Sex Sells, Female Chauvinism, etc.

I finally came in to the salon today to chop off a good amount of my hair and almost every girl I know that's done it can agree with me when I say there is something liberating in doing it - my hair isn't SHORT short right now, but I haven't had this length since the 5th grade so it definitely feels like a big step for me. My hair just got too long and bothersome so I wanted to prepare for the summer, but cutting it also feels like getting rid of extra baggage or removing a big weight off your shoulders. It's especially liberating when a big standard of beauty nowadays is a girl with long, flowy hair; a girl doesn't even have to be that cute in the face but if she has pretty hair guys will automatically go ga-ga for her, so in that sense chopping it off can be like an "I just don't give a fck" to that stereotype. I wish I had enough guts to rock a pixie cut or something, who knows maybe someday.

Another thing I wanted to get to are some observations I made after flipping through a Japanese beauty magazine. Everyone knows how female beauty standards are forced upon women in society here in America, but wow looking through those magazines made me realize other parts of the world are just as bad. Every single girl in the magazine had hair that was a medium shade of brown, the same pale color of skin, the same makeup, but I think the worst part about it was the obsession with having big eyes. Double-eyelid surgery is actually very common nowadays in parts of Asia, to the point where although it is plastic surgery, there's no taboo associated with it. Even if the girls didn't get surgery to achieve this look, there were plenty of advertisements for products that give the extra crease for the eye, like this one.

I don't really get it. I understand cosmetic enhancements such as make-up and hair color, but glue for your eyes to make your skin stick together? I find it really sad to be quite honest. Especially if an underlying reason for it is Asian standards trying to conform to Western standards.

The last thing I wanted to bring up was the thin line between sexy & trashy. Last year I religiously watched that Search for the Pussycat Dolls Show (I can't tell if that makes me cool or lame), but I was only able to catch a few episodes of this season of Girlicious. I actually think most of the girls who made it into the group are really gorgeous and from what I saw on the show they were talented, but I was surprised when I saw one of their first official videos. With a name like "Girlicious", you'd think they'd cater to a younger audience than PCD and be, well, really girly. I was wrong. Here's the "Stupid Shit" video I'm talking about:

I know girls want to be sexy and all, but it's just a little bit too much for me. I'm not even sure what their demographic is supposed to be - their stuff doesn't seem old enough for college kids, but then again I don't see the parents of 12-year olds wanting to rush out and buy tickets for their daughters to see a show like that. The blond one Nichole was soo cute on the show, and now that baby prostitute vibe just seems to be coming back to haunt me in this video. I will give them one thing though - they seem to market themselves as exactly what they are and are not trying to hide behind a cookie-cutter facade, so I can at least respect them for that.

I don't know, I don't want to keep ragging on stuff like this because apparently it makes me seem like a hater. Or if I say what's on my mind about these things I'm just jealous. Riiiiight. But really, is it that my views on this stuff are just "not with the times" anymore? Am I a prude? Is it bad that some things people consider "empowering for women" I want to call "misogynistic?" I have to draw the line somewhere, but I just don't know where to start anymore.

This book will be on my must-read list in the near future:

"Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig - the new brand of 'empowered woman' who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces 'raunch culture' wherever she finds it. If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women - and of themselves. They think they're being brave, they think they're being funny, but in Female Chauvinist Pigs, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy asks if the joke is on them..."