Men have replaced beauty with a standard that is impossible for women to hit!

[ForkfulOfTabouleh]

Very powerful blog post written by a man - imploring other men to turn their back's on fake beauty and relish real beauty.

It's not often that you read something like this from a man which actually is making a good attempt to assess where we are today in terms of objectification etc. It touches on porn etc also.

There are a lot of arguments in there that I want to "learn". I find that I have to digest a lot of things to be able to refute/debate/argue in RL against the prevailing culture we have.

why are women so nasty to themselves? we are allowed to be sexual in ways that women 40 years ago could only dream of, but when we are sexual other women bitch about us and say we are exploited by evil men and are stupid because we don't know. I have been criticised by women for years for being attractive and therefore risky to have around.

You can be beautiful without surgical intervention. Most men in my experience arent attracted to fake boobs etc. I also dont know many men that like the really over top fake tan, straggy extensions look that a lot of girls like to wear. Men usually like someone a bit different who doesnt look like an exact clone of everyone else. It is magazines that make you think differently, but thats not what real men aspire to in my RL experience.

You saying you have never looked at a male celebrity and thought they were very sexy etc. Doesnt mean you are going to only go out with someone who looks like that, or expect a man on the street to look like it. Its the media, a fantasy. Just realise the attractive things about yourself, both in looks and personality and think of the reasons any man would be lucky to have you. Real beauty and confidence comes from the inside.

interesting and somewhat encouraging that a man is recognising these things. I agree with some parts of it, but I'm a bit at others like encouraging men to ogle RL women MORE in the guise of appreciating their beauty. or maybe it's just the way he's worded that

Yeah Proles, thats a bit {hmm}

Sorry, not impressed.

FIrst of all, OMFG, a man says something and not only do people (well the posters on that blog) think he's invented a concept that women theorists have been going on about for decades, but they actually listen to him, and respect him.
Too much male privilege for me to stomach on a Monday.

Next he'll be having a lightbulb moment that perhaps women should not be raped.

"What hurts me the most is that most of these things have been said to me by more women than I would care to count"

It hurts him. Oh FGS, Those women who are so male-identified that they do the patriarchy's work for them leaving men's hands clean. Men can even write women-friendly blog posts part- blaming women for their own oppression.

Men really cannot win around here can they. Even in a blog where they write:

"Guys... It is our fault. The blame lies with us." The 'our' part is even italliced.

They STILL get slated.

Yes, but toddler that's part of feminist analysis. .

I can see the parts of it and I can see where sakura is coming from even though I don't reallly usuannly take that "mansplain" line with things like this.

Who knows though, I might change my mind in the future further along my feminist journey.

What I like about feminism is that it often seems to be saying the "unsayable" or what is often not said. That I find refreshing and challenging!

I actually like most of the blog because some of it resonated with me and articulates reasons why glossy magazines and more and more beauty procedures are crap. I will probably adapt and use some of the arguments when I discuss these things in RL with others.

So, to me most of it is helpful - but sakura (I think) is much clearer in her own mind wrt to these issues so to her it is feeble effort!

I will re-read it again with sakura and prolesworth's comments in mind.

I don't really see this in terms of "men cannot win here" more that media messages are dominated by men it's vallid to want women to lead the women's movement.

toddler as you're still lurking/posting here can I be bold and ask if you've decided to take the plunge and read any of the recent feminism books to see if they make more sense than this MN topic

Because no one actually listens to feminists do they? We've been boxed into a corner of academia nowadays. So few women in the media admit to being feminists (Mariella Frostrup, I salute you for being the most recent) that we're marginalised horribly. We're the dented tins at the ends of the supermarket shelves of mass media.

And one crappy bloke says something that we have been saying for years and the comments he gets are like he's made some great bloody revelation. FFS

Sorry, I'm angry. What with that and being told I'm bonkers for telling a woman that she's wrong to force her baby to wear hair clips to look pretty I'm very pissed off with the world today.

Yeah, but ... He's got the megaphone (because he's got a penis) so I say good on him for using it that way :)

I bet most successful emancipations would have failed, if not for some of the oppressor class fighting & promoting their cause.

not really garlicbutter, white men have given themselves a big pat on the back for the odd anti-slavery document they wrote. Privileged groups of people get to re-write history

Do you know what gets my goat.
During the twentieth century doctors were obsessed with telling mothers they should leave their babies to cry, shouldn't pick them up, breastfeeding was all but destroyed. Women had to extended breastfeed in secret.
Fast forward to the 21st century and you get men like Alfie Kohn and Sears preaching to women about how important attachment is and blah blah as though they fucking invented it

And what women have always known about babies is discarded as irrelevant

forkful , ask away, it is nice to have a question i can easily answer!! Though Sorry if this comes across as short, posting onehanded from phone as al poorly again :( .

