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‘Mean Girls’ Myth: Why Can’t Some Women Let It Go?
Mean girls. It may seem a bit off topic, but it think- I know first hand that bullying and “mean” girl behavior can do major damage to a young person’s self image. I can recall being in 8th grade and there was a older girl who was quite popular (mainly because people were afraid of her) we were in the locker room and she kept calling me ugly and pointing out all of the ugly things about me. Of course the others (happy that they weren’t her target) sniggered and laughed. I was truly hurt, mainly because all of the things that she was saying out loud were thing I already felt inside. Later she put her arm around me and said she was just joking, and I feigned acceptance of her apology but I never got over it. In fact to this day whenever I feel “ugly” I get an emotional flash back to that locker room day.
Today with the advent of Reality TV the concept of Mean Girls has been elevated, promoted, and rewarded. Paris Hilton was the first in this generation of Mean Girls 4.0. She became famous not only for her sex tape but for vile behavior towards other women, throwing drinks in faces, starting feuds through the press and encouraging others to do so. Who can forget how she tortured Lindsey Lohan back in the day? She was a part of her whole “Firecrocth” branding. No she did not say it but it can be argued that she instigated it.
Whether it’s the embarrassingly entertaining Bad Girls Club on Oxygen or The Housewives of any City on Bravo, the entertainment and intrigue on theses shows always comes from catty mean girl behavior, cutting comments, talking behind someone’s, back or being a plain ol’ beayotch to someone’s face. Women tear ourselves down from the inside out then we strike out and tear down other woman. We have to change this behavior, first by not being, or raising mean girls, and by not glorifying bad behavior, towards ourselves and others, maybe then we’ll feel better about ourselves. So ladies the next time you want to hurl a snide remark, a pause and flip it, toss a compliment instead, or like the saying goes, if you don’t have anything nice to say…
by Laura Stepp Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Excerpt:
Sometimes I despair over women’s opinions about women. How can females move upward if they’re always tearing each other down?
But despite the research studies and first-person stories I included, many of the female readers taking part in last Friday’s web chat didn’t buy my thesis. They wrote about being bullied by female work colleagues. They talked about going into therapy, taking anti-depressants, and developing eating disorders as a result. One said mean women treat men as badly as other women. Another described a bully sister-in-law of 30 years “who qualifies, corrects, challenges, denigrates and dismisses whatever comes out of my mouth.”
read whole Article
Glamour Mag Poll on Negative Body ImageThe Today Show
A few days ago I posted a link to the poll. Glamour Editor in Chief and Psychologist discuss the poll with Meredith Vieira. I found the part about building Neurons that promote negative thoughts. Just STOP!!! very interesting.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Diet, Genes and Jeans With Debbie M.
As much as it may pain or please us, when we look at our parents or older relatives we see glimpses of what is to come. “I am the ghost of your future body” I have my mother’s hands and feet, and she has her mother’s. As a little girl I would look at my grandmother’s hands riddled with arthritis and shiver at the thought that those gnarled twisted phalanges would at some point belong to me. There are some of us who know that our bodies will probably bounce back from childbirth and those who have witnessed the inevitable post baby spread in aunts and our own mother’s. Looking down at teen aged photos of them thin happy with their whole lives (and us) ahead of them we look to the portly, serious minded mother we have always known and say “Mom, that’s you?”
We see our future faces in our parents, aunts and uncles, where the age will begin to settle and show, perhaps it is in our skin that will show a road map of our lives lived, or in our bones with the stoop of the shoulders, perhaps we will get bonier and frail, or plump and round. We see if it will land in our bellies or our hips or both…more importantly and far more seriously we see what we are medically predisposed to. I have a friend whose family is highly prone to strokes, or perhaps in your family it’s heart disease, cancer, or maybe your people are built like tanks impervious to all ills that swarm around them.
Today with more knowledge, better medical care and technically enhanced products we have opportunities that generations before us never had when it come to prevention both medical and cosmetic. We can be genetically tested for cancer, we can be diligent about making certain our blood pressure, sugar levels and hearts are healthier both through monitoring by a doctor and through a healthy lifestyle and diet. We know that the adage, “Move it or Lose it is true” the importance of exercise at all ages is a key to health and mobility and strength. Yogi says “You are only as young as your spine”
Debbie is a young woman who had looked at the mirror of her family and decided she wanted to take some things in hand (before they possibly get outta hand). Here is her story and her plan!!
