Just vote. Sign your name. It’s simple.
September 2, 2012
In light of my last few posts – if you want to start making that change, sign the following petition to Cleo Magazine – strongly urging them to stop altering the images of women they use.
Following a US teenager’s successful petition calling on 17 Magazine to publish one unaltered photo spread per month, Melbourne woman Jessica Barlow has created a petition calling on Australian Cleo Magazine to do the same.
The petition reads:
Reality is beautiful. Stop using Photoshop to alter appearances.
In high school, not a day would go by without hearing another girl complain about her weight or appearance. I saw girls get severely bullied and excluded because they didn’t live up to the beauty ideals of women in magazines.And it made me want to doctor my own appearance even more.
My friends and I looked up to the models in Cleo magazine. It was one of the most popular among my classmates. But what I think many of us didn’t know is that Cleo was altering the images of women to make them skinny and blemish free.
The altered pictures make readers question their weight, appearance and self-worth. I know this much first hand. They teach us that to be “pretty” you have to be thin and have perfect skin. Studies now show that these damaging images can lead to eating disorders, dieting and depression.
Distorting and editing the appearances of models in magazines is distorting the mental health of girls who read magazines that engage in these practices.
Public pressure is building across the world for magazines to stop altering images of girls. In the US a teenager convinced Seventeen Magazine to publish one unaltered spread a month after thousands joined her petition. I think Cleo should do the same for their readers.
I want Cleo to stop selling images that hurt girls and break our self-esteem. Let us see real faces and real shapes in at least one photo spread a month — and always put a warning symbol on any image that has been altered.
It’s time to put an end to the digitally enhanced, unrealistic beauty we see in the pages of magazines. Please sign my petition to Cleo Magazine editors calling on them to give us images of real girls in their magazines.
PLEASE sign. It’s quick and it’s the first step in having a voice:
You can also tell them what you think, by writing a rational, intelligent comment on their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CLEOAustralia?filter=2
Lastly, you can check out the following page:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/440832622636296/445479898838235/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity
Let’s do this thing!
Deep Breath and sign against covers like the following cartoon:
x
DON’T buy into it. Yep – it’s a Shout Out. #4.
September 2, 2012
I’ve had an epiphany – a bit of an ‘a-ha’ moment. Well, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t know it before, but more that I was hit with a simple and succinct realisation.
It’s the simplicity of it that is both liberating and equally terrifying – because regardless of its clarity – we are trapped.
You know all the famous modern icons? – I can’t believe what we call them ‘icons’ for – icons like Kim Kardashian?
We’re paying them.
In turn, they spend the money we give them on ‘perfecting’ themselves:
On make-up – THEY DON’T PAY FOR.
On clothes – THEY DON’T PAY FOR.
On ‘procedures’ – THEY DON’T PAY FOR.
Cars – Technology – ‘Gift Bags’ – EVERYTHING!…they don’t pay.
We do.
And then we worship them for creating the image we can never have (as I wrote in my penultimate post Why it’s worse now) and buy more beauty products, clothes, ‘procedures’ to try to replicate it. In turn, we keep fattening their pay packets, as the beauty industry uses them over and over again – making them icons.
THIS IS PURE INSANITY!
This vicious cycle is not only never-ending – its predatory qualities and hunger appear to be insatiable.
OK, here comes a Shout Out.
We are intelligent beings, ladies – VERY intelligent:
Question #87: So why are we doing it to ourselves? WHY?
And we are doing it from both sides – one side (the majority of us) perpetuate it by BUYING into this mono; limiting; ‘hot’ look, while on the other side, we also have the women who agree to represent us so poorly and participate in our exploitation that way.
It’s a trap.
As a fly is digested slowly in the Venus Fly Trap, so are we.
I don’t know about you, but that’s why this clarity is a tad terrifying to me – because its EFFECTS are devastating. Statistics are showing girls and women spiralling into a world of depression and worse. I even know many mothers who loathe their bodies after growing a human being in them – instead of wearing their shape with a pure sense of pride – of the miracles their bodies are.
But, as I said in response to a comment from the above-mentioned post, EVERYTHING IS TAUGHT. Everything.
So it’s time. Regardless of what’s happened in the past – the only way to move forward is to say, “OK, yes, we used to do it like that or accept things as they are – but not any more.
Do not pay any attention to women like Lara Bingle, who so graciously had the following picture of herself taken (which has also been photoshopped to an inch of its life):
…because as I’ve said to my students at school – ANYONE CAN DO THAT! Anyone can have sex. Anyone can take their clothes off. It’s not a difficult thing to do…and yet we end up rewarding women for doing just that??
The challenging and hard thing is NOT doing it the easy way – through shortcuts – as there’s always a price to pay…
…and ain’t we paying for it now!
The irony being that the money from our pockets, provides the funding for more.
I repeat: Why are we doing it to ourselves?
Deep Breath everyone – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
x
Why it’s worse now.
September 2, 2012
I was cooking and my 9 year old daughter was keeping me company, chatting. It was great.
Yesterday, when I let her play on the computer, which is normally some sort of simple game, I went in to find her doing a ‘make-over’ on some cartoon girl. I told her to get off it. She didn’t make a fuss. Bless her.
