too skinny too fat or stuck in the middle

Too Skinny, Too Fat or Stuck in the Middle

When Professor Marsh first told us that we had the freedom to pick whatever topic we wanted to write about for our second paper, at first I was really concerned because I had know idea what to write my paper on. Then I figured I would just write it on something easy like celebrities and how they affect our daily lives. When I went to the conference with Professor Marsh and told him my idea, he told me that it was to vague and that I would loss my focus because there are so many different sub-topics that I could write about. Then I told him about the episode of the Tyra Banks’ show that I was watching the night before. The theme for that episode was how the media affects young girls. They started to talk about how if Marilyn Monroe where to still be alive in today’s society she would be considered heavy or even fat and how A-list celebrities that are way too skinny are considered to be the “it girls”. So soon as I told him about that he told me “that’s it, write about how the idea of the “ideal woman” has changed throughout the years”.
Throughout history the idea of the “ideal woman” has been influenced through the media. For the most part when you ask a man or a woman who they would consider to be their “ideal woman”, they would most likely name a celebrity or a supermodel. If you were to ask them, why, they would probably give you several physical reasons why they consider that person to be their “ideal woman”. Now don’t you think there is something wrong with society if we just consider them to be “ideal” because of their physique? Well I do. I feel like not only do people see these women to be “ideal” but half the time they try to be just like them. One thing that I feel like most people don’t really understand is that these “ideals” do change and have changed throughout the years.
In the beginning of the 1950’s when Marilyn Monroe first came out as a celebrity or an “it girl”, most women wanted to be her and most men wanted her. She first started off as a cover girl/ model and then she became an actress. She had this sex appeal that no other woman of her time had. Marilyn Monroe was a size twelve. Her body was curvy and very voluptuous. But according to Just Say When “Vintage Clothing sizes are much much smaller than today's clothing sizes… vintage clothing sizes run 4-6 sizes smaller than clothing sizes today.” So what we would consider to be a size twelve back then in today’s standards it is really a size four or six. Now still considering that if Marilyn Monroe would still be alive today she would still be consider fat because she was a size six. As much as this might hurt to hear in today’s society if you’re not a size zero or two, you are probably considered fat. But back in the 1950’s most women looked up to their “ideal woman”, Marilyn Monroe, and they were basically wearing clothes that in a way were showing off most of their curves, to show that they weren’t rail thin. But in the 1960’s everything changed.
Twiggy a world renounced Supermodel came to be what most women were idealizing in the 1960’s. Personally I would say that this is when rail think look came into play. Twiggy was about 5’8 and weighted 97 pounds. It’s pretty scary to think that this is what women today would consider to be “ideal”. I would consider this to be the era when the anorexic look came about. One thing that that I think inspired this look of being really skinny was that in 1959 Mattel introduced the first Barbie doll which “became a huge success in the sixties” (Vintage Blues). Now these look last through the sixties and the seventies. The “ideal” look for women in the eighties didn’t really change a whole lot. The skinny look was still in but not the deathly skinny look but more of an athletic look. But for some weird reason the “ideal look” of being extremely skinny and looking like you’re about to break came back through the nineties and it hasn’t gone away because today we see celebrities like Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan are all female influences that young girls and women would consider to be “ideal”.
One of the main reasons why I wrote my paper on how the idea of the “ideal woman” has changed through time is because I really want to open up some people’s eyes and truly show them that trying to fit in with society is not necessarily the best thing because it will eventually change. I guess being a girl this topic really affects me because I have to deal with looking at these images of what society calls “it girls”. Which for the most part, what women consider to be “ideal women” are not healthy “ideals”.
The playwright Oscar Wilde once said that “My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t figure myself is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality” (Hair Cut advice). This quote describes perfectly what part of my project is about. Young girls, boys, women and even men these days are trying to fit into and are trying to portray an image that can never really be achieved because in the end when they finally get to the point where they are considerable happy, a new look or a new “ideal woman” comes around that will change their prospective on everything. My whole point is just be yourself, be happy with the look God gave you because he gave it to you and just you for a reason. Don’t try to fit in with what society thinks is cool or in because in the end everyone will be the same, and what’s the point if we are all the same? What’s the point in trying to look like these “ideal woman”? When in reality maybe what we think is “ideal”, in the end it isn’t.


















