Beauty Ideal Meme

For my meme I chose Barney Stinson from the show  “How I Met Your Mother.” Barney is the epitome of the anti-feminist. He is sexist, objectifies women, and frequently lies to them in order to have sex with them. In the show he is apart of a group of friends that seem rather feminist. The two female characters Lily and Robin are strong and independent and are not reliant on relationships. The two other male characters, Ted and Marshall are not hyper masculine, are sensitive and often cry on the show. Marshall and Lily share a very egalitarian relationship. Barney is the odd man out and is often made fun of and scrutinized for his behavior. On occasion he shows sympathy to wards women’s struggles and even signs of interest in individual women’s thoughts and not their bodies but it is hard to tell if these actions are truly genuine. Barney Stinson’s behavior in the show strongly relates to the beauty ideal. Barney often approaches women and the local watering hole and insults them in order to get them to strive for his approval.

Some men, the greater capitalist system and the media, petrochemical companies and political institutions within this system use the beauty ideal to suppress women.  Barney Stinson can represent this situation. In Barney’s group everyone knows what he is doing is morally wrong. The members of the group sometimes say something but often not wholeheartedly and soon forget about it.  We see the same problem in our society regarding women’s bodies.

Barney is portrayed in the original image very favorably. He is dressed nicely, hair in order and he is fixing his tie. He is looking very attractive and must be successful at getting women to sleep with him. Many men who watch this show may aspire to Barney and find his acceptable. It is for this reason that I chose Barney for this meme.  I use Barney to first attract attention of those who watch the show he is on and second to those who are aware of his sexual orientation. The text serves as both a joke and a message to how ridiculous the beauty idea is. Women are taught to strive for the perfect core, buttocks, breasts and hair while still having to struggle with financial and educational oppression.

Kiefer, Kate. "Ten Most Awesome Barney Stinson Quotes." PASTE Web. 16 Oct. 2012. <http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/07/10-most-legendary-barney-stinson-quotes.html>.

"How I Met Your Mother" IMDb. IMDb.com, Web. 16 Oct. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460649/plotsummary>. 

The Purity Myth - Campus Engagement

For my first Campus Engangement event I attended a discussion of “The Purity Myth” with Dr. Santana. At this vent we watched the documentary and then discussed its content. The documentary brings to light the idea of purity and its relationship with women, femininity and value. The basis for the argument was that women are objectified to such an extent that their value is decided by weather or not they are sexually active or appear to be sexually active.

The video and discussion made many valid points about how obsessed our society is with this idea of purity. The video started out talking about wedding dresses and how they symbolize the purity. To be honest, I don’t typically think about weddings or wedding dresses so it did not occur to me that this white dress is intended to symbolize the women’s purity and thus virginity while such a symbol for a man is not required because his sexual experiences are unimportant.

The video also discussed “Purity Balls.” These are events where young girls dress very formally, go as a date of their fathers, and pledge their purity until their wedding night. I had no idea that these sorts of things existed and I was disgusted by the video footage of them.  The girls are made to look old enough to be the wife’s of their fathers and then their fathers make a major decision (for many of the girls, they are to young to even understand) about their bodies. One clip of a particular ceremony depicted girls proceeding down an isle lined by fathers holding swords over them. I am not quite sure whether this represented the protection the fathers had over their daughters or a symbolic penis of power that men wield over women. Or perhaps these are the same thing.

One of the most interesting parts of the video was the discussion of abstinence only education in schools. In my high school we did not have abstinence only education but we did not have sex education either. And this is the problem that the video talks about. Almost everyone in the world will have sex at some point and it is important that we talk about it. Abstinence education is an idealist failure that has placed a heavy emphasis on girls and their choices. Some of the educators went as far to say that girls who had sex in high school would get pregnant and die as well as encouraged the entire audience to insult their peers who were sexually active.

The most important thing I took away from this is that our language may have the biggest effect. They way we refer to virginity as something that you lose. Something that makes you less of woman. Being pure is something that defines you and worth. We don’t talk about sex enough and they ways we do are extremely sexist. For boy’s having sex isn’t losing anything, its becoming more of a man. And women who have sex before marriage is, tarnished, ruined, or used goods. Even the fathers who vow to protect them from becoming a sex object, are turning them into a sex object by deciding their value on their sexual involvement. Overall, this video and the discussion we had was great. I learned a lot and it has made me more conscious about the things I say, and how I say them. I would recommend this movie for everyone I know.

Beauty Ideal

When we concern ourselves with the “Beauty Ideal” we must recognize that it is fueled by the reduction of the female form to what can be seen in a 30 second commercial. The media, capitalism and societal view on beauty perpetuate a distorted, oppressive and unattainable idea of women’s beauty. Our society reduces women to bodies, valued only as sex objects or bears of children (Kirk and Okazawa- Rey 208). The problem with this is assigning an entire woman’s value to a single attribute–intellect, compassion, skill and integrity are completely forgotten. When you turn the television on at 6 in the morning every channel is running an infomercial for the newest, state-of-the-art acne-, anti-wrinkle-, and everything-cream. These infomercials offer a solution to women’s bodies, which are a seen as a series of problems in need of correction (Kirk and Okazawa- Rey 208).  The media creates this image of beauty towards which all women must strive, while capitalism allows for them to subscribe to it for “as low as $11 a day” (Nutrisystem). Porn, as an exclusive yet popular type of media takes the beauty ideal to the next level. Women, must have a slim hourglass figure, but not too slim, perfect light skin, but not have to much make-up, have large-breasts but not implants, as well as preform like a porn-star while remaining a virgin.  How can a woman ever be perfect? She can’t. Even the models that many women attempt to become don’t fit this ideal as they have they photos airbrushed and digitally enhanced with editing software (Kirk and Okazawa- Rey 208).

The French saying “Il faut souffrir pour être belle” is one of the biggest lies in the beauty industry. It translates to “One must suffer for beauty.” Even though exercise is free, healthy food is available to a large number of Americans, and we value our own individual friends more than their appearance, women are still made to be afraid of their imperfections. And to fix these imperfections they must buy the solution. From the time she is born she is bombarded with advertisements for products that she needs to be beautiful. Beauty products are a huge economic industry in America and for those who are still “ugly” the medicalization of beauty might be covered by insurance. Thousands of women and young girls suffer from eating disorders every year. Though the effects of these disorders are serious and dangerous, I can’t help but notice how the term “eating disorder” claims that the individual is the one with the problem and definitely not society. And for those large women who are too lazy, sloppy, and undisciplined to get themselves in shape, modern medicine offers such solutions as liposuction, tummy tucks and breast implants (Kirk and Okazawa- Rey 209).

Many aspects of our lives, that we view as normal, all of a sudden seem to be composed of advertisements form women claiming “You will never attract a man without this products” and advertises for men claiming “You want a women who looks like this, and you can get one if you buy this.” Women’s lives are heavily impacted by this idea of beauty as well as society’s view of beauty. The normalization of these ideals stops us from questioning them. The ideal of beauty, defined as thin, lean, tall, young, white and heterosexual just isn’t attainable (Kirk and Okazawa- Rey 208). All women, straight, disabled women of color and women of all sizes are taught to embrace this ideal, even though it is representative of no single woman. It is a creation made by us, patriarchy, capitalism, and media used advance the capitalist and oppress women. We must take time to assess an individual’s value based on all of their characteristics in order to find what is truly beautiful.

Kirk, Gwyn , and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives. 5th ed. New York, New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. 207-210. Print.

Nutrisystem. Weight-loss Plans. https://www.nutrisystem.com/jsps_hmr/shop/order_now_secure.jsp?categoryId=353