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[umiman]

what is wrong with portraying women how they actually are?

Sells less copies

And causes crap like this thread.

[Duke 2.0]

 As in the topic of discussion, not the thread itself or its creator. As in ladies still complaining even when some methods the industry uses is stripped away because the person is not fat.

[G-Flex]

Honestly, some people are going to complain when you do anything remotely unusual. The fact that this is unusual in the first place is the ridiculous part.

[Leafsnail]

Eh, sorry for the derail, everyone.  As the first person to respond to it, I'll take responsibility.  Now:

Jude, setting up unreal standards can and does cause real harm.  In a quest to emphasize size 0 models, some people will become anorexic or have other eating disorders.  "Anorexic" doesn't just mean "LOL LOOK HOW THIN SHE IS". It's one of the most deadly mental illnesses there are - one in four people who get it will die before they recover (usually from suicide).

[bjlong]

Personally, I think the magazine had good intentions, but they ended up not going far enough. The message that was intended to get out was "Models aren't perfect, too!" The message that got out was "Models aren't perfect, but they're a whole lot better than you."

I think I come down on Jude's side, here--magazines don't have any social responsibilities. It's up to people around women to personally let them know that looking like the magazines shouldn't be in their priorities at all. Magazines are just following an arms race that started when photographs were first publishable.

[Judas Maccabeus]

magazines don't have any social responsibilities.

Everyone and everything that takes part in society has some sort of social responsibility.  The more people who the individual, private business, or public institution could potentially affect, the greater the level of responsibility.  In my opinion, any line of thought that minimises or removes said responsibilities is at best dangerous, and at worst could be potentially devastating; it's the sort of thinking that allows pollution, overuse of resources, mistreatment of others, and so on.  To go with your last sentence, the magazines might not have started the idea, but they are under no obligation at all, aside from possibly profit, to continue and perpetuate that idea.  And I am definitely not of the opinion that profit is any excuse for social irresponsibility.*  One doesn't have to be a gullible fool to have one's behaviour affected by others by any means, as the process of such behaviour change is constant, powerful, and unconscious; the only way to prevent such from happening is to be a hermit.  It's the basis of our society and our nature as social animals, without which humanity would hardly be able to function except in a Hobbesian war of all against all.

That, of course, doesn't mean that people aren't generally overreacting about that cover picture.  She's still rather thin and more attractive than the average, but there's no airbrushing and her ribs aren't visible, which is a big step in the right direction.  On that part I'll gladly agree with you.
__________
*Equally, I believe it's the social responsibility of the consumer to use their ability to affect profits to encourage social responsibility in those they're buying from.  Of course, this isn't always easy, but responsibility usually isn't.

[G-Flex]

magazines don't have any social responsibilities.

Everyone and everything that takes part in society has some sort of social responsibility.

Exactly; that's how society works. If you act in society, you have responsibilities to it. You don't get a Get Out of Ethics Free card just because you happen to be doing what you do in order to make a profit.


I think the key thing here is that Jude is denying that people are actually affected by the forces around them, which is mighty silly if you weren't a feral child growing up in a sensory deprivation chamber.

[Jude]

It's self-evident. A person is not born with his ideas. They're learned. They're taught. They're the result of observation of the world around you and how the world interacts with you, using your own natural inclinations (to whatever degree those exist) and potential as a template upon which to build.

That's what Locke and similar people argued a priori, but here's the thing, you can't argue on empirically testable topics just from a priori premises.

Yes, ideas are learned. But people are meat computers, not disembodied intellects which start entirely blank and are then created by input from society. They start full of hardwired machinery which adjusts itself based on inputs that it processes itself. The difference is incredibly vast and important. But that's another topic

This is an extremely naive view of it.

Realizing the impact of environment on an individual doesn't mean that you can't respond to that person's behavior; it just causes you to think differently about how to do so and what it means to do so.

For instance, you can still punish people for things that they do. This serves the purpose of influencing their behavior towards what is more acceptable, and to deter potential violation from other people in the future.

It also makes you actually think about what social forces are in play. If someone does something terrible, you should ask why they've done something terrible, and try to make things better in order to prevent it.