I have dipped in and out of some of the articles/blogs cited. The f word has also been useful. The problem i have discovered is that feminists seemingly disagrre a heck of a lot, so as soon as i think i understand something i find a million counterarguements i need to understand as well. Fascinating stuff though, very challenging which i actually like!

The tone of my post was wrong to be honest. I have no issue with the analysis of text and subtext, i (now) umderstand this is important. I suppose what i see is a person generally trying to be helpful, just going about it in a slightly blundery way. I just feel that if we slate people harshly (not everyone has though!), like this blogger, we loose support (and therefore influence)?

I also googled the max hardcore case and came across a really interesring feminist law reference site. Learning LOADS from that.

forkful , ask away, it is nice to have a question i can easily answer!! Though Sorry if this comes across as short, posting onehanded from phone as al poorly again :( .

I have dipped in and out of some of the articles/blogs cited. The f word has also been useful. The problem i have discovered is that feminists seemingly disagrre a heck of a lot, so as soon as i think i understand something i find a million counterarguements i need to understand as well. Fascinating stuff though, very challenging which i actually like!

The tone of my post was wrong to be honest. I have no issue with the analysis of text and subtext, i (now) umderstand this is important. I suppose what i see is a person generally trying to be helpful, just going about it in a slightly blundery way. I just feel that if we slate people harshly (not everyone has though!), like this blogger, we loose support (and therefore influence)?

Tw I have also felt that in the recent past. But what some posters here have helped me see is that there are plenty of people out there doing a great job of this feminism thing so we don't have to be all impressed everytime someone (a man?) says 'I'm a great big feminist me', we can look critically at that and demand a high standard.

Hope that's helpful and not patronising? :)

Not patronising at all :) , and i see what you are saying, and it makes sense when reading some reactions here, which at first felt very harsh!

I suppose to me though, the way forward would be to explain to this person how he is managing to offend the very people is is (badly) trying to support, rather then writing the blog and its writer off.. Like I say though there are many roads to rome and i understand why my path may be a bit song for some.

Thanks for your comments and explaination btw.

long, not song!

What he's written hasn't offended me (apart from the bit about women wearing more clothes but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that's down to clumsy syntax), it's the comments below which I find really disheartening. Women being all 'wow, you've opened my eyes' and some of the men saying 'hmm, let me think about that'.

I just find it astounding that none of this has ever occurred to those people before. It just seems so obvious to me.

I tend to feel it's because so much feminist logic seems obvious to many of the people on this board that the tone & content of threads here alienates a preponderance of readers.

What that guy's written didn't form a complete principle to me until my thirties - and I was already a feminist. Sure, I'd been irritated by a lot of the everyday stuff going on in my life, and was aware of the whole thing piecemeal. But I remember the day I reached the same conclusion as that blogger; I was 34. Moreover, my conclusion at that time was along the lines of "Now I'm aware of this, I'd better use it to my advantage (ie, manipulate)" rather than a coherent political viewpoint.

If one of you had been with me that day, and gone "Well, duh, I've been telling you that for ages! It's obvious!", you'd have been unlikely to get my positive attention. I fight shy of the word patronising but, imo, feminist stalwarts could do more to kindly raise awareness amongst curious visitors.

I take your point garlicbutter. But I think the feminism boards have attracted more people than alienated them from what I can tell. Although I take no credit for that - I'm an old curmudgeon :o

Heh, me too!

On phone again, so please bear with me!

Garlicbutter makes the point much better then I could. Got to say I damn near walked away from feminisim and never looked back, and it is only because i am thick skinned, stubborn and actually really like challenging areas of doscussion (may as well put that thick skin to use!) that I stayed.

What I am trying to say is that if feminisim can nearly scare me off, I suspect many people wil indeed be alienated.

I do understand why feeling run high, i really do. i also now 'get' that feminisim is a hooooooooooggggeeeee area that people dedicate years of thier lives to understanding and promoting. But my argument remains that, if people want to support feminisim, I think they should be encouraged and educated, rather then written off.

please note that I am not rtying to make this about me, I just think its a good example in this case . I dont want to take things further of course so will shut me gob now!

I can totally see what you mean toddler. But what's difficult is how really do we address that? Am the people who are more versed in feminism supposed to stfu when someone posts something with more holes in it than a piece of emmenthal? (Not talking about the OP here, just generally). Are people not supposed to challenge a thought or an action that might seem feminist to the OP but in other people's minds is not for fear of seeming alienating?

I'm really not sure where to go with that one. Unless you're advocating a general dumbing down, which I'm sure you're not. There was a feminism for beginners thread started a while back where everyone was on scouts' honour to be very gentle to new posters - perhaps we should ask MN to make that a sticky?