Thursday, April 22, 2010

Pain Beauty and Why we wear what we do.

The anatomy of a female includes many curves, and imperfections, whether we like them or not, they exist. The clothing that we choose to wear can either enhance or diminish our natural structure. Everyone’s sense of fashion is parallel to their body type and what’s in style at the time. Have you ever thought about the little things we wear, though painful as they are, as long as they increase our sense of sex appeal to the opposite sex, we willingly put ourselves through it.

The high heel, stiletto, or pump, are all shoes designed for women, by men to pinpoint areas of the female body. These shoes are designed to make us feel uncomfortable, but make it pleasing to the male eye. Wearing any heeled shoe makes a woman’s posture completely change into a very awkward position. It’s designed to make our chest stick outward, arching our back, and pushing our bottom outward in the opposite direction. Not only do the shoes cause us foot problems, as far as blisters, pinched Achilles, and just plain aching feet, this almost every part of our spine, from our neck to our toes.

Why do we wear these shoes? Why did men design these shoes? Well duh! Since they accentuate the parts of our body that men love best, (i.e. our butts, boobs, legs, and pretty manicured toes) we love to wear them when it comes to the attention that it brings to us.
I’m not going to lie, I’m a sucker for cute colorful pumps or just plain sexy black ones, but every time I wear them, the whole time all I can think about is how I can’t wait to get home and take them off! They kill my feet, my back, my hips, EVERYTHING!
Why is it so important to us to feel attractive and sexy when it comes to the opposite sex? So much that we willingly put ourselves through pain, because PAIN=BEAUTY. These days, they’re making heels as high as five inches! Why, I don’t know, do we really need another five inches to the top of our heads? No! Who’s going to actually wear those without feeling like a complete and total idiot in pain?
Another aspect of female fashion I would like to shed some light on, is the thong, low rider jeans, and the boy shorts. Again, who designed the thong? Why? The first types of thongs were worn by men, otherwise known as the loincloth. The first modern thong was introduced by a man, Rudi Gernreich, who designed the monokini, a topless thong swimsuit. Thongs did not become popular in the U.S. until the late 90’s.

There is a whole set of criteria and standard of women’s underwear, it’s kind of ridiculous. There’s the ‘granny pannies’, known as something that of course, your grandma would wear, the boy shorts (to the left), made to be cheeky and show a little more of our; yeah you guessed it; butt cheeks, and of course the thong. What else goes better with thongs then tight low-rider jeans and miniskirts, complemented with a nice high pair of stilettos?


We wear all of these things, designed by men, for men, and worn by women. No matter how uncomfortable or displeasing it is to our body’s natural form, we wear it. The picture above, displays how most thirteen year old girls wear these thongs. Now, I’m going to say this again, I have underwear designed to be hidden, but in this case, it seems designed to be flaunted and flattered. The issue of twelve and thirteen year old girls wearing these skimpy things in the locker room, is another issue somebody else has probably written a blog about already. This is all connected to the want of sexual attention from the opposite sex, but girls that age shouldn’t even be thinking abou that to begin with.
All these accessories are made for us to emotionally feel sexy and attractive, and benefit the eye of a man. Duh! That’s why they made them. I mean, I honestly didn’t even think about the issues behind a simple pair of underwear or shoes, but there are a lot of social stigmas behind them, we just need to point them out more often then not.

2 comments:

  1. Chauntel -

    This is an interesting topic, but where is your media focus?

    The research that you did for this entry really showed. Even if you do not directly quote the source make sure to put it at the bottom of the page. It is especially important if you are looking at medical sources that let ladies know that heels are not good for their bodies! You also need to attribute where you got your images from.

    In the future keep in mind to tag your posts with the class topics that you are covering in this post. Although you have tagged your blog, none of the tags are about topics we covered in week 3 or 4. Next week make sure to focus your blog on topics we've covered in week 4 or 5 AND some source of media.

    Let Rachel or I know if you have any questions.

    - Ruth

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  2. I think the way you were going in your blog was how media shows women in T.V. and movies being sexy and attractive while wearing high heels and sleezy dresses. I would like to add to your thoughts that this horribly painful look on beauty has been around for centuries. In the olden days women used to have to wear corsets that would strangle their rib cages making it difficult to breath. I personally have always wondered what a corset would feel like and how painful it was for the women and what they had to go through everyday to get their man and keep him. Its really quite sad.

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