House of Eratosthenes

Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study in the US has warned.

The pressure of what experts call “sexualization” can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance, said the report, released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.

Inescapable…images. Psychological…harm.

You know what this calls for? Some brand of 21st-century McCarthyism. Guilt by association. This study, and everybody who touches it, and every political movement connected to it, and every study resembling it and every political movement connected to a study resembling it, should be branded.

Why not? I mean, what are you trying to do, that you don’t really want to talk about? How appealing would your real agenda be to the rest of us, if you have to cover it up with talk of some demographic being “harmed” or victimized in some way. Some demographic…almost always female, but invariably something appealingly disenfranchised according to some traditional line-of-thought. Something cute, something adorable, something wounded.

And then this thing you’re trying to warn us about, that’s all around us and we’re taking it for granted. That, invariably, is something viewed by selection, something that can be tuned-in and tuned-out…and it seems the sales pitch always concerns the ability of this object or message to seize upon a a captive audience — something we intuitively know is not the case. “Inescapable” images. Really?

Once you’ve failed to escape them, you have to embark upon this tragic eating disorder? So…the same thing does not happen to young men with arms the size of rake handles whose girlfriends make them watch Baywatch, or Xena, or …I dunno…whatever’s out there on cable with male pecs and biceps and what-not.

Haven’t kept up on it, I don’t swing that way.

Point is, those guys don’t suddenly have eating disorders. Maybe they’re doing something right? Or maybe when they have workout disorders, which society views as a generally healthy thing — isn’t that exactly the same thing? Or, if it’s different, what should we be doing to get our gals to rewire their brains so that they think more like men? For their own good.

Somehow, I think we’ve got awhile to wait before we see a study put out with that kind of slant.

But really. What is up with these studies. They get published, and then they get published again, and again, and again. The message is always the same. The studies implore us to believe that a healthy human can be transformed into an unhealthy human, by looking at a picture. But it demands the privilege to select for us, who should be the target of our pity and our sympathy and our concern.

For example, as a parent I can’t get any momentum behind my declaration that “Japanese cartoons encourage kids to talk back to their parents, and turn them into holy terrors.” I have freedom of speech to say that, of course, and lots of parents will agree with me about it. But where’s the “study” that just begins to look in to it?

Seems we have a lot of “scientists” walking around who think it’s really cool and fashionable, to say things that lots of scientists have already said, about targeted groups of people being victimized.

I found this snippet to be particularly entertaining.

The fashion world has been in turmoil since public authorities in Madrid banned under-weight and under-age models from catwalks last year.

Really!

Gosh, that’s not how I remember the thing being talked up ten months ago when I was noticing it. I remember the litany going something like this:

Shop window mannequins should have the figures of “real women”, campaigners said yesterday.

They fear the unrealistic proportions of models in shops could be contributing to the rise of eating disorders.

Over the past 50 years, the average dress size has increased from 12 to 16. The average woman’s weight has gone up from eight to 11 stone.

No, I don’t see anything in there about “campaigners are currently seeking to throw the fashion world into turmoil that may last well into next year.” I would imagine that should a press writer choose to word his story that way, his editor would have asked him to re-word it in a way more pleasing to the campaigners, and had he refused his career would have been short-lived.

But really. Advertising images holding captive audiences…and the ladies, after looking at the pictures, embarking helplessly upon their eating disorders. If this is a valid idea demanding action, why restrict the principle to the problem immediately under discussion? Superman and Wolverine have bulging biceps, and little boys with skinny arms are constantly looking at those. Is that not an equally “damaging” problem? And if not, why not?

And once we take the emotionally-tempestuous sub-issue of selected gender out of it, the question has to come up: What is our vision for young people and the lives they will lead as adults, anyway? Should they become adults who have viewed these awful, dirty pictures and formed the psychological constitution necessary to deal with said images, or are they to become protected little waifs whose fragile eyeballs have been protected from such contraband throughout childhood?

I’m trying to visualize the second of those two coping with the Gomorrah we’re watching unfold at our feet right now. It’s a tough thing to picture.

You know, I don’t have any daughters, but if I did have one and I wanted to make sure she had an absolutely miserable life, I’d teach her how to do this: Eat as much as she wants, let her body get as chubby as she wants it to get, never look at any women who might be better looking, and carp and yell at her husband until he can’t look at anybody better-looking either. At least when she’s not around. Great formula. Hey, I’d have five ex-sons-in-law and a zillion-and-one stories from my little girl about “why do men cheat all the time?” by the time I was sixty. Would I be raising my own grandchildren? COUNT on it.

This isn’t a male/female issue. Someone is deeply into the lowering of standards for the next generation — their ethos can be summed up in the famous Homer Simpson line, “trying is the first step to failure.” Maybe the American Psychological Association would like to look into that.

[…] 50 Mistakes Women Make Flesh! Oh, No! X Morgan No Function Either Beer Well Without Spiders On Drugs What The Record SaysSpeaking For Everyone Poignantly True Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun The Top Three, Huh? For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types IX Three Light Bulbs Best Sentence IX I’m a Slithering Reptile […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/23/2007 @ 11:02
[…] A Poll I’d Like To See III The Antares Paradigm Imus Puts Liberals In Their Place 50 Mistakes Women Make Flesh! Oh, No! XMorgan No Function Either Beer Well Without Spiders On Drugs What The Record Says Speaking For Everyone Poignantly True Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun The Top Three, Huh? I’m a Slithering Reptile […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/23/2007 @ 12:08
[…] Part of the reason for my unfriendly reaction to the latest “girls and young women traumatized by sexy pictures” thing is that it is tired. It is gawdawful tired. Tired, and unsolicited. I didn’t wake up the last three mornings in a row thinking “gee, I wonder if girls and young women get traumatized when they look at sexy pictures.” […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/04/2007 @ 21:53

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Flesh! Oh, No! XFriday, February 23rd, 2007

Flesh! Oh, No! X
Friday, February 23rd, 2007