Obviously. But if you take that to the point of blaming everyone else for what someone does, then it just gets ridiculous. Somebody was talking in another thread about how the underwear bomber was this really lonely guy in a strange country where he didn't fit in as a foreigner, etc etc, and then fundamentalist Muslims came along and recruited him and gave him a place to feel at home, etc etc, but who are you going to blame for him trying to blow up a plane? The fundies who recruited him? The people at his university who made him feel socially isolated? Or him, as a functional and responsible person capable of making his own decisions?

hitler paragraph

You're missing the point. Obviously the times and circumstances had everything to do with Hitler coming to power. So does that mean Hitler's no responsible for what he did? After all, if it weren't for the times and circumstances he never could have done it.

This is an extremely poor comparison. If you're giving people information on a worldview that differs from their own, and their psychology crumbles because of it, then obviously they were inadequately prepared to deal with the possibility of any worldview existing aside from their own;

Ok. And if women are shown pictures of extremely hot other women, and their psychology crumbles from it, they are obviously inadequately prepared to deal with the possibility of any woman existing hotter than themselves or people they know. it's not a poor comparison at all. You can't blame people for what effects their expressions have on other people, unless you want to categorize fashion magazines in the same class as death threats, racist incitement to violence, or sexual harrassment.

the problem isn't that you gave them more ideas to chew on, it's that something about how they were raised/developed/lived caused them to be unable to cope with ideas that aren't their own, and that's the terrible part.

Wait, I thought ALL ideas were not your own. Don't they all come from outside? Get your psychology straight here...

The key thing is that you're being constructive, whereas the media relies on changing people's view of what is naturally beautiful to something that is not even natural.

This is the most absurd thing you've said. It's constructive for me to share my philosophical worldviews, sure. But "naturally beautiful?" Isn't beauty subjective and in the eye of the beholder? So how are you making judgments about how "naturally beautiful" is better than "not natural?" Also, what is "naturally beautiful?" Makeup, hair coloring, clothing, and all manner of other tactics people use to make themselves look better are not "naturally beautiful." Why do you get to draw the line that defines what's natural, and why do you get to decide that natural equals good? Natural doesn't equal good. Nature is incredibly brutal and violent, and murder, rape, conquest, and exploitation are all natural parts of human behavior. Never ever commit the naturalistic fallacy.

What you described in your religious example is honest and constructive; this is dishonest and is designed (intentionally or not) to create a culture of unhealthy celebrity-worship and idolization, which the media rely on in order to sell product.

Define for me how that is worse or is different from the promotion of any other worldview

Also explain to me why we should not have some standard of responsibility for people accepting or rejecting messages from their culture. In this case,  it seems you're arguing that women have no ability to judge cultural messages, and therefore automatically absorb all standards of beauty that are broadcast to them. So are people not capable of making their own decisions about what to accept as valid? And if so, then why are you blaming the fashion industry for giving women unattainable images of beauty? I'd blame the women for accepting them, since if they're as ridiculous and unnatural as you say, shouldn't any reasonable women laugh them off?

If you want a better analogy, it's like if you make shit up about Mother Theresa or Ghandi or MLK Jr. to make them look even better than they were, and say that the way they were is the ONLY way to be a great person. This does happen sometimes! Role models get played up to be more than they actually were, and sometimes it's implied that there are only certain few ways to be great people. This is unhealthy as well!

It's unhealthy to listen to made up shit without questioning it

here's the essence of what I'm saying, everyone is presented with all kinds of opinions, images and messages on a daily basis, and people are able to make intelligent decisions about how to evaluate each one. Nobody just accepts them all mindlessly. So if I'm able to hear Rush Limbaugh talk about how we should build a wall and ship all the Mexicans to the other side of it, or Balloon Boy's dad talk about how they really weren't just trying a publicity stunt, and just reject those as ridiculous, then why is it that we can't allow women to make their own decisions about what they think beauty should be about? In your view, they are sponges that automatically absorb whatever information is  thrown at them. In mine, they are reasoning creatures capable of making their own decisions and should not be condescended upon by being told they're dupes for buying into the notions of beauty that they do.