Bibliography
http://www.justsaywhen.com/Vintage-101-Sizing.htm
How Cover Girl and “America’s Next Top Model” Have Influence Pop Culture. 14 April 2007 <http://wordpress.blakeschool.org/wordpress/?p=26>
The “Ideal” Woman <http://haircutadvice.com/article30.php>
Cohen, Barbara. The Psychology of Ideal Body Image as an Oppressive Force in the Lives of Women. 1994 <http://www.healingthehumanspirit.com/pages/body_img.htm>
Shapely Centrefolds? Temporal change in body measures: trend analysis. BMJ <http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1447>
Benson, Tera. Today’s Cultural Ideal of Women <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports04/papers/tbenson.html>

Ideal women of today

Eva Longoria and Giselle Bundchen are two women that today we would consider to be ideal women and hav the ideal bodies.

Marilyn Monroe- Ideal Woman of the 1950's

She was a size 16 and yet she was an ideal woman of her time

Website

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports04/papers/tbenson.html

Just think

It's really scary to see what just happened at Virigina Tech. And if you reallt think about it can really happen anywhere even here at St. JOhns. We may have public safety to protect us and everything but if you really think about they really aren't doing anything. As I started to think about it, I realized that anyone can just walk into St. JOhns and make pretend they are a student or something. I have seen it happen, I know people that don't do go here but for some reason or another they live here. SO before you say that it can't happen here it can.

Quote for my Essay

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate purssuit of my own individuality"

http://haircutadvice.com/article30.php

Freshman Year Basically Over

So I honestly can’t believe how fast this semester went. I seem really scary that I’m going to be a sophomore in college. Sometimes I feel like life just needs to slow down. We only have about ten days or schools and I feel so stressed because I have so much to do and not enough time to do it. For me this semester feels a lot harder than last because I am taking more classes, which obviously means more work. But feeling so worn out for the past couple of days, because of school, work and life it’s self. So many things have gone on during these past couple of weeks that are making me feel this way. The one that’s at the top of the list is the death of my grandfather. He passed away last Sunday, but I still find it hard to deal with it. I think since like the day he died I haven’t been able to sleep. All I do at night is toss and turn and basically get up every hour. Even my mom has told me that I don’t seem my self these days, and I actually starting to notice also. I think I’m just finding it harder to deal with things these days. I feel like, when finals and everything is done, that I will probably start to feel more like myself and less stressed.

WEbsites

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1447

Women

"Women on the runway, on makeup (and any other product) advertisements, on billboards, in magazines, on commercials, in movies, all have been specifically coached ( whether they know it or not) to carry themselves in a certain way in order to portray a role, set a trend, and to influence our society. These roles and trends influence young women in our society in what products they buy to look what society calls “pretty”, and how they act toward others. More specifically, the make- up brand, Cover Girl, has set trends as to how women should look like. Through it’s pictures on the products, and what models they feature on the commercials has told women what kind of make up they should wear, what size they should be, what their facial structure should be like, how they should smile, and how their hair should be."

