Maganda, bonita, bello...?

I can't even begin to write my thoughts about ideals presented by the media as regards beauty and image. I'll end up ranting, that's why. Character-building, self-improvement, looking one's best by enhancing one's features (no surgery involved, that is), gratitude for what one has been given -- these are things I believe to be good. That's all I'll say for now.

Stumbled on this during blog-hopping one dayl:

Myrna Blyth writes in her book Spin Sisters, that a top beauty advertiser once told her, “We hold up the ideal to women, an ideal she can never achieve- but we want her to keep trying.” (Blyth is former editor of Ladies Home Journal and founding editor of More.)

For the average young woman, continual exposure to the media ideal produces a body dissatisfaction rate higher than 60 percent in high school and 80 percent in college. Research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that the more frequently girls read magazines, the more likely they were to diet, even though more than 70 percent of them were not overweight.
Not only do magazines show women how to look, they offer the avenue to achieve it. Lillian Calles Barger, president of the Damaris Project, noticed 45 advertisements in one magazine for cosmetic surgery or some other body-enhancing procedure. I counted several identical ads in the same magazine this month for a group of doctors which guarantee they will perform any plastic surgery a patient desires.

The message here is not that we are each uniquely and wonderfully made but that our bodies are in desperate need of being “fixed.” It’s a poisonous lie to swallow.