Regarding The Unsexiest Woman Alive

  Okay so this is pretty old news. (Does that make it olds?)

I realize that I’m behind the times, but as I just heard about this I feel the need to vent.

I’m sure that you’ve heard the buzz by now and that your co-workers and friends have torn this subject apart.

Perhaps you’ve joined in on conversations and added your 2 cents.

Or maybe you’ve added a whole quarter.

I only hope that your conversations haven’t succumbed to the level of Maxim.

It really pisses me off.

I mean who are they to make the calls on who is “sexy” or “unsexy”?

I understand that Sara Jessica Parker may not be pretty in the traditional sense, whatever that means, but she is beautiful.

Traditional is boring anyway.

Who wants to be Barbie or look at her all the time?

Obviously – and disappointingly – a lot of people, based on Maxims Sexiest/Unsexiest Woman of the year contest.

But I’ve got news for Maxim: unsexy is not even a word. So there!

Is it any wonder why so many people in this country have self esteem issues? What do you expect when you have these magazines trumping who is considered sexy (“Looking like this is GOOD!”) and who is “unsexy” (Don’t look like this! It’s bad!).

The truth is that a large percentage of the population does not look like Barbie. (Thank God.)

Does that mean that most people are “unsexy”?

No – absolutely NOT. There are so many sexy people out there who are not sexy in any traditional sort of way. And to me that’s even sexier.

It seems like all you have to do for Maxim to consider you to be sexy is get some implants, dye your hair and slather on some face paint. They seem content with the deception of perfection. But I wonder if they would be disappointed if we were to pull the masks off of their beauty queens and take away their plastic parts.

I bet they would be. I mean look at Britney Spears. Years ago she was loved by Maxim. Today they’ve moved her into the ‘unsexy’ category. They claim that the reasons why are her 2 kids, 2 ex husbands, slight weight gain and “losing the ability to perform” (Quoted from here.)

But I’m willing to bet you that the main reason why is the weight gain. If she still looked like she did when she was 18, and perhaps went out and got the next size boobs, I don’t think that her personal life would matter much to Maxim. She probably would have made it onto the sexy list.

For once can we have a list of the sexiest woman using REAL people? No movie stars and no makeup allowed? No fake boobies? Just REAL people.

Why not? Why is there this need to wear makeup and lie?

I’m sick and tired of seeing the same fake picture perfect people. It gets old.

I prefer seeing REAL human beings – people who are not “perfect”.

They are the sexy ones.

The Deception of Perfection

  Is it better to lie about who you are but to look picture perfect than is it to be truthful and less than the rest?

Recently I was listening to the T-man show (absolutely my favorite radio show) and they were talking about women and make up. T-man was saying that men do not want to see pictures of women online (for example on sites like Myspace) if they are not wearing make up. This of course sparked some rather interesting phone calls, which is of course why T-man says things like this – he knows that it will spark a reaction. The resulting conversations were pretty fun to listen to, as is always the case on the T-man show.

Anyway this got me to thinking about the issue of makeup. When I was a kid I was never allowed to wear it even though all of the other girls in high school (or a large majority of them anyway) were wearing it. This gave them an edge up on me. They were always able to look that much better than me, being able to cover flaws while I walked around with all of my ‘blemishes’ out in the open. As a result of never being able to wear makeup as a teen, as I’ve gotten older the concept of wearing it has become less and less appealing. I mean who wants to spend nearly a trillion dollars on a bottle (or jar – I don’t even know what it’s called!) of mascara just to poke out their eye out while trying to put it on? In the end I look like an idiot with black streaks dripping down my face and I’m forced to spend an extra half-hour in the bathroom ferociously trying to scrub my skin to get the stuff off. All of the scrubbing results in excessive pulling of my eye skin, which leads me to believe that I really need Eye Cream more than ever. While most other women learned the proper techniques and tricks to putting makeup on all the way back in high school, I (obviously) never learned how. I am terrible at it. As a result I don’t often wear it. Although I do have some Bare Escentuals, which I am able to put on pretty well, but that’s another story in and of itself.

