NO LIFE BUT THIS: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


It is biographical fiction based on the life of Emily Warren Roebling considered to be the first female field engineer and highly instrumental in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.


http://atbosh.com/authors/diane-vogel-ferri/

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Growing Old Gracefully (cough, choke, gag)

Yes, ladies, it's time for a rant - t's all the perfect female bodies in commercials and ads (not to mention everywhere else). The latest one to piss me off is Evista (It's for menopausal bone loss). This ad shows a bunch of women wrapped in towels. A few of them truly look menopausal (the ones when the camera lens goes fuzzy), all very slim and attractive though. But most of them are young women POSING as mature women. What they do is take a youngish woman, maybe in her thirties, and put gray streaks through her hair to make you think (if you're stupid) she's in her fifties, but with a flawless body. No sags, no bags, no age spots, no wrinkles. How many dark-haired women do you know walking around with giant swaths of gray through their hair? After all, the next commercial is for hair color in which a young woman with 28 pounds of hair that is 42 inches long swings it around in the lights of a studio. Do you know anyone with hair like that? I don't. (It should be an ad for wigs). Or how about the mascara commercial where the lashes actually GROW right before your eyes? How stupid are we if we can't tell the difference between real and fake eyelashes? (False advertising!!!)Then there are the commercials where the mother is about four years older than the teenage children. Or how about Oprah? Somehow she loses 30-40 pounds before every photo shoot for the cover of her magazine and then manages to put it back on for TV. Amazing.
I'm disturbed by the media assumption that we can't tolerate anything less than gorgeous anymore. According to the media our eyes are no longer equipped to relate to mediocre, plain or average. Advertisers seem to be on a mission to crush every normal females's self-esteem - but WHY? They could be sending the old subliminal message that if you use their product you will somehow be more perfect, more beautiful. Maybe. If you've lived for awhile you know it hasn't always been like this. Watch TV Land and see imperfect actors and actresses from the past who entertained us whether they were drop-dead gorgeous or not. Growing up I don't recall any emphasis on what kids were wearing. It's a sad turn of events.
So why are "they" doing this to us. Money, of course. Think about all the products we are inundated with through television and print media - all the products that are completely unnecessary - until they convince us that we can be younger-looking, more lovely, stronger, healthier - oh yeah, just like those Evista ladies who need bone loss medication, but have bodies of 30-40 year olds. Even magazines geared for women over 40 (More) feature beautiful age-defying women in every magazine all in their air-brushed, computer-enhanced glory - saying "This is what 50 looks like!" Uh, no, it isn't.

8 comments:

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

I hate this stuff too. It sends out so many distorted messages. Thank you for ranting.

Lena said...

AMEN!!

Moohaa said...

I couldn't agree more! Like those diet meds they advertise where you see a body builder "before" who looks like they drank a couple of gallons of water and didn't work out for a couple days. Then they take a pee, do some crunches and POOF! They've lost 10 pounds in 6 weeks *.

*Results not typical. My hiney!

Amen to all you said sister!

Happyone said...

I agree with what you said but you can look and feel good at any age. Sure we all age but I believe so much in having the right attitude.
If you exercise and watch what you eat you can be the best that you can be.
I'm in my 50's and sailed right through menopause and I have never been in better shape than I am now. I belieive I owe it all to my walking!!
I'm lucky to be healthy and I feel great!!

Rose said...

You have just said a lot that I have been thinking for a long time...and then also you look at people like Joan Rivers that has had how many face lifts and I swear I had rather have the wrinkles as to look like that.

But then who cares about looks--it is personality that counts with the normal people. I could go on and on, but I won't.

Except to say that it is almost impossible to get an action movie that don't have some woman showing her boobs and hinting at more, and of course, it is that perfect body. This is something else that makes me rant...

Mavis said...

Good rant! Last night I watched on TV a bit of The Farmer wants a wife (Aussie reality show http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/tvshow.aspx?sectionid=8870§ionname=farmer2 ) and was shocked when I caught myself thinking negatively how 'ordinary' the women were! As if to be on TV they should be supermodels. Thankfully the farmers had much better judgement! (Not that I love this type of programme - but at least within its limitations the farmers showed good sense)

Jessica said...

Tell it sista!!!!!!
I agree with you 100 percent!

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