Jessica Simpson- The Price of Beauty/ The Body Project

Props to Jessica Simpson- I am loving the direction that Simpson's new show is going. The public scrutiny of her physical appearance has dominated much of her life. I appreciate her desire to travel the globe to see what lengths what women will go to to be beautiful. "The Price of Beauty" will be shown on VH1 beginning March 15th. I don't know if the show will be too exploitive. The trailer is interesting. The theory behind the show has great potential though. I am hoping for the best.
Props to feministing.com for posting this on their blog- the link to the blog is below. I highly suggest checking it out.
http://www.feministing.com/archives/020255.html#more
The more I have been researching my senior thesis, the more I feel saddened. Decades of women have been fighting to be seen as more than just a "beauty." What about their intellect? Their desires? Their goals? It is disheartening to know that we still have SO far to go. I am reading this book called "The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls." The book focuses on diaries and media images beginning from 1830 to the present. The attitudes of women's desires to beautiful literally makes me cry. The author, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, writes that 53% of young girls in America are unhappy with their bodies. The worst part of this statement is that this statistic becomes truth for young women by age thirteen.
You want to know what pisses me off most about this statistic? It's true. My own experience as a young girl growing up with family pressures, comparisons to my friends, and media telling me what is normal- I know this statistic to be true. And that is unacceptable. I am SO over seeing some of the most beautiful women I know hate themselves because they don't meet cultural standards. It's even harder to see them work endlessly to achieve the "normal" image of what women should be. One, the work never pays off because no one can stay that perfect forever. Two, at the end of the day, what have they really achieved? Does it really make them happier? Woopti Doo. At what expense to their self-esteems and inner voices have the achieved this dream? They work tirelessly trying to keep themselves in this state of "perfection." And all the while, they are stressed about that. Women can't win. You either have it and are stressed about keeping it, or you don't have it and "fail."
Fuck it.