Whatever. Beauty is in the neurons of the beholder, and we all have neurons wired up in fundamentally similar ways, the design of which, incidentally, is largely affected by its previous owners having been horny as fuk

This is flat-out false.

Several decades of psychology, anthropology (well, GOOD anthropology), biology, neuroscience, and all manner of disciplines combining those fields all beg to differ

There are certain markers for beauty that carry over across time and space (such as "does this person appear healthy and child-bearing"), but the particulars vary remarkably across culture, especially since people wind up associating different things with, say, health.

That doesn't contradict what I said at all

For instance, heavyset women were once in vogue in European society (from which ours is derived anyway, if you live in Europe, Australia, or North America, so we're not even talking an extremely foreign cultural influence here), and if I had to give you a reason for it, it would be that people associated it with being healthy, since obesity was less a problem than was people not getting enough to eat, especially amongst the poor. These days, it's the opposite: The more common health problem is obesity (again, worse with the poor), so thinness is associated with health as a reaction. It's not exactly a coincidence.

There are still limits on variation as well as universals that are common to all societies (in all aspects of human life, not just judgments of sexual attractiveness). For example, young women are considered more sexually attractive by men in every society on earth (just as evolutionary theory predicts). And weight of the ideal attractive women may vary, but it never veers into seeing stick-thing or morbidly obese women as attractive. Also, despite what you are going to say about how unhealthily skinny some models and movie stars are, plenty of research has found that men aren't actually attracted to emaciated women. Do you find stick-thin models hotter than women that have a healthy amount of fat on them? I don't, and if you don't either, then you're living proof that people don't automatically internalize standards of beauty from their culture. And also of the view that your opinion of what's attractive in a woman is substantially influenced by genetics.

Point is, more is up to environmental influence than you think. If what you said were true, then cultural standards for beauty simply wouldn't vary very much, unless you somehow think that's genetic too, and I basically already ruled that out as a possibility.

Wait, you ruled out the possibility that people's idea of attractiveness is genetic? You'd better get that published in a scientific journal ASAP, since it would overturn pretty much all the empirical findings of the past couple decades

Anyway, my view does NOT predict that standards of beauty cannot vary. It DOES predict that their are outside limits on that variation. Find me a society where the men would prefer a morbidly obese woman to a healthy one, or a severely anorexic woman to a healthy one, or a postmenopausal woman to one in her twenties, and then you'll have somewhat of a leg to stand on in arguing against my view.

Don't waste your time looking though, plenty of anthropologists already have, with exactly that intent in mind. They met with no success.

Anyway, to get back on topic, my basic point is that it's dumb to hold magazines or the fashion industry accountable for people buying into the ideas they put out. If you must blame someone, blame the people that buy in, otherwise all notions of personal responsibility go out the window.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Anyway, to get back on topic, my basic point is that it's dumb to hold magazines or the fashion industry accountable for people buying into the ideas they put out. If you must blame someone, blame the people that buy in, otherwise all notions of personal responsibility go out the window.

These influences aren't always conscious, though.  People have some measure of control over the way they view the world and themselves, yes, but that control isn't absolute.  Even aside from extreme things like anorexia nervosa (which is a full-blown mental disorder in any case, and anything but controllable by the person suffering from it), the human mind can and regularly does slowly drift within or even slightly outside the limits you mentioned - they aren't hard, brick-wall limits, they can be pushed a bit when outside influences encourage such.

When you come to a situation like this, with two overlapping areas of responsibility, that just means both are in play, not that one cancels out the other.

[Jude]

When you come to a situation like this, with two overlapping areas of responsibility, that just means both are in play, not that one cancels out the other.

Oh sure, but I never hear anybody assign any responsibility to anyone but "the media."

Anyway, if you're going to argue that messages that define beauty as unattainable are bad, then you're going to have to lump a lot of art in there as well, and plus, the argument extends to any form of media that ever portrays an impossibly high-quality form of some human trait. It gets pretty ridiculous when you start insisting that all media, which includes art and journalism and scientific publications, should promote "natural" portrayals of various things. And as I said, it also leads to the quagmire of defining what's natural and insisting that natural is good.

