I recently came across an article from Jennifer Love Hewitt talking about the Hollywood hype for the acceptable female body (dare I say it goes way beyond Hollywood).

It appears that the "ultimate" female body type is only really obtainable for about a decade of life; sometime from mid to late teens through the twenties.

With such a focus on body image are females at a disadvantage during this stage of development? And are we setting up 30+ females for depression and an unachievable goal of rekindling the image as they reach their 30's, 40's and beyond.

If the above is true, what can be done to help our daughters (in my case), or sisters, wives and friends to overcome this constant media bombardment and an obsession to achieve an often unobtainable body type?

I think we should stop calling it unobtainable. It sends the wrong message about the obesity epidemic.

Dear Corri,

Why focus on the female body? My parents and grandmother always told me that I was special. When people told my parents, "What a beauty you've got." My father would remind me, "It's what's inside you that matters." And I tried very hard to be beautiful on the inside.

"Educate your mind, your inner beauty will shine," dad used to repeat often. And I did my best. Education was the focus in our family.
And instead of thinking about my looks I loved learning new things and I had the knack of learning languages quickly.

Perhaps if girls had a variety of interests and were kept busy, their body image would not be such a major concern. I did ballet, and Russian dancing, and played tennis...

Thanks Foxy ... and you're spot on. Beauty does come from inside, but it's often not until you find a level of self trust can you understand that (and sadly few achieve that during their teens).

Freediver - I certainly don't want to downplay the issue of obesity - this is equally as dire as the anorexic image at the other end of the spectrum.

Equally? I think it outweighs anorexia etc by a huge factor. It is overtaking cancer as the biggest killer ever, and it is almost entirely self inflicted. All this crap about you can't control what your body does, and we wonder why people are eating themselves to death. It's time for the self delusion to end.

Well, as usual, Foxy is shiny with commonsense.

When I was a kid, I was tall and pale - you couldn't get much uglier at my school, were the popular girls were petite and bronzed. Then I left school, and suddenly I was a sought after - for the very same reasons that I was shunned in Year 9.

Tell your daughter that life is long, beauty is fleeting, a love of good books will reward well into the doddering years and love is way more intense when it's not just about boobs. Tell her the best men like pretty girls, but they marry women who are brainy, funny and artistic, and, above all, secure and happy. Teach her that flirting is not about being hot, it's about the gorgeous playfulness of teasing and taunting someone who intrigues you. Teach her to love the creativity of fashion rather than becoming a slave to it.

And Foxy is right. Physical activity - particularly graceful physical activity - can encourage a girl to feel the beauty in her body even when it doesn't conform to the Cleopolitan ideal.

And tell she's amazing. All the time. I remember getting so angry when my mother told me I was beautiful, when I was absolutely convinced I was hideous. But now I know my healthy self esteem is based on her dogged insistence.

Dear Botheration,

I just remembered a quote from 'Judge Judy.' You probably know it too.

"Beauty fades, stupid is forever!"

So as dad would add, "Work it girl, work it!" (meaning the brain, not the body).

And, again Thanks for your kind words - your partner's a lucky guy!

My wife is just as beautiful, & sexy, as she was, when I met her, 36 years ago.

Our youngest daughter, in her late teens, [as one of Bob Hawkes silly old buggers, I was a late starter], is very pretty, & probably sexy. It will however, take a few more years living, for her to achieve beauty, if she is going to.

Dear Hasbeen,

You certainly don't sound like a 'Hasbeen.' You sound like a -
'Been-there-done-that.' A very cluey sort of bloke. And it's lovely to have a man acknowledge his wife's beauty, as well as his daughter's...

And I'm betting that neither of them have an 'image' problem. They couldn't with you around, telling them how amazing they are.
Ahhhhh, for more men like you!

AAh HAH ! now we know :) both Foxy and Botheration are 'female'.. no wonder their posts have a "gentle" twang to them :)

Corri said:

<<With such a focus on body image are females at a disadvantage during this stage of development? And are we setting up 30+ females for depression and an unachievable goal of rekindling the image as they reach their 30's, 40's and beyond.>>

No Corri, we have all invested in 'Cosmetic Surgery'Companies and expect a huge windfall when the girls reach 30 and start paying for that special body shape......

Ok..seriously now..... IFFFF our moral and cultural foundations are based on the 'existential self' and the philosophical unperinnings of postmodern life are drawn from the likes of Sartre, Neitzche and Derrida.... "truth is what you make it" etc.. and if we have abandoned the ethic of Jesus:

"If anyone among you would be great..let him be the servant of all, for the first will be last and the last will be first"

and if we continue to pander to the "me me me and more of me" and "if u've got it..flaunnnnnt it"

and if we continue to 'make it up as we go' ..well.. lets not be surprised if the outcome is as Corri described!

The 'world' (i.e. FM youth stations and popular media/MTV etc) says:

"Females are sex objects"
"Live for the sexual moment"

The Bible says: "Treat the younger women as sisters, in all purity"

Well I don't care HOW boring that might sound, I know it works for the individual and society.

Dear BD,

Sometimes you surprise me. In a nice way!

Thank you Boaz ... though it expands the initial thread it certainly focuses on the underlying theme. Have we lost our sense of ethics that were taught via Christian studies (or other religious beliefs)?

