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Janet Jackson “I don’t see myself as a sexy person…. For a long time, I had a hard time finding things I liked about myself physically. I’d never look in the mirror…’cause I didn’t really like what I saw. "One day I looked in the mirror because I wanted to find something that I liked about myself — and I started crying. I didn’t see anything. “I would always wear clothes that made my butt look smaller because I was so self-conscious about it." [On where her body issues came from:] “Childhood. My brother Michael used to tease me. We’re very close, but he was very adamant about the way I looked, the way I should look. He thought my butt was too big. Maybe he wasn’t completely happy with himself, so he put it on me? "I’m just guessing here, but looking back now, I know that in adolescence your body changes, and he would always tease people left and right about something. When his own body started to change…he became a lot more introverted.” From Janet Jackson Tells All, Giant mag. giantmag.com Sept 14, 2006 According to Wikipedia, singer-songwriter, producer, dancer and actress Janet Jackson ranks as the ninth most successful artist in the history of rock and roll and the second most successful female artist of all time. I'm starting to become more and more of an actress as the youth and glamour aspects become less important to me. I can finally branch out. You're supposed to disappear into a character; that's the emotional goal. Diane Lane .. [LATimes, July 28, 2005] > image from her film "Must Love Dogs"    ~ ~ ~ ~ In L.A. it's important to have a "look," but you don't have to get a boob job or your nose done to get work. Just find out who you are and what works best for you. The No. 1 most important quality an actor needs to have is honesty. Daisy Eagan .. [Los Angeles Times, July 19 2005] > photo from her site daisyeagan.com     ~ ~ ~ ~ Feminists.. are buying into the idea that the way to feel good is to look after our bodies. We would have been horrified at this years ago, but it's just part of what we do now. How many hours are spent by accomplished, capable, intellectually interesting women in being frightened of food, then decorating or denigrating their bodies? Is the gym really about health? > psychotherapist Susie Orbach - in article The Dialectic of Fat, by Catherine Orenstein, Ms. magazine Summer 2005 > Susie Orbach is author of book Fat Is a Feminist Issue

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Things You Think You Want Surely any right-minded 21st-century type wants to Get Sushi, Whenever, Wherever? And a Decaf Chocolate Mocha Espresso, Anytime, Anywhere? Well, want it, but know what it is that you're wanting. I read that Leonardo called it a service-station culture which takes the needs of a Fat White American and reproduces them all across the globe. No, I couldn't believe he said anything that smart, either. Speaking of Leo, is it true you still wish to be Forever Young? To be, or to be with, The Perfect Woman?

A cautionary tale: my 73-year-old father has the hots for the big-haired one of Friends. He thinks about her constantly. That is what happens in a culture that won't put childish things away. Remember: these two things do not exist. Remember: these two things will hurt you more than anything else, if you let them. > from blog entry A Short Catalogue Of Things You Think You Want by Zadie Smith Zadie Smith is author of the novel On Beauty - the title comes from Elaine Scarry’s book, On Beauty And Being Just. “I wanted to write a non-academic version of that,” Smith says of the examination of beauty and it’s importance in the world. [metronews.ca Oct 31 2005]

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I was a 36C or D, and at 5' 1", I knew that being a small person with big boobs standing in front of an audience was not going to be easy. It would be really hard to get people to pay attention to me without mocking me. Getting a breast reduction to prepare for my career was no different from people who work to get good grades to get into a good college to get into a good graduate school to get a good job. I went down to a B cup, and it was the best thing in the whole world. Janeane Garofalo ... imdb.com bio]

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I've lived by a man's code designed to fit a man's world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman's first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick. Carole Lombard (1908-1942)

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Cameron Diaz on wanting to be voluptuous Oprah : It was so interesting when you... were saying you always wanted to "be a fleshy, voluptuous woman…the kind that bursts out of her clothing, displaying her wealth of femininity." Have you made peace with what you've got? Cameron Diaz : Yeah. You know, at some point you have to. I think writing that article [in Vogue magazine] for me was really sort of freeing because people assume so much about you; the way that you look.

And my point in that article was: We're all struggling with what we have. No matter if it's something that's desirable to somebody else... The grass is always greener. But it's really not true -- you have to love what you have and make the best of it... This is the only body that you have and this is the vessel that's going to carry you. ... I didn't work out until I started Charlie's Angels. And I'm like, "Why wasn't I doing this the entire time?" Because people would say [I was] thin enough. > The Oprah Winfrey Show oprah.com 2005 > bikini photo from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle 2003

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myths of beauty The whole temptation to be as beautiful as possible or to be beautiful in a social conformist way -- I am susceptible to that. I wake up and put on makeup. I like high heels. I do a lot of things that have a whole history of controversy behind them. Now I find myself writing about them, and I tend to write in the “we” voice because I don't feel like I am so far removed from the women who are having those crazy plastic surgeries on those reality TV shows. ... I really feel as vulnerable to social ideals of beauty as anybody else. /// On the radio yesterday somebody mentioned how terrible it is that we are obsessed with surface and superficial beauty and that the Cinderella myth is really all about appearances -- the movies that we watch, like Maid in Manhattan, or Pretty Woman, and television shows like The Swan, Extreme Makeover, I Want a Famous Face, and Nip/Tuck are obsessed with Cinderella makeovers and skin-deep beauty. On a certain level that's true. But you could also say these shows and stories are about just the opposite. The Cinderella Cycle also incorporates the desire to transcend superficial beauty.