[DJ]

They should ban the Olympics because I can't run as fast as those guys

[G-Flex]

It's self-evident. A person is not born with his ideas. They're learned. They're taught. They're the result of observation of the world around you and how the world interacts with you, using your own natural inclinations (to whatever degree those exist) and potential as a template upon which to build.

That's what Locke and similar people argued a priori, but here's the thing, you can't argue on empirically testable topics just from a priori premises.

Yes, ideas are learned. But people are meat computers, not disembodied intellects which start entirely blank and are then created by input from society. They start full of hardwired machinery which adjusts itself based on inputs that it processes itself. The difference is incredibly vast and important. But that's another topic

Did you  miss the parts where I pointed out differences between eras and cultures, or where I agreed that people do have some inherent potential that they're born with, and aren't completely blank slates?

Obviously. But if you take that to the point of blaming everyone else for what someone does, then it just gets ridiculous. Somebody was talking in another thread about how the underwear bomber was this really lonely guy in a strange country where he didn't fit in as a foreigner, etc etc, and then fundamentalist Muslims came along and recruited him and gave him a place to feel at home, etc etc, but who are you going to blame for him trying to blow up a plane? The fundies who recruited him? The people at his university who made him feel socially isolated? Or him, as a functional and responsible person capable of making his own decisions?

All of them are to blame. If you incite someone to do illegal things, you are to blame. If you do terrible things to a person which in turn cause them to do terrible things, then you are partly to blame because of the terrible things you did to them.

So yes, encouraging people to do bad things is bad in itself. I didn't think this was controversial. You can't blame someone directly for all of the results because the person can't necessarily predict all of the results of his actions.

You're missing the point. Obviously the times and circumstances had everything to do with Hitler coming to power. So does that mean Hitler's no responsible for what he did? After all, if it weren't for the times and circumstances he never could have done it.

I didn't say that. I already gave you reasoning for why and how you should hold people responsible for what they do. My point was that the times and circumstances had a lot to do with what Hitler was. He wasn't the only person like that at the time, and there's damn good reason for that.

Ok. And if women are shown pictures of extremely hot other women, and their psychology crumbles from it, they are obviously inadequately prepared to deal with the possibility of any woman existing hotter than themselves or people they know. it's not a poor comparison at all.

You didn't even read the rest of that part of my post, did you? If you did, and understood it, you'd know that a lot of my point relied on the fact that they weren't "pictures of extremely hot other women"; they were falsified. Photoshopped, airbrushed, whatever you want to call it, they weren't even entirely photographs of real people anymore.

And the issue isn't simply "other hot women", it's encouraging certain standards of beauty to begin with to the exclusion of others. American culture is not very accepting of people with differing body shapes/types, and it plays havoc with the emotional stability of girls long before they even can be expected to think about such things for themselves.

You can't blame people for what effects their expressions have on other people

Yes I can, if it's known to be socially harmful and they do it willingly and only to make profit for themselves.

Wait, I thought ALL ideas were not your own. Don't they all come from outside? Get your psychology straight here...

You know what I meant by "their own"; the ones that they currently hold. You're seriously stretching there, presumably to avoid actually addressing the point I made, which you ignored.

This is the most absurd thing you've said. It's constructive for me to share my philosophical worldviews, sure. But "naturally beautiful?" Isn't beauty subjective and in the eye of the beholder? So how are you making judgments about how "naturally beautiful" is better than "not natural?"

Read my post again so that you might actually understand it instead of engaging in kneejerk reactions against what you think I said.

Artificial beauty is fine. Natural beauty is fine. Expressing either one is fine. Expressing artificial beauty while CALLING it natural beauty is not fine; it's deceptive.

Also, what is "naturally beautiful?" Makeup, hair coloring, clothing, and all manner of other tactics people use to make themselves look better are not "naturally beautiful." Why do you get to draw the line that defines what's natural, and why do you get to decide that natural equals good?

I never said that "natural is good". See above.

