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Barbie doll and I are of the same age. We were "born" the same year. Fortunately, I
hadn't had pleasure to play with her. She wasn't introduced to the little girls of my
country until much later. Reading the usual fairy-tales, I wanted a prince who would come
and wake me into life. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all.....".
But princes come only if you are beautiful and helplessly asleep!How did Cinderella
or Snow White look like, little girls back then had to find out on their own. Today, girls need no imagination. They own collections of Barbie dolls; identical, faceless, with "ideal" proportions, who, like a lighthouse, illuminate the way into the "desired" future. We played with "baby dolls" today little girls play with images of grown-up women, adopting an attitude, from a very early age, which they will be hardly able to change afterwards. The majority of women, unfortunately, retain the lessons learnt in childhood, fighting all their lives to achieve the "ideal" measurements. Unhappy because the results are never satisfying, they blame themselves instead of those who sell them those "unreal dreams of happiness", keeping them in an everlasting chain of consumerism and artificial needs. Very few women can see through the shrewd trick game of cosmetics manufacturers, diet pills and new invention of plastic surgery. Under the mask of concern for their health and good looks, manufacturers of "beauty" and "health" manipulate women into buying their products with annoyingly repetitive commercials. Although their products do not have any desirable effects, they fill their cash registers. Let's count how many different products, from hygienic to cosmetic, we buy and spend on, convinced of their miraculous effects more than their functionality. Let's confess how many of us buy a shampoo having in mind clean hair, and how many, in fact, want to have rich and beautiful locks like the model in an advertisement. We close our eyes to a simple truth; if we do not have a good quality hair, that only Mother Nature can provide, there is no "miracle" shampoo that can give it to us. The same principle can be applied to other cosmetic stuff, creams that guarantee youth or unwrinkled face, pills that shape up your body without a diet, various items for a massage and anti-cellulite,etc.... Surveys show that women spend billions of dollars a year on totally useless cosmetics which promise youth. How much money that is we can understand if we compare the amounts gone to cosmetics with everything that can be done for the betterment of women's position if funds like that were better invested:
- thousands of Women’s Health Clinics, Cosmetic surgery brings gross profit of several hundred million dollars per year with an increase of 10% every year.No matter from which part of the world they come and what the standard of living is, the conscious and subconscious need to be "beautiful" is the same everywhere. Medicine developed reconstructive techniques to give back faces to gravely disfigured soldiers in WW II. A human gesture and discovery with an intention to help, as the majority of other scientific discoveries, turned into a parody and the source of misfortunes for many women who have been persistently persuaded to see in plastic surgery a key to happiness. Reconstructive surgery, a useful and desirable discipline, deals with medical cases including: birth defects, cancer reconstructions, severe burns, facial trauma, hand surgery etc. Basically, very different from this is the RISKY and useless cosmetic surgery, including: liposuction, breast enlargement, breast reduction, breast lift, face lift, eyelid lift, fat grafting etc. Liposuction gains more and more popularity. How many women, who undergo this surgery, know that, although it sounds attractive to be able to get rid of fat and cellulite, liposuction means ripping out the cells of your flesh and can be FATAL? Statistically, the percentage of deaths is insignificant, but even one life lost for the fake "beauty myth" is too much. Breast enlargement and lift up include silicone, or other artificial material, implants into the healthy body, which usually reacts with rejection. The growth of a foreign body in ours, known as cancer, is considered as one of the most undesirable and fatal diseases we are all afraid of. At the same time thousands of women allow CUTTING of their HEALTHY BODIES and putting in implants of artificial material to be .....WHAT? More desirable to men? Happier because men will find them attractive? Be more worthy? Be worthy AT ALL? Under the motto "There is nothing wrong in our wish to be beautiful" there is a sly slogan which keeps us under control. Media CREATES the NEED together with the cosmetics manufacturers and advertisers who then, give answers and fulfill the need they created themselves. Women, caught in the web, convinced that they are worthy ONLY as much as they are attractive to men, spend billions on totally useless and unnecessary products. Although these products will never bring them even an inch closer to the desired goal, the hope never ends. The market always creates a new product which is "better" and more "miraculous" than the one before. The vicious circle begins one more time, endlessly. Isn’t it totally ridiculous that the media tries to make us believe that 90% of the population is not even close to their so called "ideal body weight" and that 90% is not normal and shouldCHANGE their looks. According to WHOSE standards? Maybe, it is time that we become cognizant of the fact that happiness does not hide itself in measurements 90-60-90. If there was a way that we all, somehow attain those numbers, they would not be "ideal" anymore. New 3 numbers would be introduced to strive for. What about the woman MM , who was the most desirable "object" of the 20th century with the "most ideal" figures and who was one of the most insecure and unhappy creatures? In reality the women with power, knowledge, money, influence, talent are NOT 20 year olds, neither are they beauties that take away our breath, or have tiny waist and the face without a wrinkle. But the IMPORTANCE of these women, as the raw models for the generations of women to come, is almost totally destroyed with the flood of false model girls. Reading the magazines for women, which have millions of advices for instant happiness, young women and teenagers become "obsessed" with desire to do ANYTHING to look like the front page models. Maybe, the examples of women who have been 20 or more times operated on, to fit into the BARBIE MOULD, sounds too drastic or extreme; maybe, we consider them as the whims of the rich, something they do out of boredom, but let us not fool ourselves, the consciousness which pushes those women to risky surgery is no different from ours, when we buy miraculous creams to wipe out the wrinkles, chocolate bars which help us "loose" weight, capsules of youth and similar hogwash items for the naive. Wrinkled faces and ageing process are parts of life, a natural path which no cream or surgery can eliminate. And there is no need for that. What is so attractive on a 40 year old woman who tries to look like her daughter and to whom? Has the surgery wiped out the experience as well? Or the years? Or the natural aging of body cells? Frankenstein dolls of the modern age are no less frightening, only because they are covered with flawless make up, and their body figure emphasized with silicone breasts. Question is, what does a man see on this artificial non-woman? Maybe the statement that the "war between sexes" is profitable, sounds strange. But those whose pockets get full as a result of maintaining the gap between men and women, will do anything to keep it as wide as possible. Prostitution and Pornography brings profit which is possible only by feeding the sexual discontent. Women who are satisfied with their looks and sure of themselves and men who dare to follow their own wishes and tastes, instead of instant products of media, are threats to the profit makers. They are unwanted categories of people who are usually presented in media as "ridiculous, perverse and insecure exemptions. Contemporary consumerism is based on the market dominated by clones like Barbie, Cindy and such; it is based on men who desire objects with preestablished measurements, and women who will try anything to be desirable objects for men. The market dictates how the object must look like, changing demands and moving the limits so that they can always be outside the reach, ensuring thus the constant flow of money and their own survival. It is not a coincidence that the fashion modelling and prostitution are the only professions in which women make more money than men. Pornography world-wide earns 7 billion dollars per year, more than all film and music industry together. Only in the USA pornography earns a million dollars PER DAY. Men , brought up in social backgrounds where women were to be seen as bodies only, will continue to see them as such all their lives. Instead of seeing a woman as a complete human being, they see a vision or embodiment of a vision who addresses and attracts their sense of vision only. Simone de Beauvoir said once that no man is free to love a fat woman. Unfortunately, BOTH men and women are caught in the same trap and it will take time measured in generations to get out of it. I think that time has come to write new fairy-tales our daughters could be raised on. The ones in which the mirror on the wall will have to answer the question: who is the SMARTEST, the MOST FULFILLED, the HAPPIEST, the MOST CREATIVE, the MOST ACCOMPLISHED........ Nena |