Progress?

Force feeding young girls, a la Chinese foot binding, to attain a cultural beauty standard that is just as phony as all other beauty "standards," and the homogenization (some could argue the Americanization) of what is thought of as beautiful? Where to begin...

I am repulsed and disgusted by this incredulously oppressive and controlling habit of force feeding in order to achieve some illusion of wealth. Imagine a MAN'S wealth being shown by the fact that he obviously brings home enough 'bacon' (pun intentional) so that not only does his wife not have to work, but on the contrary does nothing but sit around and stuff her face. These are ideas of wealth from another time. However that doesn't seem so quaint when you consider dear old mom and dad restricting their little princess to force Hostess Twinkies and MacDonald's down her throat to achieve the same picture.

And that brings me to my next point: It's just a picture. Sacrificing health for some unrealistic and artificial idea of beauty is wrong. The only purpose it serves is to control and oppress half the population, it doesn't matter what size package the oppression comes in.

How sad is it that even though this is an atrocious treatment of girls and women, I am simultaneously mourning the dwindling of societies where a woman my size and shape would be considered beautiful before, and turn heads faster, than one of Paris Hilton's stature. Where my thighs, stomach and arms wouldn't be shameful aspects of my flesh but proud ones. Where Scarlet Johansen isn't considered by the establishment to echo a time where women were more voluptuous, just because she has breasts in a community where that borders on taboo, even though she's still too damned thin. I think that it is sad that even though what these images are the other side of the force feeding coin, as it were, these are the things I fear for the women of Mauritania.

It doesn't matter what country your talking about, there is no way to achieve healthy and realistic standards (if standard is the goal) if there is socialized inequity in weight and food politics as well as unattainable beauty ideals that are being perpetuated by a global media. When, and where, do we meet in the middle? Where every woman and man can live healthily without being concerned with body "image?" where we can all simply live and be happy with ourselves and one another?