Cinderella's transformation from rags into fairy princess beauty -- and related stories like the ugly duckling to the swan or the chrysalis to the butterfly -- can be seen as being about transcending superficial physical barriers and being recognized for one's true, inner self; and finding love that transcends poverty and class and age and physical imperfection. I think one thing that is important to do is to examine the myths that drive us so that in some way we can be freed by them -- or at least be free to interpret them in the ways we find most useful. Catherine Orenstein - interview, Ms. Magazine 7.02.04 / photo by Mara Catalan > more quotes on the page mythology Catherine Orenstein is the author of Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality  and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale

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Augmentation no longer carries the stigma it once had. Augmentations have soared to an estimated 252,915 a year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. "Breasts sell," said Ann Kearney-Cooke, a Cincinnati psychologist who has studied body image. "Whenever you have a body part that there is such a high charge around in the culture, I think that is when you see people getting obsessed and dissatisfied." "The whole idea of remodeling your body has become a fashion statement, almost like changing your wardrobe," says Rita Freedman, a clinical psychologist in Harrison, N.Y., who has studied body image and breast implants. Aggressive marketing and advertising, fashion trends and cosmetic surgery television shows such as "Extreme Makeover," have all contributed to a culture in which full, bouncy, youthful breasts are part of the ideal female body image, says Freedman.

Large breasts "are advertised indirectly every time a Victoria's Secret ad comes into your house," she says. > from article Breasts, redefined - Forget the natural look. More American women than ever are turning to implants. By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2005 > photo: Carmen Electra - who has said she was considering having her augmented breasts reduced >more on body image 4 > related books : Ann Kearney-Cooke, Florence Isaacs. Change Your Mind, Change Your Body : Feeling Good About Your Body and Self After 40 Rita Freedman, PhD. Bodylove: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves : A Practical Guide for Women

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Jane Fonda on cosmetic surgery and having implants herself Most celebrities -- like most non-famous people -- are less sanguine about artificial alterations to their appearance and more attuned to the assumptions plastic surgery can engender about their level of confidence and emotional health. "I think it is when people have lost touch with their spirit, their life force, that they become most vulnerable to consumer culture and the toxic drive for perfection," Jane Fonda writes in her memoir, "My Life So Far." In the mid-1980s, she writes, she experienced a sort of midlife crisis -- her creativity was flagging and her marriage to Tom Hayden was crumbling: "Instead off dealing with my crisis in a real way, I got breast implants."

"I am ashamed of this, but I understand why I did it at the time. "I somehow believed that if I looked more womanly, I would become more womanly. So much of my life had become a facade; what did it matter if I added my body to the list of falsehoods?" > from article When it comes to plastic surgery, celebrities play it close to the chest. By Shawn Hubler, Los Angeles Times June 11, 2005

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Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett is disgusted by how many of her Hollywood peers have succumbed to using face-paralyzing Botox. The Gift star, 35, is happy to age gracefully and is saddened so many young girls are injecting the chemical into their faces in the hope of retaining eternal youth. Blanchett says, "It's not just women on film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who'd had children and I think they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? "I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is their little pin holes of terror... and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move." [imdb.com 10 May 2005]

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color castes and cliques There are so many words to describe African-Americans' pernicious, persistent dirty little secret -- colorism, color-conscious, color-struck, color complex. And then there are the more specific descriptive terms that separate Blacks and create castes, and cliques, and that are ultimately definitions not of color but of culturally defined beauty and ugliness and that can end up distributing everything from power, to wealth, to love. High yellow, high yalla, saffron, octoroon, quadroon, redbone, light brown, black as tar, coal, blue-veined, café au lait, pinkie, blue-black. [As a child] I had absorbed everything I needed to know about color. I knew how deeply imbedded was the culture's obsession with White defined beauty, whether it was manifested in the icon-status of Marilyn Monroe, or the light skinned "good haired" Black women smiling from the cover of Jet or Ebony. ...

