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As someone with two daughters this is a concern; I also think it would make for interesting viewing and discussion in the context of youth ministry–KSH.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
As someone with two daughters this is a concern; I also think it would make for interesting viewing and discussion in the context of youth ministry–KSH.
For those who have not seen these, we will use at least [url=http://www.dove.us/#/features/videos/videogallery.aspx/]one of the Dove videos[/url] as a discussion starter in our high school series this spring, “The Truth About…” where we will talk about the truth about guys, girls, relationships, and sex. My favorite is the “Evolution” video under “Dove Films.” Our focus will be primarily on, “From where do we get our identity?” The point being, of course, our identity is found in Jesus, who bought us with his blood.
Kendall, I have two daughters, both under two, and being a youth pastor has made me frightened about the messages they will receive as they grow up.
the “woman” is so unattractive to boot, who on earth aspires to look this way?
That photo doesn’t even look real. How bizarre.
At my daughter’s high school (single sex Catholic) the graphic arts classes do a photoshop exercise where they doctor their own photos to see how easy it is. The before and after photos are posted in the halls so the lesson can be extended to all the students.
#1: I’ve seen that “Evolution” video before, and it’s remarkable. And Dove, I think, deserves to be commended for that campaign.
Photo retouching is a big problem; but even if the industry were forbidden from doing that, it’s still not reasonable for the average person — women or men — to compare themselves to a professional model whose full-time job is looking good. If all of us had personal trainers and dieticians and hours each day to devote to it, we’d look trimmer and tauter too.
i had heard about this some time ago, glad to see it is getting attention. she is really an attractive lady in real life, unlike this bobblehead picture.
Real men like women with some meet on their bones. Marilyn Monroe was reportedly a size 16. Likewise for Jane Mansfield. I gues NW Bob is a hopeless dionsaur.
🙂
Whoops! Make that meat!
The revision of women’s images according to some bizarre aesthetic is symptomatic of a general loss of commitment to the truth. Our sense of history has suffered enormously from the tendency to revise history according to a philosophy that imposes a “modern(ist)” or relativistic mindset on previous generations. Having taken up the relativistic and nihilistic philosophies undergirding the horrendous dictatorships of the 20th C., and the advertising techniques of their propaganda machines, fashion institutions (designers, magazines, clothing outlets) are guilty of marginalizing the truth in order to sell their products and make a profit at the expense of real beauty, or humanness. As commentators rightly assert, the visual medium permits a dangerous power to negatively influence and form young people. The result of the fashion industry’s exploitative activity is a loss of innocence (i.e., a loss of self respect), a loss of respect toward women and a loss of responsibility for genuine communication of the truth.
The fashion industry is not alone in its manipulative behaviour. Theologians and historians who manipulate the Biblical text through the historical critical method, for example, have seemingly undermined the authority of Scripture only to impose their own corrupt understanding of what religion should be. That their actions constitute eisegesis rather than exegesis seems to elude them. Scientists who have fabricated or manipulated data are being held to account for creating a bias in climate research. Stem cell scientists who insist embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) is viable ignore the moral implications and disastrous medical outcomes of their work. ESCR scientists have been caught manipulating information on several occasions, and despite having produce no viable therapies people still believe it (ECSR) is a worthy pursuit. Meanwhile, adult stem cell research, underfunded and under publicized, continues to achieve real results.
The defining praxis of the times appears to be an inability to tell the truth. We have become complacent toward, compliant and comfortable with the zeitgeist. Pope Benedict identified the dictatorship of relativism immediately prior to his elevation to the papacy. Pope Benedict has also identified a strategy to combat the disease of relativism which has given rise to the marginalization of authentic beauty.
Northwest Bob,
In Marilyn Monroe’s day, a woman with size 16 measurements would correspond to what we in the US would call a size 8 today – not at all plump. This, however, reveals yet another dirty secret of the US women’s fashion industry – adjusting the names of sizes to make women think they are smaller/thinner. The UK has not suffered from this sizing “deflation” (go check the Boden UK or Topshop websites if you want proof).
Notwithstanding the above, even a cursory glance at actresses of the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and early 50’s will reveal that the “ideal” woman had more meat on her bones than the anorexic ex-models who Hollywood today thinks can act. Keira Knightly, anyone?