What Women Need to Know

Today I opened an email and it was a link to a UK tabloid newspaper which showed photographs of Shakira the Colombian singer with stretch marks showing on her bottom. The picture was magnified so we could see the damning image up close. A woman sent this to me with heading ‘Ha ha Your Hips Do Lie Shakira’. As if stretch marks were the worst thing that can happen to a successful world wide pop star.

 

Who the hell actually cares that Shakira has stretch marks on her bum? Not me, but the fact women devour this nonsense and then assume I would be interested, worried me.

 

There are a glut of magazines that love to show so called celebrity women up close, just so we can look at their flaws in our millions. Women buy these magazines and I suppose the basic message is to let ourselves know that the ‘beautiful people’ are not perfect, they too have ugly bits. I find this horrific, as I would love to dwell on the achievements of my hero’s not their ordinary bodies.

 

This is the reason why women damage themselves by running three miles a day four days after the birth of their child. They believe they need to get their skinny body back, they are not aware of the damage and stress they are adding to their pressured life. Back in the 60s if a woman went a four mile hike with a baby in a ‘sprinting pram’ a district nurse or psychiatric professional would get them sectioned under the mental health act for their own safety.

 

My point is that men don’t pressure women as much as other women judge their so called ‘sisters’. I feel we have gone backwards as far as women supporting women is concerned. These gossipy bitchy magazines only add to the insecurity that the industry relies on.

 

Women wear clothes and perfect their make up so other women will judge them less harshly, I have never ever in my entire life heard a man in a bar say “That woman should be in higher heels and her make up needs blending, and don’t even start me on the colour of her skirt” Men generally don’t care how women look as long as they are happy in the themselves and the relationship, the few men who do dictate what a woman should wear and how she should look have a dubious sexual identity as far as I am concerned.

 

Women end up starving themselves and can develop a really bad body image; it is destructive and detrimental to their own well being. Anorexia is on the rise thank to skinny celebs showing their emaciated bodies off at photo shoots. Our young daughters don’t need to judge their achievements on how high their collar bones stick out.

 

I don’t want to see any more photos of famous women who have cellulite when they cross their legs, I have no interest in a magnified image of a woman’s baggy armpit anymore than am interested in seeing famous men’s wigs close up…leave people alone and stop judging folk.

 

Its 2010 where did our sense of fairness and our belief in women’s lib go?