http://wordpress.blakeschool.org/wordpress/?p=26

First Draft

After my meeting with Professor Marsh, I felt a lot more confident about the topic that I want to write. I had first started with the idea of writing about how celebrities affect our daily lives. In my first draft my central question was: “Why are we so mesmerized by people who are just like you and me?” But then I realized that this topic is way to board and there are so many topics I could write about this. So I finally decided to narrow it down to how the feminine ideal has changed throughout the years. If you were to look at a magazine from thirty to forty years ago and compare them to the women now they would be considered fat. One of the reasons for this is because the idea of the “perfect women” has changed. Personally I don’t think it has changed for the better. I will probably be researching how and why the ideal of the perfect women has changed throughout the years and finding the history of what the perfect woman was back then and now. I guess my central question now would be: How has the ideal of the perfect woman changed from today’s standards to the standards of thirty years ago?
I guess one of my major objectives for this project is to show how the ideal if the perfect woman has changed throughout the years and basically to show girls that what could be hot and in style today may not be tomorrow and just to be happy with who they are. One of the things that I hope to accomplish is basically to show that maybe being who you are in the long run is better than trying to fit in with what society thinks is the perfect woman because that will only last for so long until another “it girl” comes along and everyone will want to look like her. Now that I fee like my idea for this project has evolved more I feel more confident in what I want my “end product” to be but I am still torn between two things. First I was thinking of creating a power point presentation with handouts of the class. My slide show would show women throughout the years going as far back to 1940’s to now and to show how the “ideal woman” has changed. The second thing that I was thinking of for my “end product” of making a website incorporating some of the same ideas from the power point presentation into the website. But I still don’t really know what I should do for my end product. All I know is that I want it to be something that will grab the class’s attention and not put them to sleep.
I feel like I will need to begin by using google. Besides google, other sources that I am going to use are magazine and newspaper articles. Now that I changed my topic and made it more specific, I don’t know if I will really need to conduct interviews. I feel like a survey will only get my so far and if I do create a survey I will document it by posting it to my blog and creating a separate section for my second research paper. I really don’t think that I will need to do a lot of research in the library because most of it I could do sitting from my house. But I think I could use the library to look for old magazine and newspaper articles on my topic. I will definitely have to do a lot of online research and I will also have to find a lot of pictures. Pictures will definitely be one of the biggest parts of my report because my report deals with how the appearance of the perfect woman has changed throughout the years. The best place to document all my information is in my folder or in my blog, but for my it’s easier in my folder because I like having things hands on and I like to be able to write on the articles that I get.

http://www.fashion-era.com/1970s/1970s_fashion_images.htm

This website shows how women would dress in the 1970's

1950

This shows what the style used to be in the 1950's

This website is amazing it goes through how the styles where it shows me how different the styles were of each era - www.vintageblues.com/history6a.htm

Working at STAPLES SUCKS A little!

Today i went to my place of employment which is STAPLES. I didn't ahve to work but i just went becuase I needed to buy some art stuff for my little sister that i forgot to buy on Tuesday, when I worked. As soon as Iw walked they were like do you want to work today because we really need you and we were just about to call you. This kind of mad. I know I am a good worker and when they need me they can count on me but they can't always and constantly count on me. At the moment we have about 7 cashiers when we are suppose to be having like 12. The ones that they do they have us work extra hours because they might be to lazy to hire some new people. It's getting to the point where I am thinking for quiting but I really don't want tot because I absolutely love the people that I work with and i get along with them so well. It also makes me a little mad that i have been asking for a raise for the longest time and they still haven't given it to me. I keep giving them new reasons espeically now that they gave me a new responisibility which is basically to count all the money at the end of the night and do all the banking. So i think i deserve a raise and I am hoping that I get one because if not I might go looking for another job.

RIP ABUELITO: I LOVE YOU

If god is with us when we are broken the most... where is he now that my whole family is broken. Today is Sun April 8, 2007 and it's easter and my abuelito passed away. My dad left for colombia today to go be with my whole family. It's so sad that this happened becuase we were all hoping that he would get through it, like he did all the other times. I feel so bad for my dad because he didn't get to say goodbye in person... saying goodbye to my dad this morning was one of the hardest things that i have ever had to do. Seeing him so upset and crying like that broken my heart and made me break down. I wish I could be with him right now but I know that he is on his way to be with all my aunts and uncles and epsecially my grandmother. I feel the most for her because my grandmother and grandfather were married for sixty years, they have been together for the longest time and now what is she going to do without him... what are we all going to do without him. I just miss him so much and I can't get it out of my head that he is never coming back