Oprah did an eye-opening show focusing of concepts of women’s beauty around the world.
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081024_tows_beauty/1
Cultures that were featured included France, Oman, Brazil, Iran, Burma (Kayan), Japan, New Zealand (Maori), Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, and Mauritania. Topics included diets, tatoos, stomach flatteners, lingerie, skin whiteners, hair extenstions, plastic surgery, skin softeners, nose jobs, and over-eating to get fat.
The underlying messages were that:
1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholding culture. In Mauritania, bigger is better and fat is beautiful. Even stretch marks are beautiful. Diets are non-existent and no diet products are available. The downside is that girls are routinely force-fed starchy foods (till they vomit) in order to fatten them up to attract a husband. The high obesity rate there causes lots of medical problems such as heart disease and diabetes. Some women consume black market pills created to increase the appetite of camels and cows. But, the women don’t have the same poor body image issues as women in Europe and the Americas who kill themselves to be thin. Being divorced also heightens a woman’s appeal because it proves she is desired by other men.
Regarding Mauritania’s love of plump women, Oprah sang, there’s a place for us….
2. Women, all over the world are willing to go to great lengths (even risking death) to live up to their culture’s beauty standards. Plastic surgery is becoming increasingly more common all over the world. Who knew that Brazil had the second largest plastic surgery volume; and that even in Muslim Iran, where women are covered from head-to-toe, nose jobs are very common. Nose jobs are so common in Iran (60,000 per year) that wearing a nose job band-aid is a status symbol worn by women years after the actual surgery and by women who have never had the surgery.
A survey conducted by Dove reveals that 90% of women around the world wish to change some aspect of their bodies. Too bad women can't be more like men who are generally comfortable in their bodies.
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081024_tows_beauty/1
Cultures that were featured included France, Oman, Brazil, Iran, Burma (Kayan), Japan, New Zealand (Maori), Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, and Mauritania. Topics included diets, tatoos, stomach flatteners, lingerie, skin whiteners, hair extenstions, plastic surgery, skin softeners, nose jobs, and over-eating to get fat.
The underlying messages were that:
1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholding culture. In Mauritania, bigger is better and fat is beautiful. Even stretch marks are beautiful. Diets are non-existent and no diet products are available. The downside is that girls are routinely force-fed starchy foods (till they vomit) in order to fatten them up to attract a husband. The high obesity rate there causes lots of medical problems such as heart disease and diabetes. Some women consume black market pills created to increase the appetite of camels and cows. But, the women don’t have the same poor body image issues as women in Europe and the Americas who kill themselves to be thin. Being divorced also heightens a woman’s appeal because it proves she is desired by other men.
Regarding Mauritania’s love of plump women, Oprah sang, there’s a place for us….
2. Women, all over the world are willing to go to great lengths (even risking death) to live up to their culture’s beauty standards. Plastic surgery is becoming increasingly more common all over the world. Who knew that Brazil had the second largest plastic surgery volume; and that even in Muslim Iran, where women are covered from head-to-toe, nose jobs are very common. Nose jobs are so common in Iran (60,000 per year) that wearing a nose job band-aid is a status symbol worn by women years after the actual surgery and by women who have never had the surgery.
A survey conducted by Dove reveals that 90% of women around the world wish to change some aspect of their bodies. Too bad women can't be more like men who are generally comfortable in their bodies.
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