This class has brought to my attention that in the world of the media no one is good enough and ever will be. The best point brought to my attention recently is that the magazines for women all have a woman on the front. Is that normal? I realized it is, every magazine cover has ways we can all be better to get the body and life we want. I think this is quite ridiculous, and I never came to realize it until now. The lifestyle for women and some men is now beyond stressful because we can never be good enough. It used to be loose three pounds, look better, and now it has been upped to ten pounds! Three is no longer good enough. We always need the bikini ready body, a toned stomach isn’t good enough, now you need a six pack to be “entitled” to feel good about yourself, to feel worth while and attractive. In the reading of How to Become a Marijuana User by Howard Becker, he discusses the social construction of using Marijuana. The activity isn’t fun unless you “know and understand” how to have fun. Meaning, you enable yourself to enjoy other feelings others have using this drug as your own. You must use to learn this correctly. Which I think relates to the media and following the ways of a changing culture or Docile bodies as Susan Bordo calls it, meaning allow yourself to learn the ways media believes your body, life, and paths to happiness should be. Forming an opinion relating to Howard Becker’s study and reading, I feel as though the ways of the media, the social construction and the use of the docile body wouldn’t get through to us if it wasn’t put out on magazine stands in every check out lane like it was a learned practice. We as society see all these pictures and words, see these bodily practices that “everyone’s doing” and we learn the ways to interpret them, just like people learn how to enjoy Marijuana. Without the ways of pictures and words telling us how to enjoy our bodies and figures, we might have actually come up with attainable goals, weights, looks and dreams.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Learning of How To Be Beautiful and Worthwhile
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In today's standards, there hardly is an ideal body, man or woman. There is always a different look that is considered to be better and it changes constantly. For pot smokers, from the first time they try it they're told what to think, how to feel, and whether or not they're doing it right. Really makes me wonder how people would go about their lives if they weren't constantly being influenced by what they see and what we're told.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100%. Even the models on the front cover are not good enough because of photoshop. It is ridiculous how people need to identify with the person on the front cover on the magazine. People have learned that looking like that person on the cover with bring them pleasure and all the happiness in the world. They try all the diets and exercise plans in the magazine to try to look like that. This is similar to people learning how to smoke pot so that it is pleasurable. Similarly, if the diet or workout does not work the people lose interest in the plan and try another. It is the ideology of the people who buy the magazines that they have to look "perfect". Unfortunately, the advertising agency computers idea of perfect is impossible to obtain. So people will continue to buy the magazine to look for new ways to look like the person on the cover. It is simply an advertisement working its magic.
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