And yes, there are things like makeup and other aspects of personal care/beauty-adjustment to consider. However, the other things you mention are actually possible for people to do. If a model has her hair colored and makeup on her face, not only is it usually obvious, but that's something that real people can do, in real life. You can put blush or eyeshadow or hair color on in real life, or wear certain styles of clothing. You can't photoshop your waist thinner or your legs longer, and a lot of that photomanipulation crap is done such that most people won't even notice that it's fake.

So yeah, there are artificial aspects to the ways people normally try to make themselves beautiful, but at least those are things people can do in real life, and at least you know it's being done.

Define for me how that is worse or is different from the promotion of any other worldview

Because it's purely selfish on part of the media. It's designed to sell product. In other words, it's bad because it's designed to use and abuse people for the sake of an industry's profit. Any worldview like this is bad, especially when it's mostly just the haphazard result of free-market economic forces.

Also explain to me why we should not have some standard of responsibility for people accepting or rejecting messages from their culture. In this case,  it seems you're arguing that women have no ability to judge cultural messages, and therefore automatically absorb all standards of beauty that are broadcast to them. So are people not capable of making their own decisions about what to accept as valid?

You're ignoring several of my points yet again.

For one thing, I mentioned more than once (and am continuing to, since you don't seem to be reading it) that these standards are pushed upon people long before the point in their lives where they can be expected to think clearly and critically about them. If we were born as adults, you'd have more of a point, but as children, middle/high school kids, etc., your faculties for critically thinking about these things aren't exactly up to speed yet, and pressure to fit in/belong/etc. will tend to override it anyway.

And let's say you ARE a middle school kid who rejects those standards which you find irrational or stifling. What then? Yeah, great for you, you're ahead of the curve when it comes to critical thinking, but you're still different from other people, and your peers will still judge you both for those ideas you hold and for whatever aspects of your person don't mesh well with their ideas, so it'll affect you anyway, and in a big way.

And if so, then why are you blaming the fashion industry for giving women unattainable images of beauty? I'd blame the women for accepting them, since if they're as ridiculous and unnatural as you say, shouldn't any reasonable women laugh them off?

See above. It occurs early in life as well, affecting even your ABILITY to learn to judge them (especially if you're not actually taught to think critically about them in the first place; this is big), other people will still judge you harshly based on them if they subscribe to them themselves, and things like photomanipulation aren't always expected or obvious.

It's unhealthy to listen to made up shit without questioning it

here's the essence of what I'm saying, everyone is presented with all kinds of opinions, images and messages on a daily basis, and people are able to make intelligent decisions about how to evaluate each one.

Here's the catch: Not only (insert every single point I've made above; go read them again if you need to), but the very tendency to question things and even the ability to do so is something that is affected by socialization itself. If you're never taught to question things very much to begin with, what you're saying becomes a hell of a lot harder.

Also, even if people are relatively good at making their own decisions and thinking rationally for themselves, it's very easy for them to be affected on at least an emotional level by things that are extremely pervasive in society; people care about what society expects of them; even when they don't necessarily agree with it, it can still be a source of stress, especially if it's something that was influencing you long before you could make the choice to disagree.

There are certain markers for beauty that carry over across time and space (such as "does this person appear healthy and child-bearing"), but the particulars vary remarkably across culture, especially since people wind up associating different things with, say, health.

That doesn't contradict what I said at all

Er, yes it does. Society teaching you which things in particular to find "attractive" does seem to contradict what you said; you seemed to be implying that what we find attractive is ingrained and unlearned.

There are still limits on variation as well as universals that are common to all societies (in all aspects of human life, not just judgments of sexual attractiveness). For example, young women are considered more sexually attractive by men in every society on earth (just as evolutionary theory predicts). And weight of the ideal attractive women may vary, but it never veers into seeing stick-thing or morbidly obese women as attractive.

Yes, I'm aware that there are commonalities; I agreed to that.

Also, when it comes to things like weight, unhealthy tendencies CAN be seen as attractive, for a couple of reasons I can think of:

• I think I already said this (notice a theme, here?), but: Hypercorrective tendencies. When people are overweight extremely often, to the point where thinness itself gets linked to attractiveness, and being underweight isn't a prominent or often-considered health issue, then underweight women may still wind up being seen as attractive; people may overlook the fact that their weight is unhealthy, because they're focused more on "thin is good".
• People have different body shapes. Believing that a certain weight is healthy leads to trouble when people just naturally have different body structures and healthy weights themselves. There are plenty of women that are fairly stocky, but associating thinness with health/beauty sort of leaves them out of the picture and trains them to associate health/beauty with something that isn't even healthy for them in the first place, necessarily.

