Underweight women face a host of health problems as well. The issue isn't about just being healthily slender; it's about being underweight and stick-figured like models and celebrities (or at least the Photoshopped photos of those people).
i would say the more broad (heh) issue is that creating ridiculous expectations of beauty for women serves to further dehumanize them and continue commoditizing sexual relations.
i think the trend towards thinner and younger women as the ideal is an attempt to reclaim that slipping feeling of patriarchal dominance that comes with women getting to have careers, vote, and choose their mates.
While I don't immediately dispute your premise, how does that explain that most of the damage being done is by the largely female-dominated women's magazines and modeling industries?
a heteronormative patriarchal culture doesn't require the direct hand of men on it at all times, there are women who benefit from the arrangement that feel they have a vested interest in subverting feminist movements. "most of" is a dishonest value judgment; while there are women who take part in maintenance of those industries, they exist because of a cultural interest in sexualizing and dehumanizing women. it's rooted in the time when a woman's only societal value was as a mate and a homemaker thanks to a male dominated society.
as those stereotypes have peeled back, the hateful and regressive nature of "the good ol' days" is being exposed if you know what you're looking for.
to say that women's magazines and the fashion industry were part of a female movement to objectify themselves is a gross miscarriage of responsibility and a deliberately incredulous analysis of human behavior.
I must admit, I actually buy the "women in positions of power within those industries have a vested interest in continuing the objectification of their gender as a whole" argument. You've convinced me.
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i think the trend towards thinner and younger women as the ideal is an attempt to reclaim that slipping feeling of patriarchal dominance that comes with women getting to have careers, vote, and choose their mates.
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as those stereotypes have peeled back, the hateful and regressive nature of "the good ol' days" is being exposed if you know what you're looking for.
to say that women's magazines and the fashion industry were part of a female movement to objectify themselves is a gross miscarriage of responsibility and a deliberately incredulous analysis of human behavior.
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