Cosmopolitan magazine– On the cover of the magazine there are always girls with super low cut tops, tight dresses. Of course, the content on the cover surrounds sex. In big bold, letters, “Sex moves to keep him wanting more”, “kissing tips to win him over”. This magazine is not about the women, instead it focuses on the man. These are things you should try to please your man. It suggests that to get a man or make him happy you have to do these things. It basically puts women in a position as an object. Women are worth more than just pleasure.
Snapchat– Snapchat offers their users a variety of filters to make their photos more fun, cute,pretty and exciting to share with others. Users can play with backgrounds and effects on their photos. These different filters, however, can also alter someone’s appearance. Snapchat has photoshop like features. For example, on snapchat there is a “pretty” filter, such as, flower crown filter and butterflies. This filter can alter skin, hair, nose, and eyes. In this image, you can see that the nose is skinnier. The photos are all lightened to produce a much paler result. Skin becomes a lot smoother, the face more flushed with a rosy tint, and the jaw is visibly thinner. The hair becomes shiny and lips become rosy. This filter covers blemishes, birthmarks,freckles. These sort of filters encourage others to show what we think they want to see instead of who we truly are.This filter encourages girls to believe that their beauty is not good enough. By encouraging girls to use this filter, they are also letting girls lie about their appearances in fear that others will not accept the way they look like. It is a very superficial app.
Makeup- red lipstick is a must have for many women. It evokes a confident, sexy look. Make-up has the effect to allow us to alter our looks. With makeup(contouring kit) we achieve defined cheeks and skinny nose, jawline is more defined. It comes to show that with makeup, girls can achieve a sort of porcelain doll look. With the use of makeup, you can appear more attractive to appeal the opposite sex or feel more confident about yourself. The problem is that if you wear too much makeup that you look like 2 completely different people, it is likely that you are hiding something. You look fake and deceite other people. Makeup is the most common mask we wear. We use makeup to cover up blemishes, dark circles, which is okay, but it is not the true reflection of yourself. You are covering up what you really look like. It seems that girls wear makeup because they are ashamed of what they look like when really makeup enhances the way you look.
Skirts/shorts– For example, there are many guys out there that say “she was wearing a dress or skirt, so she was asking for it”. It’s men that hold this mentality of girls that promotes and increases assault, sex violence and rape in our culture. They do not hold the guys accountable for their actions towards girls, instead they blame the girls and their clothes. Clothes are not a risk factor. Even if a girl was wearing jeans, they’d still find a way. No one deserves to be raped or wishes rape upon themselves. Even if someone is dressing sexy because they want to have sex, they still get the choice of who and when. Stop shaming girls and blaming the victims. We need to teach boys to be educated, respectful men and not to look at girls as sex objects. Be responsible for your actions and have some self-control.
I love your Cosmopolitan artifact, because you really get to study the rhetoric, and I love your observation. It would be interesting to study a variety of magazines/articles and see if the majority of the content is directed towards women pleasing men, or women doing things for themselves. I wonder if there are some (if any) articles about men doing similar things to please women.
I also think the snapchat filters is a great cultural artifact, because it’s pretty recent and has become such a widescale trend. People rarely post a picture without some sort of filter to enhance the lighting/their looks without the intent to use “#nofilter,” and that’s a shame. I think the same goes for Instagram filters as well. So then there is this dichotomy between real life appearance and appearance on social media.
And then, I think with your make-up artifact, you could even compare how make-up is used to help women look like how they do on social media with all of the filters/effects.
I love how closely related those three are.
For your last one, you might want to get the numbers on rape case statistics (if they exist) comparing whether the victims were wearing skirts/dress versus shorts/pants. I was never aware that such a discrepancy could exist, so that would be interesting to research, if possible. But I agree, clothes should never be a factor.
I love what you said about women are worth more than pleasure and it is true that magazine nowadays are just about women sexualization and pleasure. And I think that magazines should focus more on how smart women can be and that they can do an awesome job just like men too. So I do not know anything about snap chat because I do not use it, but I from what you describe snap chat is altering the body image of young women, and that their self-esteem is low because they are afraid that others will not accept them. So I think the problem is within the app.
COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE – ahh, yes!! There’s never a shortage of those at your local Publix or Toys R’ Us. Or, at least, I hope only Publix. Those titles do meet the criteria for a kind of afeminist (if I may) power discourse; this alone would seem to be at conflict with the ideas suggested by the title, “Cosmopolitan”, a citizen of the cosmos (I believe that’s Anthony Appiah’s, a scholar, definition), one who would attempt to better understand and therefore balance out power as it seems like the world is becoming more and more connected. As a cultural artifact for your paper, you might also draw upon questions that arise from the typical locations of these magazines. Do more appear in places like Publix, Walmart, and Bed, Bath and Beyond that they do in, say, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Barnes and Nobles? Such an inquiry might yield powerful insights.
SNAPCHAT – Also, for women who might notice no change upon their faces when switching to the a “pretty filter”, this may also lead them to a sense of “optimal beauty”, since the apparent programs that support instagram and all its filters must know something about what beauty is and what it’s not (I’m being somewhat sarcastic here). There’s an interesting idea too. How modern technology, with the underlying idea that it is a complex, almost above our intellect, precise and detailed entity can be used as a platform for augmenting particular features of something (like, say, when you see a super cool, tech-blue advertisement for a new phone, versus some homeless guy with cracked hands and dirty fingernails trying to sell you the same thing. Which one has a more persuasive “ethos”?)
MAKE-UP – Personally, I think porcelain dolls are rather creepy. Actually, I’ve never seen one, but I can imagine what you mean based off your description. But, anyhow, yes, oh the many masks we wear! It’s another article on appearance. I think you may want to look into how, changing “faces”, so to speak, with make-up, say more about how we are very susceptible to change as part of our nature, in a way similar to how we change clothes everyday (putting aside reasons of hygiene of course, but even this point might be employed). Interestingly enough, it seems that make-up, as an article of change (or for change, too, possibly?) might speak back to the idea that “it’s not the strong ones who survive, but the ones most responsive to change, the ones who can adapt.” I think Darwin said something along those lines, though you may want to be careful how to commission this point, since it seems, superficially, that it might counter what you’re trying to get at.
SKIRTS/SHORTS – Your bit on self-control is what stood out most to me here. Throughout the ages, and even now, one can list many methods people have employed to try to control one another, but you mention we must control ourselves, and I agree with this. However, the influence of others and what they do, like your argument here, needs to take more prevalence in society, such that to counter act, or at least show definite opposition to what some deem to be perfectly fine behavioral norms. Few are faultless here. Consider some cultural partners to skirts/shorts; some might say club music and clubs themselves, which many of us Floridians can say to have made massive protests and rallies against, but should we? Considering all that seems to gravitate around them.
These are complex topics and questions of course, and by no means to do I mean to strikingly oppose or affirm anymore of your ideas I may not be cognizant at this moment, but I do hope I was of some help and that you do excellent on your paper. Do talk to me if ever you want to discuss these things; thanks!