Also, despite what you are going to say about how unhealthily skinny some models and movie stars are, plenty of research has found that men aren't actually attracted to emaciated women.

I'm not sure about that, but even if that's true, it's not just about men. It's about the women who look up to them as well.

And regardless of whether or not men "like emaciated women", things are very much skewed towards that end of the spectrum. I've seen countless examples of women being called "chubby" despite being perfectly normal or healthy weight. Even if emaciation isn't considered good by men, thinness is still expected in order for someone to be attractive.

Do you find stick-thin models hotter than women that have a healthy amount of fat on them? I don't, and if you don't either, then you're living proof that people don't automatically internalize standards of beauty from their culture.

I never said it was automatic, or always worked, or that everyone is subject to the same influences. There are a lot of factors at work.

Also, I was largely talking about women and how their expectations of themselves are affected.

Point is, more is up to environmental influence than you think. If what you said were true, then cultural standards for beauty simply wouldn't vary very much, unless you somehow think that's genetic too, and I basically already ruled that out as a possibility.

Wait, you ruled out the possibility that people's idea of attractiveness is genetic? You'd better get that published in a scientific journal ASAP, since it would overturn pretty much all the empirical findings of the past couple decades

Not what I said.

Anyway, my view does NOT predict that standards of beauty cannot vary. It DOES predict that their are outside limits on that variation. Find me a society where the men would prefer a morbidly obese woman to a healthy one, or a severely anorexic woman to a healthy one, or a postmenopausal woman to one in her twenties, and then you'll have somewhat of a leg to stand on in arguing against my view.

I never argued that there weren't trends or commonalities across cultures. Seriously. For the last time.

And like I said, the point is also that certain body types might be favored to the exclusion of others, resulting in some people who simply can't live up to what society views as healthy or beautiful, even though they might be perfectly healthy or look attractive from a more objective, outside perspective (although you can't really get one very easily; the best you'd have to do is establish trends across cultures).

Anyway, to get back on topic, my basic point is that it's dumb to hold magazines or the fashion industry accountable for people buying into the ideas they put out. If you must blame someone, blame the people that buy in, otherwise all notions of personal responsibility go out the window.

I think I've responded to this enough already, as has at least one other person here.

Oh sure, but I never hear anybody assign any responsibility to anyone but "the media."

Yes they do. Parents, schools/teachers, etc. are getting blamed for stuff too. And regardless of who DOES get "assigned responsibility", we're arguing about who SHOULD.

Anyway, if you're going to argue that messages that define beauty as unattainable are bad, then you're going to have to lump a lot of art in there as well, and plus, the argument extends to any form of media that ever portrays an impossibly high-quality form of some human trait. It gets pretty ridiculous when you start insisting that all media, which includes art and journalism and scientific publications, should promote "natural" portrayals of various things. And as I said, it also leads to the quagmire of defining what's natural and insisting that natural is good.

Like I said above: Presenting unnatural ideas is fine, as long as you're not trying to pass them off as natural. A lot of the stuff we're talking about (modeling, photomanipulation crap) intentionally confuses the two.

[bjlong]

Alright, these point-by-point posts are getting somewhat annoying, so I'm breaking the cycle.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but to claim that a company or corporation should abide by a set of morals is somewhat nonsensical. You give the company no incentive to do so by the mere claim that "it helps people." Further, the morals usually cause a huge handicap to be placed on the company, in terms of its revenue generation. And, really, that's why companies exist, right? To pool the collective powers of people into one product, so that everyone makes more money to take home to their kids.

Now, I'm not saying companies are immoral. I'm saying they're amoral, that is, morals don't make sense to them. A company is not a person, neither is it just a group of people. It's not necessarily a business statement or mission statement. It's a product generating entity. Morals have nothing to do with it, save if the company is betting that you'll pay a bit more for a more "ethical" product. Even then, the company doesn't have morals--they're just playing off of yours for money.

