Taboo

There's a show on the National Geographic channel called "Taboo" that explores a different taboo each week. The taboo featured in last week's episode was simply 'fat'. They showed a 650 pound man who can't even get out of bed, a 450 pound female model and a beauty pageant for plus size women. But the story that really caught my attention was about the women of the African country Mauritania. In Mauritania overweight women are considered to be the most attractive. The women believe that the larger they are the more space they will take up in their husband's heart. Mother's actually forcefeed their young daughters in order to make them desirable to the men. This practice has been legally outlawed but the show captured the scene of a mother actually pinching her daughters toes between two wooden rods in order to force her into drinking some mixture of milk and butter.

At one point in the segment on of the experts made a comment about how these women completely sacrifice their health in the name of beauty, which is exactly what we do in the U.S. just in the opposite way. It is frustrating to me when people truly think that these expectations of beauty are natural and just the way things are supposed to be. I think learning about other cultures and how their ideas of beauty can be completely different from ours is proof that the media and society essentially control the way we think. It's almost scary, but important, to realize that many of the ideals and beliefs that we hold as our own may not be all that original or personal but rather intentionally constructed by society.

Just be chubby!

One thing that has always bothered me is the way that actresses tend to lose weight after gaining a little bit of fame. For example, I love the show Reba :) and in the show her ex-husband's new wife goes from looking like this in the beginning of the series:

To this in the end:

Her pretty significant weight loss was even written into the story line. Another example is Sookie St. James on the show Gilmore Girls. I had a hard time finding any good pictures but she had a similar transformation. Another place that I often see this is in reality t.v. where it's clear that the girl who may not have been the skinniest on her show made it a point to lose some weight before returning to any reunion or whatever it may be.

I usually initially feel sort of proud that they had the dedication and motivation to change something that they may not have been happy about but then I think "Were they really unhappy about it or did they just not have a choice?". I wonder if maybe they were okay with the way they looked until they were put in front of millions of criticizing people and felt that they HAD to change. It's sad to me that the few women on television today who actually represent what normal people look like usually don't stay that way for long.

Hey everyone! My name is Grace and I am currently a junior here at OU. I grew up in Dublin, Ohio with two sisters and one brother and my step mom actually just had a baby girl on December 22nd. After I graduated from Dublin Jerome High School I spent my first year of college at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. I love Charleston as a city but going to school there just wasn't the college experience I wanted. I love being at OU and my major here is Restaurant, Hotel and Tourism and I hope to eventually have a career in event planning. I am doing an internship at Disney World this spring and summer and would love to continue working there after I graduate next year.

Last quarter I took a Women and Gender Studies class that I can already tell will help me in this class. We looked a lot at the media and it's societal impacts on gender and what we deem to be appropriate for men and women to look like, say and do. Megan mentioned that we will be watching Jean Kilbourne's video "Killing Us Softly" which I also watched last quarter. The video focuses on the way women are portrayed in advertisements but I have found myself being much more aware of women's roles in all forms of media. The way that women are so clearly sexualized in just about every role, even when it's completely unrealistic, is pretty shocking. What's even more shocking, and also alarming, is the fact that I have gone so long without really noticing it, despite how obvious it is. From suggestive camera angles to revealing costumes, I truly feel that the television and movie industries are taking it too far. Even programs that are supposed to be more PG are riddled with sexual innuendos and unnecessarily suggestive elements and I'm sure that if you paid a little bit better attention you would be just as appalled as I am.