brilliantyears:

A very powerful message. Please watch!

Killing us softly by Jean Kilbourne

Thanks for sharing, C! I absolutely recommend you all watch this. Keywords: advertising, ideal of beauty, popular culture, consumerism, sexualization of consumer products, eroticization of violence.

Link to Part Two

Some quotes from both parts:

“Our popular culture seems to have the ability to make women everywhere and everywhere feel absolutely terrible about themselves.”

“At the same time that we allow our children to be sexualized, we refuse to educate them about sex.”

“When the culture offers girls and women only one way to be sexy, it can hardly be considered an authentic choice to choose it.”

downlo:

Interesting look at how black-owned beauty companies might be on the decline in the face of bigger cosmetic companies catering to nonwhites. Greater inclusiveness at the beauty counter may not be an entirely clean ‘win’ for people of color:

…Revlon and similar entities now shell out millions for spokeswomen like Halle Berry hoping to attract our audience. Mainstream brands like CoverGirl are partnering with stars like Queen Latifah to design lines that target consumers of color. Pantene has created highly popular shampoos and conditioners for relaxed and natural hair.

Black customers may want to support our beauty businesses to reverse years of economic inequality and keep money in the community. Yet, this is an increasingly difficult task, because beauty giants are snapping up black-owned companies, even as they manufacture products for people of African descent.

The loss of these independent, POC-owned businesses is troubling. Despite their recent efforts, big beauty companies still screw up when it comes to fulfilling the needs of brown people.

There are still a hundred shades of pinkish beiges compared to a handful of browns and olives in most foundation/concealer/powder lines. It’s exceedingly rare to find quality skin and haircare products at Sephora and Ulta that meet the needs of people with more melanin in their skin and textured or otherwise ‘ethnic’ hair. Not to mention lightening the complexions of women of color spokesmodels and implying that unprocessed black hair is uncivilized in advertising.

It’s just too damned soon for companies like Carole’s Daughter to try to be a ‘polyethnic’ beauty company.

This is interesting and important.

I watched Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair recently, and thought it made some astounding points. It was a shock, at any rate, to learn that a large part of the black hair industry is not actually black-owned.. how ridiculous that a product so important to many people, and so expensive, brings so little financial profit into their community.

greaterthanlapsed:

[Trigger warning for discussions of weight, diet, thin privilege, fatphobia, body policing.]

Great post that highlights to just what extent women can never be thin enough. It reminded me of Luisel Ramos, the model who died from complications of anorexia—while participating in a fashion show.

And the biggest problem is the complete loss of connection with one’s body. No matter how thin one is, the conviction of one’s Not Being Thin Enough to the point of no longer recognizing the state of one’s own body- this is what terrifies me, both at a level of general culture as well as up close and extremely personal.

Thanks to greaterthanlapsed’s link to the upsetting story of Luisel Ramos (and her little sister), I read another article on the starvation of models. Sadly, several men in charge of the fashion industry felt no sense of responsibility whatsoever.

From the article: Didier Grumbach, head of the Chambre Syndicale, the body that governs French fashion, says it is not the role of fashion to solve public health problems.

‘I think it’s a non-issue. You don’t solve public health problems by regulating the size of models,’ he says. ‘You know, fashion is only the reflection of what is happening in society. It is not the cause.’”

I do not believe him. I do not believe that girls look at pictures in magazines or online, watch movies or tv, or play with barbie dolls (or computer games), to observe the form of women in all these form of culture, only to remain unshaken and observe that these shows have got it wrong. Because girls are part of culture. Their mothers and fathers are. The boys who want a girlfriend -also those who don’t- are part of culture. It’s hard to pin down and easy to displace blame. At this point I guess I believe that sharing blog posts like this are a very small start of a discussion, a sharing of opinion, a deepening of consciousness.