The consumerist society certainly has focused on the "me" or as Boaz so wonderfully put it, the existential self. But who is now defining the "me" ... the media? the corporates? Certainly not the individual.

There seems very little individuality in a consumer society.

How do we rekindle the ethics / cultural foundation? Or are we starting to see more of that now with the growth of the pentecostal churches such as Hillsong? Or are these churches just an extension of consumerism, the consumerist church?

Dear Corri,

This is getting away from your thread a bit. However, as far as my religion is concerned I feel that Catholicism as a monolithic structure is disappearing. Once a person who differed with the church quietly stole away. Now they refuse to abandon their communion with God. From a timid rebellion has grown a courageous confrontation.
This is not merely the roar of a few. It is the fruit of a studious examination of the foundations of faith. Faith has passed from the passive and complete acceptance of a body of truths to the honest search for total commitment.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the world has become meaning-centered, and the individual measures the traditional truths in terms of personal value. The individual refuses to accept irrelevant sermons, a sterile liturgy, a passe and speculative theology which explores publicly dry and distant formulas, a law which does not explain its own origins. The individual demands a priest who reaches him in honest dialogue. The individual will not be bullied by an authoritarian demand for the observance of parish boundaries, nor by moralizing which ignores the true and complex context of modern life.

Today we have a more open view of mixed marriages, a more understanding discussion of the birth-control problem and the dilemma of Catholic education. The individual has recognised the human face of the Church which has been forced to change its expression or die.
This has given the individual the courage to hope and push for greater changes still.

At the outset I agree we've moved off the initial thread (and might raise this separately if it continues interest). That said ...

Foxy, I tend to agree with much of what you've written ... though does it work? Are we on a road to destruction? Is this religious sentiment paralleled by the consumerist society - are we asking for a religion that suits the individual when we live in a collective society. Are we bending the rules that made society to counter to minority feelings, thus eroding the fabric that has made society work for millenia.

Sure a wider acceptance of mixed relationships, birth control, race, religious belief, etc etc seems on the surface to be what our society upholds ... but is that reality? Even in this site I've seen absolute rascism and prejudice. So while on the surface we appear to be more accepting, are our ideals delivered through our actions? Is this utopia actually obtainable?

Anyway, I've ranted long enough! Thanks Foxy, with all that said I hope that we're moving towards a more tolerant society where dictatorial religion forcing a certain set of beliefs isn't the only way to achieve a perceived functioning society - I'm just not convinced we're even close.

Ah Boaz, you charmer, you!

Beguiling the ladies with your winning ways and worldly wisdom, eh?

>>The Bible says: "Treat the younger women as sisters, in all purity"<<

But that's not all it says on the topic, is it?

Here's Timothy:

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." 1 Timothy 2

Hmmm. Not quite so PC, that one.

And here's your mate Paul, telling it how it is.

"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." 1 Corinthians 14

I know, I know. They don't really mean it. It has been badly translated. The meaning has been warped by centuries of anti-religious fanatics who just want to show the bad bits in the Bible, not the good bits... oh no, that's Boaz and the Qur'an, isn't it.

Sorry to butt into an otherwise civilized discourse, ladies, but he can't resist any opportunity to proselytize, and I can't resist putting him back into his box.

And for what it's worth, your body-image is purely a chick-thing. You won't find a bloke having the same issues, even though in nine cases out of ten they let themselves go further and faster than the female. If they do get concerned about your body rather than the whole being, than they simply don't deserve your attention.

Here here Pericles! I'm certainly 1 of the 9.

Here here from me too Pericles. Re your timely quoting of that ridiculous book at it's dreary pronouncements.

Re the "purely a chick thing", though, I actually think it's a bit of both. Chicks put way too much pressure on each other, and themselves, and those dreadful magazines are always lady-driven. But if I had a dollar every time I'd hung around with a group of men who felt free to critique the bodies of every passing women, I'd have... well, you know, heaps of money. Nice mature men don't do it, sure, but lots of boys do, and girls are left to either take it on the chin or complain and be found "uncool", or, worse, to hear a "miaow" sound and see a man making a cat scratching motion. Our popular culture is full of men making judgments about women's bodies - watch The Footy Show sometime.

Of course women need to take responsibility for their part in the beauty myth, but men do too.

Most men don't mature, they simply grow taller.

Or put another way - Boys will be boys and so will a lot of middle-aged men...

Foxy, dare I say it ... the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children! (or the men who remain boys)

I think this thread has had a good run with some interesting comments and sidelines to boot.

Thank you your views and help in generating an interesting discussion.

McDonalds couldn't have come up with a better disease if they tried. We are constantly told that a catwalk figure is unobtainable, that we have no control over what our body does. We are allowed to believe that a sedentary lifestyle is normal and that 90 minutes of exercise a week is adequate. We are told not to stress if we can't shake off that fat. We are sold processed foods by the trolley full and reassured that you don't have to put much effort into dinner. We are told that exercise merely increases appetite. We are constantly warned not to try too hard to slim down, in case we become a gaunt, psychotic shadow of a human with a warped sense of beauty.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/anorexia-obesity.html

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