© Cathy Thorne – everydaypeoplecartoons.com

For more amazing cartoons by the über-talented Cathy Thorne, visit her site: everydaypeoplecartoons.com

From the Washington Post’s “On Being” video series: an interview of make-up artist Bailey Orenia-Sessoms – who speaks eloquently about race, beauty, and self-esteem.

A terrific quote:

When you have that lack of self-love, you’re more susceptible to accepting society’s “beauty standards” and then you find yourself not liking who you are year to year because every year (fashion) changes.

To watch the full interview, click here.

Whenever I discuss the issues of beauty, self image and the media – in a critical way – people instantly mention the Dove campaign for “Real Beauty,” invariably saying, “Wasn’t that wonderful, for a change?” Yes. And no. Because (a) it was heavily retouched in Photoshop by Pascal Dangin (b) Dove is owned by Unilever, which sells Slim Fast and the #1 skin whitening cream brand in Asia (c) the ultimate purpose of the ad is to sell a product – and smartly so, by differentiating the brand with the illusion that what they care about is real beauty (their sales shot up 700% in the UK with the – albeit retouched – Pro Age campaign showing older women). For more on Dove’s corporate hypocrisy, check out this earlier post: “An Egregious Example of Corporate Hypocrisy: Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign.”

Indeed, if you examine it closely, a Chomsky quote would be really appropriate regarding Dove’s “Real Beauty” (Photoshopped) campaign:

One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there’s a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins.

Now, criticism aside, once every blue moon a campaign comes out carrying  a positive, empowering message to women with no strings attached. No products to sell. No corporate image to make-over. Just pure, undiluted positivity. It’s the case of the award winning PSAs by the wonderful organization Girls Inc.

Their YouTube page does not allow embedding the video on external sites, so click on the link below to open up the video in a new window:

Girls Inc. “Tell Me”

The first time I watched it, it almost made me choke up…

Share this video with your friends and family!

Yay! For once a positive spin on real breasts.

From Jezebel.

“I love the fact that you have real breasts,” Oprah gushed to Kate. Kate took this as a compliment. Oprah went on to describe the difference between what happens to real breasts when a woman lies on her back and fake breasts when a woman lies on her back.

via Jezebel & Photoshop Disasters:

In the September 2008 issue of an international edition of Marie Claire, some of the staff at the top of the masthead — creative director, photo director, deputy editor, associate editor, acting features director — posed for a photo in what looks like the office conference room. They all look fresh-faced and wrinkle-free. However, as Photoshop Disasters points out, the reflection in the conference room table suggests a different reality.

Life & Style Magazine!

Take a look:

“Jessica Alba lost 40 lbs. in three months.”

Compare the photo above with the one below:

They used the retouched photo!!!

via Jezebel.

“Forget facials and pedicures. Today’s new moms want tummy tucks and breast lifts.”

Excerpt:

The fact that more women are turning to plastic surgery worries Shari Graydon, author of In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You.

“Apparently, the pressure on new mothers to care for the every need of a completely incompetent and utterly defenceless newborn while stumbling around in a perpetual state of sleep-deprived hormonal overload isn’t enough,” she says.

Giving plastic surgery a name like “mommy makeover” is just clever marketing to women whose body image is suffering, Graydon says. “Calling cosmetic surgery, whether it happens two years or two decades after a woman gives birth, a ‘mommy makeover’ is a cynical attempt to normalize medically unjustified radical intervention.”

Graydon also says mothers who have plastic surgery send a mixed message to their children.

“You can’t convincingly tell your kids, ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are,’ if you’re risking major anesthetic yourself to remake your body after it does what it was biologically designed to do.”

Full article here.

Excerpt:

While the emotional health implications of cosmetic surgery are still up for scientific debate, articles in women’s magazines such as The Oprah Magazine and Cosmopolitan portray cosmetic surgery as a physically risky, but overall worthwhile option for enhancing physical appearance and emotional health, a UBC study has found.

Full article here.

Speaking of onslaught (see yesterday’s post): the spring issue of Ms. Magazine carried a powerful article by Caroline Heldman on self-objectification:

A steady diet of exploitative, sexually provocative depictions of women feeds a poisonous trend in women’s and girl’s perceptions of their bodies, one that has recently been recognized by social scientists as self-objectification—viewing one’s body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze. Like W.E.B. DuBois’ famous description of the experience of black Americans, self-objectification is a state of “double consciousness … a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”

Read more here.

Dove Onslaught

Dove Onslaught(er)

www.greenpeace.org