Weight of the World
Virtually all American women worry about their weight, certain it is too much. That they are right is an inescapable concept, relentlessly reinforced in a thousand images each day, every day, in every medium.
“Size matters” so deeply and so pervasively in this country that young girls starving themselves are part of popular culture. Women spend millions of dollars each year, supporting corporations who spend millions more to tell them an acceptable size is anything different than what their own.
Cloaking their agenda in a clearly counterfeit concern for 'health', companies target women for an eternal parade of products, activities and attire to help them lose weight, get 'healthy' -and pay for the privilege.
In the high gloss, full color pages of magazines, the smaller-than-life figures on billboards, the perfectly pictured ads in newspapers and every five minutes on television, women are relentlessly assailed by professionally designed, psychologically determined appeals from an avalanche of fast food providers, specialty food lobbyists and national restaurant chains.
Eat more. Be thin. Faced with diametrically conflicting messages, experimental rats tend to go nuts. American women, in the same predicament, know only that they must buy something. Like Sartre's play, there is no exit.
The unbridled insistence on slim and slimmer dismisses the possibility of value clothed in anything more than a size 6. Unfortunately, the quest for attributes like intellect, imagination, talent, skill, dedication and integrity don't send anyone to the store.
It's not news that people enjoy seeing beautiful women. But a differently disturbing trend has developed where even beautiful women are trashed.
Story lines on television feature an endless succession of women being raped, murdered, beaten, attacked and stalked. Twenty years ago, the actress on the television show “Hunter” quit in protest when the script called for her to be raped a third time. She was rightly offended by the repeated presentation of her character as a victim and by the paucity of imagination exhibited by the writers.
The sleaze factor in prime time is contemptible at worst and insulting at best. Real woman scientists and police officers don't show cleavage. Real women lawyers and judges don't wear skirts slit to their crotch. Prostitutes don't make up the preponderance of the female population. Beyond the sleazy subjects, the sheer number of long camera shots of murdered women's limbs, endlessly prolonged scenes of terror and the utter lack of substantive dialog by women is demoralizing.
Research in the fifties proved 'brain washing' could be successfully achieved in a week. Imagine what is happening to minds of every age exposed to the daily, yearly, barrage of appalling images that are television and video games.
NOVA recently vaulted over an opportunity to present women positively in “The Elegant Universe”, a PBS program about theories of the universe. In the carefully contrived 'Quasar Cafe', scientists discussed weighty matters, all men, at every table. An airhead in a tight, strapless dress served the moderator. Her contribution to probability theory discussion was serving orange juice. The woman scientist that finally made the text of the program was a cliché - no makeup, Buster Brown hairdo, big glasses, Oxford shirt. Young girls watch the world beat a path to professional bimbos like Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears who are showered with money and attention. They know the score. The message of the “Elegant Universe” was clear, but hardly elegant. Worth is in beauty, beauty doesn't speak, intellect is unattractive and women exist in an ambivalent state that lauds physical perfection but not ability.
It isn't about entertainment any more. It's about respect. Without it, women carry a much greater burden than a few extra pounds. PL