And while there were brown to black men and women profiled in these "bibles" of the Black community, it seemed to me that the Negroes who had managed to pull off the most amazing feats of achievement (Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall ), those we referred to as "Negro Firsts", were usually light-skinned. How was I to conclude anything other than because I looked like exactly what I was, a "Negro," I was less valuable, less legitimate, less real to nearly everyone around me. Marita Golden > excerpt from maritagolden.com - from her book Don't Play in the Sun : One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex > related pages :...identity.....self-esteem / self concept

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Frivolous as reality TV may seem, the psychological browbeating these shows engage in has political ramifications. They reinforce insecurities bred into women by decades of inaccurate media reports of “man shortages” and brokendown biological clocks.  "You always hear those horror stories: 40 and single! I don't want that!" said one booted bachelorette.  The genre’s scare message to self-sufficient women is that they need to make themselves as attractive and nonthreatening as possible, or else Mr. Right will be snatched up by one of 24 cuter and more compliant chicks, and they will be left alone and miserable.  Welcome to the backlash, new-millennium style. Underneath their pretty promises of "true love" and "fairytale" transformations, producers construct these shows to drive home the notion that no emotional, professional or political accomplishment can possibly compare with the twin vocations of beauty and marriage.

They want women to think like June Cleaver, look like Miss America and -- in a nod to modernity -- have sex like Madonna. Hello, Stepford. Apologists claim reality TV isn't sexist because no one forces women to appear on these shows. But the impact on the shows' participants is almost beside the point: The real concern is the millions of viewers, scores of whom are young girls, who take in these misogynistic spectacles uncritically, learning that only the most stereotypically beautiful, least independent women with the lowest-carb diets will be rewarded with love, financial security and the ultimate prize of male validation. Jennifer L. Pozner - from her article The Unreal World [Ms. Magazine] She is executive director of Women In Media & News (WIMN) > photo above from ABC show "The Bachelor"

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.. changing self-confidence through natural nudes I am a 19 year old girl who has suffered a lot from low self-esteem about her physical appearance. I have had battles with eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder and obsessive compulsive disorders related to my looks... and what's more, I hated being seen as an object by men worth for nothing but sex. I was skeptical at first when someone gave me the link to your site as inspiration for my art course, but it has helped me beyond what I ever could have imagined.

DOMAI celebrates the beauty of the woman herself no matter what hair or skin colour she has or the size of her breasts, and what's more it somehow manages to NOT view her as an object! I find your site absolutely amazing and it really helps build my self-confidence. Thankyou so much :] I wish there were far more sites like this instead of porn- I believe it would encourage more respect towards women both from men and themselves. > from DOMAI newsletter - 29/5/05 - on the site : DOMAI - tasteful nudes of beautiful women photo : Helen - from related book : Natural Beauties:  The Domai Collection - by Eolake Stobblehouse

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.. .. ---Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love -  by Joanna Frueh [Author : ] Ever since I was a little girl, bodily beauty has fascinated me. When, naked, I'd put on my mother's fur coat, I loved how it felt on my skin.  I remember the delicious way that my feet slid forward in her high heels as I'd do my best to sashay, and the excitement of seeing myself in her scarlet lipstick and nail polish.

I loved my own corporeality and spirit and the sensations and appearance of dressing them up. Sensuality and bodily decoration -- aesthetic and erotic self-creation--have continued to fascinate and enlighten me, and today, as a midlife woman, they give me great pleasure.  That pleasure motivated me to write Monster/Beauty -- because so many people feel dissatisfied with their bodies, simultaneously so inundated and disenchanted by the celebrity and fashion images that proclaim perfection as the best, perhaps the only way to be able to experience the pleasure of one’s own and others' bodies.  Monster/Beauty embraces bodies of all sexes, sizes, colors, shapes, and ages. The book is more than an antidote to people's discontent and self-rejection.  I was thrilled when a friend of mine said to me that Monster/Beauty is "revolutionary," "a manifesto." I would love for it to work that way for all of its readers.

 

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.. .. It is in part the inspiration of her daughter that persuaded Emma Thompson to "come out" as a political activist by becoming an ambassador for ActionAid and use her voice to raise awareness about AIDS in Africa. /// Another one of her preoccupations is the damage done to young women by the diet industry. "While in Africa women don't necessarily have full jurisdiction over their bodies. I have noticed that teenage girls there have a total lack of self-consciousness about body image.

"This is because they are not subjected to a constant barrage of media about how they should look. They have, in a way, a lot more freedom." /// Growing older has, she says, brought balance and made it easier to equate her seemingly disparate sensibilities.  "There was a time when my feminist rage interfered with my capacity even to dress up as a woman. I felt crushingly self-conscious in high heels.  "Now I think that it's great there are women out there like Joan Collins who really make an effort every time they leave the house." from article Avenging angel in high heels - by Nicola Graydon, The Scotsman, February 3rd 2004

 

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In China, we don't consider someone truly beautiful until we have known them for a long time, and we know what's underneath the skin. Zhang Ziyi   ... [imdb.com bio]

 

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Beauty? Let me tell you something -- being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult.  Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory. ... Personally, I'm really saddened by the way women mutilate their faces today in search of that. There is this plastic, copycat look evolving and that's frightening to me. ... It's really insane and I feel sad that's what society is doing to women. Halle Berry   ... Assoc Press Aug 2, 2004

 

 

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