Zeph: I agree about reification. I tried to think of something smarter to say all day yesterday but I got nothin'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoolBee  I do just want to ask if you know of many very obese women in the UK or US who are in high positions in companies or government? I ask because my experience of the UK is that very obese women are very rarely found high up the trees because they won't push themselves forward because they know for sure people are looking at them with judgement thinking "look at the state of that, she obviously can't control herself in the face of a batch of cream buns, how dare she presume to have any opinions whatsoever".
Here in Egypt, while I don't condone extreme obesity as an aspiration, you find MANY women in high positions who are very obese. It does not define them in the way it does in the UK. I was very surprised when I ran a summer school for kids a couple of years back and all these ginormous women came along with their kids and they were all 'doctorah' this and 'professorah' that and 'head of the other government department'. In the UK none of them would have aspired to anything higher than Walmart Till Operator on the basis of their size. |
I can't think of many people in US gov't who are very obese. I know there are bigger men than women, but I don't recall seeing people that are... uhm... very obese.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ButterflyWoman Compare that to Victoria Beckham, who is an actual fashion designer, with her "Lollipop" look (big head on a scrawny, skinny frame) and to Kate Moss, who was (and is) an icon of beauty and fashion. |
From the flat, skinny girl... hey, that's not nice either, that "Lollipop"/"scrawny" thing...
And yes, I understand that it's a lot easier to be overly skinny than it is to be overly fat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Indiana However, I honestly believe it's much less about the material you're given than how you work with it. If you're not naturally attractive but you want to be treated favourably, extremely good grooming/presentation can compensate for/significantly improve a lack of natural looks to the point where you're not disadvantaged at all, and can even have an advantage over good-looking slobs. If you dress better than 90 percent of people around you, if you have a sharp hairstyle, if you put together outfits well and have a strong personal sense of style, if you appear to take good care of yourself and be in good health, people will respond to you pretty much as favourably as they would a naturally beautiful person.
It's responding to the same aesthetic preference as for natural beauty, but it's controllable, and therefore empowering. |
Doesn't this basically amount to saying "unattractive people should be held to a higher standard for the same treatment"? The only reason it matters is because we make it matter. What if we all decided that we weren't going to discriminate based on looks?
Maybe I should move to Australia.
