not only women

I realize that in my previous post I sort of left out the fact that men are just as negatively affected, if not worse, than women. Men, and especially young boys, seeing beauty ads are getting the message that that's what "real women" look like. It breeds a generation of men who search for these unrealistic, or rather, non-existent women. What a terrible cycle, where women must constantly try to live up to the male standards all around them.

Here's one of my favorite anti-beauty-industry-male-feminists, Rafael Casal. Check out his other stuff, it's all really honest and awesome.

something to think about

I don't know how many of you have already seen this, because it is a few months old, but I can't help but love Dove's new ad campaign. Every time I see it, I get more and more upset about the beauty industry's power over the youth of this country. Has anyone seen what 11 year olds look like nowadays? Not like they looked when I was 11. Honestly, it's one of the things in this country that scares me more than anything... The reason my 12 year old cousin cares more about how she looks and how popular she is than how sounds or how intelligent she is. I feel like the beauty industry wants us to believe that they want women to be more confident, but in reality, if we were more confident, they'd be out of a job.



My only real problem with these ads is that they're made by Dove... a beauty company. It's a start, and I'm happy that at least it's coming from someone, but I do think if it came from an anti-cosmetics organization or, hell, even the government, it would be a much better message. Dove is, ultimately, still just trying to sell us more beauty products.