May 05, 2007

Health and Beauty


Warning: this is a particularly cranky post, but at least it's short. Crabby will be back soon with a posting that is much more upbeat.


So we know that health and physical attractivenss can sometimes go hand in hand: people who are strong, well-nourished and rested look, on the whole, way more attractive than people who don't exercise, eat crap, and never sleep.

However, standards of feminine beauty are sometimes arbitrary and even vicious. Here are two recent examples:

Take a look at the feet of this poor old woman (spotted by Apostropher).

And read here about the force-feeding of Mauritanian girls and women.

Crabby thinks there are also examples here at home, too, (maybe this?) but these first two struck her as particularly disturbing since "choice" didn't seem to be part of the picture.

This stuff makes Crabby so sad and angry she just wants to crawl into a nice little crabhole in the sand and hibernate.

Okay, enough with the infuriating depressing stuff. Back soon with something cheerier.

7 comments:

  1. It is amazing the things folk will do to conform to the cultural norms - and since they can change at a whim based on some random arbiter of what is "beauty" (yeah, I saw The Devil Wears Prada) it seems like one can never keep up, to say nothing of staying ahead. I decided a long time ago (and I can say that as someone who's almost 50) that I'd pick a classic, classy look and stick with it. I might see something in a new trend and adopt a bit of it, but only the mega rich can afford to change looks, hair, wardrobe every season.

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  2. I'm with Dawno on hair and wardrobe. I'm not rich enough to keep up with trends, and past a certain age, trends make you look like you're trying too hard, anyway. Classic looks good at any age, though.

    As far as body changes, though, most people would be best served by simply eating a healthy diet and getting some sort of exercise every day. Okay, six out of seven days. I'm a big believer in the importance of a rest day each week. :-)

    I responded to your comment on my blog, though, mainly just to say that my fiction blog is part of that "sorta like ours but not really" world. I still update, but not as often. The "First Diary" part is the part I had the best time with.

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  3. The beautiful women in my life, the ones I look up to, take care of themselves, eat right and look well rested. I am not fooled my photo retouched pictures (I know all about it, I know how to do it, I have a degree in multimedia). American ideals in media are not even real. I think that the Donatello look is the "rich old lady look". It scares me away from ever wanting plastic surgery because if they are rich and they could afford to go to any plastic surgeon they wanted to, and they still look like that! What are the chances that I would get a hack to work on me!
    Sadly, I don't think the foot lady or the force fed daughters have much choice. It only reminds me even as far as we have come, we have so much further to go!!!!

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  4. Appalled barely touches how I feel about the offensive standards of beauty found in the links provided, and almost everywhere else.
    We have a lot of nerve calling ourselves civilized.
    I go with what works for me. Anyone who does not like this is welcome to excuse themselves from my life.
    It's good to post this sort of thing, Crabby. Forces us to think about how we allow ourselves to be treated.

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  5. Hi all,

    Very thoughtful comments, thank you!

    I'm a bit rushed tonight and won't respond individually, but I really liked what you all said. I'll catch you all soon at your Very Own Wonderful Blogs. I know this was sort of a depressing post so thanks for commenting anyway. You helped Crabby crawl out of her Crabhole and make her way slowly towards those tempting margaritas and nachos.

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  6. Just out of curiosity, is there an article to go with the pictures on the old chinese woman's feet? I'd be interested to find out her thoughts.

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  7. Hi David,
    Yeah, I'd be curious too, but i didn't see any associated link. She seems weirdly cheerful in the pictures, but then I suppose she's lived most of her life that way and probably doesn't think about it all that much.

    I also thought it was kind of creepy that these seemed to be part of some sort of "funny pictures" site. Didn't seem too damn funny to me.

    ReplyDelete

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