Gender

After we watched the clips on gender in class, I thought a lot about America's Next Top Model. I watch the show a lot. I record it, and when there's an ANTM marathon on, I sit in front of the TV for hours even when I've already seen the entire season. From watching the clips in class and thinking about ANTM, I realize that modeling is a market, and that models pose and people choose picture in a way that they think will sell a product. Marketing is sometimes false. Now a days it seems like marketing is always false, but with the models we see in the magazines and on television, I think we as a society realize that this is not how everyone looks. Women realize that not everyone is stick thin with big boobs and mile long legs. Men realize that not everyone has an eight pack and looks like a laundry back filled with meat. Although we realize this as a society, we also realize that someone looks like that in the world, and if someone else can look like that, we can look like that too. We know that this body figure is unrealistic and rare, but when we see people that we could look like, we automatically feel bad about ourselves. We could look at pencil wearing a skirt, realize it's a pencil in a skirt, and still want to look like a pencil in the skirts we buy. Another trick of marketing is that we feel if we buy a certain product, we have the ability to look like the model in the picture. We say, hey that looks good on the model. I want it because it looks so good, and even though I don't look like the model, it doesn't mean I can't look like the model and make that outfit look great on me. I think it's a problem that we strive to look like these models when we know that we can't look like them. It makes us feel horrible about ourselves because we know that someone out there looks the way we wish we could look. If magazines start publishing pictures of people who look like us, we will realize that the way we are is good and right and socially acceptable, which is ultimately how we want to feel about ourselves.