This sounds like it's a bad thing, but it's really not. Society (esp. the government) sets the boundaries, and then companies do everything within those boundaries to create the best-selling product. It's like calling a submission move a "dirty wrestling tactic." Sure, for boxers, it's entirely wrong, but for wrestlers, operating under entirely different rules, it's a great tool. Similarly, magazines operate under different (ie laxer) moral "rules" than the general public, and can get away showing made-for-grocery-shelves nudity, while the public can't.

So, what, am I advocating the FCC step in? Absolutely not. This is a social problem, and it won't go away because the FCC starts saying that we should include more ugly and fat people I mean come on guys it's only ethical. Beauty will always be idolized, more or less. It will continue to be a tool for writers, artists, etc. for years to come. If the FCC steps in, it'll only change this arms race slightly. Instead of nudity, it'll be bikinis and suggestive poses. Instead of bikinis, it'll be one-pieces. Instead of flawless features, it'll be the most attractive place to put warts. On top of that, beautiful people exist in real life, and people will look up to them, perhaps unhealthily. Should we force them to wear average-looking masks? Give them plastic surgery?

What I am advocating is a personal influence rather than a corporate one. That means you're the one with responsibility, here. Women should be told that they are pretty, that they look wonderful the way they are, and if they want to change their bodies, that's fine, but they should do so healthily. By people they know. This probably means you. A magazine article will never be as effective as personal contact, and it's silly to think that people's problems will disappear just because we changed a corporate policy.

Don't make a point-by-point of this post. Try to break the central thrust without nitpicking.

[The Mad Engineer]

I scrolled down halfway, and I found a comparison to Hitler.  This argument has reached critical mass.

[G-Flex]

Alright, these point-by-point posts are getting somewhat annoying, so I'm breaking the cycle.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but to claim that a company or corporation should abide by a set of morals is somewhat nonsensical.

It's no more nonsensical than expecting it of a person or other group. Doing something for a "corporation" instead of explicitly doing it for yourself doesn't mean that you're all of a sudden opting out of social obligation. If corporations don't have to abide by any sort of morals or ethics, then why can't they murder or defraud people? Unethical or criminal activity is still unethical or criminal regardless of whether it's done in the name of a person or a larger entity.

Further, the morals usually cause a huge handicap to be placed on the company, in terms of its revenue generation. And, really, that's why companies exist, right? To pool the collective powers of people into one product, so that everyone makes more money to take home to their kids.

No shit, except why does doing stuff in the name of a company suddenly allow you to do things you'd never, ever be allowed or encouraged to do on your own?

This sounds like it's a bad thing, but it's really not. Society (esp. the government) sets the boundaries, and then companies do everything within those boundaries to create the best-selling product.

Except those boundaries are exactly what we're debating: What is or isn't responsible for a company to do. You're already admitting that companies can't do absolutely anything they want (or that the owner/management wants); the question is which things they can't/shouldn't do and why.

Beauty will always be idolized, more or less. It will continue to be a tool for writers, artists, etc. for years to come.

I've made it clear that the bigger issue is what sort of beauty is idolized, and how, and how people are taught to handle being living in such a society in the first place, and whether or not the media is being deceptive in its portrayals to begin with (see: photomanip).

Women should be told that they are pretty, that they look wonderful the way they are, and if they want to change their bodies, that's fine, but they should do so healthily. By people they know. This probably means you. A magazine article will never be as effective as personal contact, and it's silly to think that people's problems will disappear just because we changed a corporate policy.

It's not just about "a magazine article", though; it's about the entire social paradigm at work surrounding the subject. If that were different, then the magazines would be different, too. It's a weird sort of chicken-egg thing with a huge feedback loop: The media gives people what they want according to the people's standards, but then the media also serves to reinforce those standards itself.

I scrolled down halfway, and I found a comparison to Hitler.  This argument has reached critical mass.

Yeah, that made me laugh a bit as well. As far as mass itself is concerned, I think I've typed enough wall-o'-text posts for today to generate a gravitational singularity, so I've done my part.