Dove Real Beauty Campaign – Real women tell the Real Story…
Glamour Body Image Survey: 97 % of Women Have Negative Body Thoughts Daily
Read these words: “You are a fat, worthless pig.” “You’re too thin. No man is ever going to want you.” “Ugly. Big. Gross.” Horrifying comments on some awful website? The rant of an abusive, controlling boyfriend? No; shockingly, these are the actual words young women are saying to themselves on any typical day. For some, such thoughts are fleeting, but for others, this dialogue plays on a constant, punishing loop, according to a new exclusive Glamour survey of more than 300 women of all sizes. Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day.
* Our Experiment
* Why Your Body May Not Be the Problem
* Silencing Your Inner “Mean Girl”
* How Change Can Happen
* The Real (Really Harsh) Things Women Think About Their Bodies
* Secrets of the 3% of Women Who Love Their Bodies
Models’ Real Faces, Before The Photoshop Magic
This vid does not go with this story but it’s really eye opening
Irin Carmon — Models’ Real Faces, Before The Photoshop Magic You are not the only one whose skin isn’t always perfect. But you could get that feeling from looking at the magically pore and blemish-free images we’re bombarded with on billboards and in magazines. One photographer inadvertently let us in on the process. Watch the miraculous transformation in our video.
Here is the photographer, M. Seth Jones, on his process:
In these selected images, you can witness first hand the impact that retouching has the potential to make on a single image. Every image presented to me has an ideal state, that I’m attempting to reach; retouch is so completely subjective, that it is likely that no two retouchers will approach an image in the same manner, or reach the same finished outcome. At this stage, it’s clear to see that retouching, at least the way I approach it, is not so much about tapering necklines and re-sculpting facial structure; but rather, sculpting light, and the way it falls on the subject, as well as clarifying the distinctions between the individual colours of the image’s palette. This ensures that every element sits harmoniously within the final frame, enabling that ideal state to be presented to the viewer with little-to-no visual distractions.
Oprah’s Real Iife Black Swan- Jenifer Ringer
Jenifer Ringer, a ballerina with the renowned New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center, strives for perfection in every aspect of her life. “It takes 100 percent to be a ballerina, 100 percent to be a wife and 100 percent to be a mother,” she says.
Jenifer Ringer on Oprah
I was so proud of Ms. Ringer for being more eloquent in this interview about her feelings on that fateful critique last December then earlier on the Today show. I think a bit of time and space brought her words and clarity of what that did to her. I thought that she was gracious but clear about the difference between Black Swan and the real world of dance “It’s entertainment” and “Well, we aren’t killing each other” and I agreed with her about the first scenes in the movie being more realistic to the ballet world. What I did pick up on which ironically was the theme of Black Swan was how often she used the word perfect. I felt that she might still be struggling to, in her mind remind herself that there is no such thing, but the quest for perfection still plagues her. One can see how as a young dancer she could fall victim to that sort of perfectionism.
I appreciated what she said about where her body issues came from and the contrast between the Waif ballerina and the Womanly ballerina. That is a hard one and there is a prejudice there and it is real. Many Ballet dancers who have breasts and hips end up feeling “fat” because they have shape. They could be just as bony as a no hipped girl but feel twice as big. It’s a great interview. in the clip Ringer starts at 3:06
Transgendered Model Lea T starts off the clip. Being Transgendered is like the ultimate Body Image crisis. To feel one way in your mind- no more accurately to be of one gender in your mind and yet to occupy the contrasting gender in one’s body must be emotionally, physically, and spiritually painful. I thought that Lea was wonderfully honest and informative to those who don’t understand what being Transgendered is. I thought is was the epitome of what we talk about on this site. And I was very moved, so if you have a few minutes watch her as well or if you need to Jenifer starts at 3:06
Supermodel Iman’s Aha Moment – after 1983 face marring car accident
I can remember when I first heard the news that Iman was in a car accident and her face had been smashed. I was about 13 years old and it hit me like I had been in that car. It is hard to describe what Iman or Beverly Johnson meant to me and other black women in the ’70’s. Theirs were the only brown faces that had graced the covers and centerfolds of (white) fashion magazines like Vogue and Bazaar long before Naomi, They were the pioneers. Because of them, all of the sudden as a brown girl I could begin to consider myself beautiful, even glamorous. Iman with her long sleek neck and oval head, her completely balanced features, and her perfect nutmeg complexion, where the epitome of regality – black or white. However it was her pure African roots that I and so many other African American women could take vicarious pride in. Iman truly made Black Beautiful. When the news broke of her potentially career ending car accident, hearts and hopes were smashed as well. While we prayed for her to rise like a phoenix, she was having a a revelatory life altering discovery about her looks and her life…
As she lay in a hospital bed, the supermodel was hit with the truth about beauty.
On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs. For quite some time before that night, I’d felt that my life was going to take a very sharp turn—and not for the better.
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