So we were chatting about that tonight. I said that, in a way, that game was training her to become a girl who grooms herself in a particular way. I said that there was nothing wrong with wearing makeup when she’s older, but that girls and women nowadays were spending A LOT of money to look a particular way.
I said to her that when I was younger, I loved going through women’s magazines but that ‘back then’ the images were of the women as they were. Don’t get me wrong, we were being sold a particular image – thin, glamorous, in the latest looks…thin – BUT they were fairly real. No airbrushing…lots of make-up – but no airbrushing.
Throughout these modern times – since mid-last century – women have always been sold a look; in line with the fashion of the time. And we have always jumped on that wagon, hoping to mirror that look and belong. That’s cool. We are the fairer sex and we like to groom ourselves.
But it’s worse now.
Why? Because the looks and bodies we’re trying to mirror – are altered and unattainable ones.
Simple, isn’t it?
The logic of it is striking and obvious – and yet…
…here we are ladies – watching women on our screens, posters, ads – depicting the shangri-las of looks – that we can’t have because they are simply. not. real.
Question #85: Why is the unaltered image above, not considered beautiful?
Because there are some rolls…like the ones we all have? Because she has a tummy…like most women?
God forbid we represent the general female population in our media!
Now look at the women around you – your friends – your family.
Do you think they’re all ugly?
They must be if they’re not thin, ‘hot’ and sexy…with no wrinkles etc. etc. etc.
But the majority of women DO NOT fit that tiny mould and I’m also pretty sure that you don’t think any such thing about the women in your life. So, if we think the ordinary and remarkable women around us are beautiful:
Question #86: Why are we being passive and tolerate what the media is doing to the representation of women?
And we are being passive.
Just look at what’s been done to the images of the women below – for magazines that women buy:
Even Barbie – or any doll for that matter (Bratz, anyone?) – sells a look to girls from a young age.
It’s up to us to change this. Noone else can do it – certainly not men. That would be as futile as women changing men’s perspectives.
It’s up to us.
Deep Breath.
x
Ally McBeal
August 26, 2012
I was driving home after having dinner with a good friend and decided to listen to my music, instead of the radio.
Even though my iPod has all my favourite songs on it – I sometimes feel like I’ve heard them a million times. But the only station I listen to, Triple J, was playing really thrashy, heavy metal with a-man-screaming-into-a-microphone type of song. No. Not for me.
It turned out to be a great decision because when I put my songs on ‘Shuffle’, my Ally McBeal song came on. Anyone driving next to me would have seen an entertaining sight.
E-hem.
Ally McWhat?
Well, to those of you who were born ‘recently’, this great series (1997-2002) was targeted at women my age – at the time I was in my late 20s.
This show was about Ally (played by Calista Flockhart), a lawyer in a firm, who was a success in her career, but who was now looking for love. Doesn’t sound like anything special, right?
Well, it resonated with a lot of women my age (at the time) because we all felt like Ally did…well, I can’t speak for all women – but I was thinking, “I hear ya!”
I remember being told at my all-girls high school, when I was about 16/17, that “we didn’t need a man” and that “we should go and get a career for ourselves.” Great advice, actually. It made us go out and find our place, make our mark and NOT be reliant on anybody but ourselves. Nothing worse than being a weak, ineffectual woman, having to be carried by a man…or anyone else, for that matter.
So this show gave us Ally. A woman who had done just us many women in that time were advised to do – but despite all her success, she felt a void – she wanted to find the love of her life.
This show was quirky too – it was a cack! Ally famously saw the dancing baby, they had unisex toilets that they sang and danced in at times, there was an obsession with Barry White, equally odd-bod characters – all whilst trying cases in their law firm.
In one episode, Ally is told by her psychologist (played by the wonderful and very funny, Tracey Ullman), to pick a theme song. She was to then listen to it, in her mind, at times of worry, distress, feeling down etc.
Ally picked the old classic, Tell Him – a song that could help her with her trials with love.
So the other night, my Ally McBeal song came on, Jamiroquai’s, Canned Heat. Oh, how this song speaks to me.
“Dance! Nothing left for me to do, but dance
Off these bad times I’m going through, just dance
Got canned heat in my heals tonight, baby.”
I love to dance – and do it in the kitchen with my girls when I can. At any party with good dance songs, I tend not to move far from ‘dance floor’.
Question #84: What’s your Ally McBeal song?
Below is a clip I found of the show…if you’re a youngin’. Enjoy!
Deep Breath and DANCE!
Woooo Hoooooo!
x
Just Sayin’ – #9
August 25, 2012
As much as the hype over The Shire seems to be abating (I’m not sure what their ratings are like at the moment), it seems ludicrous that the types of people who media feel we need to ‘follow’ are people like this:
Shire star charged over gay attack
When producers of TV shows like The Shire sink to the lowest sludge at the bottom of the bucket to create ‘entertainment’, I just wonder one thing:
Question #83: Who are the bigger fools? Those who create the show or those who watch it?
Why is a man who has urinated on another in a homophobic attack, given the platform and reverence (by some) that TV affords them?
WHY?
As always, though, we do have a choice as to whom we give our prized attention. Let The Shire sink into its own excrement.
…Just sayin’.
Deep Breath.
x
Questions for Us 