the fashion industry only use models who clearly have a Body Mass Index greater than 18.
Heroin chic is to die for.

And once the fashion industry starts to portray nourished women rather concentration camp survivors then perhaps retailers will stock clothes that fit Australian women. Clothes that are cut to Australian womens shapes - not the Chinese designers/manufacturers dream figure.

I am far more twitchy about tattoos which are for life, than brazilians that I am unaware of and grow back anyway. I guess brazilians start because bikini and bathers bottoms are cut much smaller than the map of tasmania and women must not be hirsute below the eyebrow. Historically didn't Turkish women remove all body hair

There may be another reason for the blow out in sexulaisation of girls. Since the rise of hysteria about men being pedophiles fueled by sexually abused feminists and the media that has fueled the fear of men's sexuality by condemning porn and linking it to child molestation, men have stopped cuddling and touching children. Touch for a child is the very stuff of nurture and without it babies do not put on weight and fail to thrive. Young girls thrive on climbing all over their fathers and the physical nature of nurture is an essential ingredient in loving relationships. Without the physical contact of men, girls fashions have taken to sexualisation as a means of attraction. Girls dressed like hookers and taking sensual dancing classes have become the norm. Without physical hugging and love we shrink and die inside.
Men have been ostrasized, many children are growing up without fathers and when the fathers are present they are not having enough physical contact. Touch depravation is the cause of much neurosis and this leads to girls acting out to get the attention they need, often for the rest of their lives. This behaviour will only worsen until men are once again secure in being able to cuddle children without the fear of being accused.

Part one

I actually agree with gist of this article. Young girls today are hardly ever given images of what “normal” “successful” women and girls look like. This situation has intensified with the growth of mass media, both the fashion and porn industries. The nub of the problem is that young girls and young women grow up with no realistic reference points in the media as to how they are supposed to look and how they are supposed behave to gain true self worth. They are acculturated throughout childhood and adolescence by the media that is filled with abnormal ideas about what is normal physically & sexually compounded with abnormal ideas of what it means to be successful as a “woman”.

I have a friend with a ten year old daughter. She has taken to dressing in a “slutty” fashion as these are what her and her friends consider to be a normal fashionable way to dress from all the images they is on music clips and in girls magazines. They purchase Girlfriend magazine with their pocket money which contains ample makeup freebies such as lip gloss. They have been waring bralets marketed for their age group from target & Kmart since bing 8 years old which they now stuff, (as think a lack of breasts at their age is abnormal – they have the bra – where’s the breasts?). They also wear short skirts or hitch up their longer ones.

My friend is beside herself having “banned” magazines etc. as to how to stop a behaviour that is perceived by the child to be normal, is rewarded by peers & constantly suggested and re-enforced by the mass media. This girl is sending out sexual messages she is not old enough to understand and is being rewarded by the “wrong” kind of attention by older boys. She is too young understand the implications of the sexual messages her dress and make up sends or the difference between good and bad attention from the opposite sex. Post Part two

Her mother is rightly concerned that this will lead to her daughter to base her self esteem on this kind of attention that re-enforces the slutty look & behaviour and not be given a chance to understand the difference between positive and negative attention and true self worth. And that is what is most concerning about the images and ideas being fed to girls.

Young girls are filled with a desire to be normal and successful but are being guided by what this is and how to achieve it by the images of abnormal bodies and sexual behaviour constantly being displayed in the mass media as normal.