How are tits, lips and high heels aspirational for young women?

[Bouncealot]

Just watched The Apprentice on BBC and am following Rise and Fall on C4. Why are all the women styled like this? What does it say to younger women? Is it to signal feminine power? None of the successful young women I know dress this way. The equivalent dress code for men doesn’t bear thinking about, and guess what? We don’t see young men’s chests on display in the office, or even on TV.

The Fox News presenter/ TOWIE style of those contestants is completely at odds with how professionals dress in the City, and indeed how stylish women dress anywhere. It's nothing to do with fashion and everything to with sexualisation. It just looks so... desperate - not to mention heavy on the polyester. I've not seen anyone in my professional milieu, other than a very junior secretary, looking like this. Bizarre.

I don’t think these two shows are that representative though. I’ve only ever watched the former, but the men look pretty identikit too. It’s just a different time and fashion. There was a time when women would be seen as harlots for daring to show their ankles. Then it was for wearing trousers! The common theme is that the majority of the outrage is usually aimed at women.

I think people are kidding themselves if they think that the way they like to dress and look has nothing to do with men. We form our opinions of what makes us feel good about ourselves in our early years. Particularly the secondary school years when most girls want the boys to notice them. Our sense of identity is related to how what we wear etc makes us feel. Many of those feelings are linked to the knowledge that we know our bodies look good in certain clothes. I'm not saying that people choose to dress a certain way or look a certain way because at that moment in time they want men to notice them. But the whole of our lives we are conditioned to feel good if we think that men are noticing us. I'm not explaining it well but it's just biology.

I know what you mean OP, trouble is , you've been hijacked by THOSE who can't see beyond the obvious.

I agree op.

I wonder if they keep the meters running ££££ 🤣

But these women, irrespective of how successful they are, want the show to launch them into TV - they just want to be famous.

That's very different from most ambitious women's values.

I think people are kidding themselves to think women dress for men. A lot dress for themselves, for other women, or just like fashion. We aren’t all the same and we don’t all have the same opinions on what looks attractive - so how can you dress in a certain way for one sex? Do all lesbians all wear the same thing?

Kylie Minogue, Kim Kardashian, Helen Mirren, Kate Middleton, Claudia Winkleman all dress in very different ways - are they all doing it to attract the opposite sex? If so, then dressing for the opposite sex really is a minefield!

Do you no not all women are interested in men? In spite of ‘biology’

Why is it sad that they want to look nice?

Its sad that an overtly sexualised, pornified, surgically altered blown up frozen face is what all the female contestants conform to because otherwise they think they don’t look “nice”.

Plenty of people can ‘see beyond the obvious’, they just have a different opinion to the OP, that can’t be that hard to comprehend.

The majority of the contestants don’t have surgically altered faces. Why are you so determined it’s about porn?

I’d love to see women with a quirky style, short hair or something a bit more individual on the Apprentice. There are so many interesting ways to look and the Barbie clone thing is just a bit weird, to my way of thinking.

The Apprentice. It literally says so in the first sentence of the OP.

Yep. Spot on @Coffeellama
Think about it.

The majority of the women on the show had filler injected lips, I think maybe two or three didn’t. To me that’s surgically altered or perhaps it’s called “cosmetically enhanced”?

I didn’t say it’s about porn. I said it’s a pornified look- inspired by an overly sexualised “ideal” which all young girls are continually exposed to on SM

@Kranke 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

Im pretty certain only 3 of them have had lip filler.

I don’t mean women are consciously dressing for mean. I just mean that subconsciously early in life we form opinions about what other people like and that makes us feel good about ourselves. Doesn’t mean you aren’t able to override it but it’s still there. It’s just like unconscious bias if you have done those training courses but about the way we look. Anyway I’m really not explaining it well.

But I don’t mean that you choose your clothes because you think the opposite sex will like them. Of course fashion and personal preferences come into what we wear. That’s not what I meant. I mean that our feelings regarding whether we think we look good in something are deep down related to attraction

@User963 read your post back, you very clearly said MEN three times. Doesn’t exactly fit with your new post of ‘But I don’t mean that you choose your clothes because you think the opposite sex will like them’, what you said was very clear.

Yes, you’re spot on about that episode.

Our feelings regarding whether we think we look good in something are deep down related to attraction

I’d re word that as: many young womens feelings regarding whether they look “good” is deep down related to the endless media stream of overly sexualised images they’re exposed to from a young age.

It’s no wonder there’s an unprecedented mental health crisis among teenagers when an ideal of “looking good” is only achievable via Botox, cosmetic enhancement and lip filler. That’s unattainable for our daughters watching reality tv or scrolling Instagram in their bedrooms.

I think it’s concerning that this identi kit sex doll look is being constantly promoted and applauded.

Your looking at a very narrow subsection of society here. You're not looking at real business people, you're looking at people who think going on a reality show is a good career decision.

I work from home alone and I would often have full makeup and hair done, heels the lot. Not everyone craves the attention of others. Some of us dress for ourselves.