A few weeks ago, I posed the question, “What is ‘real’ beauty?” Along with that question, I posted a video from You Tube on the ”Evolution of Beauty” - a short video that, in less than two minutes, reveals the massive amounts of make-up andphotoshopping that goes into producing and reproducing our mainstream cultural ideals of “beauty” and subsequently perpetuating an onslaught of myths pertaining to female beauty. For cultural critics and Internet connoisseurs this is probably old news, but Redbook Magazine recently created quite a controversial stir with its July cover of Faith Hill. I heard about this earlier in the week, and then Leslie Goldman blogged about it on her blog The Weighting Game; Leslie urged everyone to take a look at the magazine cover so that they might come to realize that “‘perfect’ is not good enough and that what we see truly is not real.” Chilling words, but so true. According to popular definitions of “beauty,” I always thought that country star Faith Hill was pretty “perfect.” Apparently, the folks at Redbook disagree. To check out the July cover - and the mega-photoshop job done to shave 10-15 pounds off of Faith Hill and erase her gorgeous laugh lines - check out the following link: www.Jezebel.com.
My hope is that as fit, healthy, and athletic women, we have different definitions of beauty that do not comply with mainstream notions; my hope is that when we think of beauty, we think of strength, power, endurance, stamina. Beauty cannot be contained by a size, a weight, a wrinkle-free and fat-free body. Re-read the quote of the day . . . Margaret Cho is definitely on to something.
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