Monday, September 7, 2009

Gender and beauty

In her most famous book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir claims that one is not born a woman but that one becomes a woman. This claim unfortunately is still accurate fifty-some years after the book’s publication.

It is throughout one’s life that a female who constantly is bombarded with gendered ideas and concepts comes to see herself as a woman bound to act in certain ways and live by certain means in order to be accepted by the patriarchal society. These days every advertisement, every movie and TV show encourages women (especially young women) to behave in ways popularly known as “normal”. Images of tiny, tall and for most part young women who are constantly in search of a socially accepted image can be seen everywhere, from billboards to even crime scenes of Law & Order Special Victims Unit.

It seems that the whole purpose of all this is to rip women of their individuality and to kill in them any thought of adhering to a subjective and well thought doctrine and way of conduct.

I look at the whole process as a plan to make (read manufacture) dummies of women who, while enjoying a herd mentality, act and behave as lovely muses for one purpose only and that is to provide inspiration for men and to ultimately safeguard the mankind—and by that I really mean man kind.

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