Just finished reading 'The Beauty Myth' by Naomi Wolf and wow are my eyes open!! I suppose a lot of the stuff she talks about has affected me but not affected me. I've always been pretty contrary when it comes to things like looking like those people you see in ads and wearing makeup and all that jazz. I never read those horrible magazines. Telling me how I should dress and paste crap on my face and grovel around after men. No thanks. I feel good about myself. I'm healthy, smart, perfectly happy with the way I look without buying useless crap to put on my face or subjecting myself to stupid 'diets'. There's nothing wrong with me but those mags and ads always make me feel like there is. I can't imagine how someone who reads those things all the time and takes them seriously would feel. But also how society focuses so intensely on how women look to the exclusion of everything else. It's so deeply ingrained. It's always annoyed me how that is when men aren't subjected to the same scrutiny. It's perfectly fine for them to walk around wearing whatever they like, looking scruffy, zits showing and that's fine but if woman doesn't dress nicely and have her face and hair done up she's some kind of plain, 'ugly' child. Not a woman.