Luckily my partner is not into makeup. He thinks that wearing it is equivalent to lying because you are hiding what is truly there and thereby deceiving others. Yet in a world where most people wear makeup and pushup bras it’s hard not to fall into that way of living yourself. I feel like in order to compete with most other women, or in order to at least match up to them, that I have to wear makeup. There’s no way that I can look as good as the woman who is covering all of her flaws (broken capillaries, slightly discolored patches of skin, zits, blemishes, small chest, etc) by wearing face paint and/or making her chest look deceptively larger with a Wonder Bra.

All of this leads me to the following:

Why is it that women are expected to wear makeup and men are free to simply be who they are, flaws and all? Why are women the ones who are expected to be perfect, or at least to fake perfection? It doesn’t seem fair to me, but then again who ever said that life is supposed to be fair?

I feel like I’m damned if I do (wear makeup) and damned if I don’t. If I wear it I’m considered (by some) to be a liar. If I don’t wear it I cannot even begin to compare to those who do. I’d like to just be happy being who I am, flaws and all, but it’s hard when there’s so much to measure up to. While it’s true that my boyfriend doesn’t like makeup or pushup bras he still can’t help but to at least momentarily drool at the made-up Wonder Bra queens who walk by. Who wouldn’t drool when they look so perfect? I don’t blame him or other men for getting aroused at the simply sight of beauty queens, but at the same time it’s incredibly frustrating to observe. It makes me angry because I too could look just as good as these made-up queens (with a few lessons on how to properly apply face paint) yet instead I walk around (most of the time) truthful about who I am and what I have to offer. I am not utterly disgusting yet at the same time I am not drop dead gorgeous. What I am is real and concrete – like Angela from My So Called Life. In The episode Self Esteem  a similar issue is addressed. This is the episode in which Jordan Catalano finally acknowledges his love for Angela. It hits him while he’s in English class reading Shakespeare. Shakespeare is talking about a woman who is not the prettiest girl, but who is loved and adored because she is real and has flaws. She’s not imaginary or ‘made up’ (pun intended).

All in all I suppose that in the end it’s better to have someone drooling over who you really are then to have them drooling over a ‘disguise’ or ‘costume’ that you wear. Yet it doesn’t change the fact that being truthful about who you are can often make you feel like less than the common denominator.

I Scream for Eye Cream!

  Do I really need to use 3 (or more) different kinds of lotion on my face to stay looking young, or is it just another scam? 

I am still amazed at how many different brands of the same product there are in any given store. It’s a little ridiculous. It makes shopping for the indecisive person, such as myself, incredibly difficult. I stand in an aisle comparing not only prices, but also product ingredients and claims. This can be a very timely procedure and it seems that no matter which product I end up choosing, I always end up with some form of buyers remorse. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m wondering if that other brand or style of Band-Aids would have been better for me.

Most recently I’ve noticed the many different skin products that there are just for the face alone. For years now I have been in the habit of using an Oil of Olay daily moisturizer with sun block in it. A few weeks ago I was speaking with an older woman (who has wonderful skin) and she gave me the impression that just using a moisturizer once a day is no good. Her routine is to use a special daytime moisturizer and then in addition she applies a completely different evening moisturizer as well as an entirely different eye cream. This conversation sent me to the store where I was amazed to see countless facial products. It was overwhelming. Do I really need 3 different creams to put on my face or is it just a marketing ploy? Do these ‘special eye creams’ really do anything different than any of the other creams or are they all basically the same product with a different outfit on?

I stood in the facial cream aisle for a good 20 minutes debating whether or not I really needed the 20-dollar bottle of eye cream. In the end I didn’t get it. I just couldn’t justify spending that much on a cream that may not even be all that it’s cracked up to be. Instead I got a 7-dollar bottle of Night of Olay and told myself that using 2 moisturizers a day is plenty good and that there’s nothing wrong with using my regular facial moisturizer as an eye cream. Still I wonder though – would using an ‘official’ eye cream make me look younger and reduce wrinkles, or better yet prevent them? For some reason I doubt it, but it’s claims like these that keep those companies feeding their families year after year. The people who make these products probably don’t even use them. They probably just Botox at the slightest appearance of a wrinkle. They can afford it – people like me make sure of it. Yet knowing this doesn’t change the feeling that I have that I may really need that eye cream. That somehow having that cream will make my life better and more complete. In no time I’ll be succumbing to their advertising and buying a bottle of ridiculously over priced eye cream that is probably the same damn face cream I’ve already got just dressed in a different bottle.