Body Image

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.
 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/virginia_woolf_3.html#1xrQkVDqQJyAt0Px.99

Over the last six decades women have had the added pressure to conform to an idealized body type from the growth of the commercial market.

 Through popular culture, film, print and advertising. We have been sold a notion that to be happy we have to conform to this representation of what is desired to have a good and fulfilled life.

From the fifties glossy film stars to the Baby Boomers of the sixties, it has continued to build. This is unbelievable to comprehend that as woman have become more educated we are still vulnerable to these pressures. But it seem the more we have, the more critical we are of ourselves

"Body Image" has become a product and a brand. Sold to us through every media possible. Anything but this "Image" is not acceptable as the "norm"!

The other important factor is that now this pressure is being transposed onto young adolescent girls.

Fashion is sold on stick thin models that are nothing but clothes horses for the garments.

There is now an awareness of these concerns and women are fighting back with promoting "Fuller Figure", "Plus Size" models.

Ashley Graham Plus size model TED Talks. "My Size"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAgawjzimjc

Icons

Women have also had the influence of advertising and marketing. Here two worlds collide. On one hand we have the product and on the other very often a Designer who becomes the Brand. The two overlap and its confusing as to what we are actually buying into. Very often these Branded items are being sold under their sexuality and it is this that is being sold to us.

Perhaps woman are guilty of subliminal sexuality as well? 

Why would we prefer to buy perfume in a bottle in the shape of a Corseted Female Torso?
I opened this line of conversation with a group of women and they put forward that it was the men buying these items for the "women". This is suggesting that the product is designed for the Male consumer? To me this is very confused, " the man is purchasing the item that appeals to himself, for the woman that he is trying to please with the gift"? What do you think?

Or is this us trying to conform to that ideal again? 

"Female Icons and Role Models"

The graphic novels of the 1950's, here there was a total dominance of the male artist so as you would expect these are fantasised ideals of women. 
As a young woman I did enjoy the dramatized T.V program, "Wonder Woman". I think because she gave women the idea of an alter ego, girls could become super hero's too! We accepted the sexulised body form, in fact there weren't many of us that didn't dress up as our heroin for a fancy dress party.

2015 and the Heroione has moved into the realms of cyber space!

But the imagery is the same. Men like Big Busts and we do everything to be complicit to their desire. The corset was the main player to accomplish this now we can have surgery and design our bodies to order.

This is that "Superwoman" in reality! this athlete has developed her body for fitness and strength. Whether it is also to conform to a preconceive image is questionable? But remarkable for the training that went into achieving this, the development of the muscle does not include the development of the bust! So her body does not conform to the male stereotype. So what do we think about this?

The hourglass figure has been swapped for the more masculine silhouette of the inverted "V"?


Body Builder Rene Campbell
https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gif

The Ideal Housewife of the 1950's 

This was the age of the "Domestic Goddess"!

Women were still expected to be the home maker and wife supporting the husband. Although some women worked it was another decade before it started to become more of the norm.

Women were also expected to dress to please the husband as a show piece of his position.

The Real Housewife of the 2015's

What have we done? is this really the image that we want to give our generations that are growing up now?

Where did all the work of the Suffragettes go?

 What happened to all of Germaine Greer's work for feminism of the 1970's go? 

If you ask any woman who she dresses for she will tell you,
 "other women". 

It is to other woman we try to aspire, it is other women that we try to emulate.

 Yet this society has manage to portray us as these shallow mortals that have nothing better to do with our lives than to out dress and diminish the intelligence of each other, to that of ......................

 sorry but I can not insult anything else to that level!




 The Burlesque Dancer

Body Image, Self: http://www.bustle.com/articles/107140-8-ways-you-were-unconsciously-conditioned-to-slut-shame-as-a-child