Blog#3

There are many repeated themes in the book. One of these is the struggle that women have fitting in when in the workplace. First of all women do not get compensated the same even if they are performing the same tasks in the workplace. Second, women get constantly ridiculed for what they wear to work, and people do not care at all what men wear. If a woman wears something serious or professional, she gets pegged as to masculine or not woman enough. If a woman wears something feminine of soft, then she gets pegged as slutty or too feminine, and men even blame sexual harassment on the fact that women dress feminine. Another theme is just the general oppression of women because of their looks. Women are thought to have less value in our society if they gain weight, get old, or do not dress well enough. Since when did our looks constitute the what we can contribute to society? If a woman doesn't fix her self up then she is thought of as not competent enough, but a man can roll out of bed in his clothes from the day before and nobody thinks twice about it. And why are there pants with writing on the backside for women and not for men? Why are there low-cut shirts for women available in just about every store, but I have never seen a pair of low-cut pants for men that give a little peek of their junk? Why do women think they have to show some skin to get recognized by men?
Beauty, body image, and sexual attraction is in fact a function of social construction. Everywhere you look you are influenced by advertisements that tell you what to think about yourself, other people, what is sexy, what is acceptable, and what is not acceptable. Beauty is social constructed because adds tell us that if we have wrinkles we need to get rid of them, or if we are fat we need to take diet pills. It is not just media, it is other people who look down on over weight, old, or unmanicurred people. School plays a huge role early on in a person's life. If a child wears clothes from a thrift store or wal-mart then they are not good enough. So people learn to change their weight, clothes, wrinkles, glasses, shoes, and teeth to fit in and not be an outsider (because no one wants to feel like they do not fit in.)Sexual attraction is socially constructed because we only see "good-looking" people getting action in the media, we do not usually see "ugly" people getting action, so we learn that if we want someone to be attracted to us we need to be skinny, muscular, have big breasts (or other big parts), white teeth, no wrinkles, and just be perfect.
Ideals of female beauty function as a form of social control because every thing that a woman is involved in depends on the way she looks. If a woman looks old she might get discriminated against for a job. These ideals can hinder women because they will be thinking about what to wear to school so they fit in, instead of thinking about their homework assignments. Women do not get seen as human beings sometimes, they are only seen as objects, so they are not taken seriously. These ideals can control women by making them spend so much time and money on looking pretty and less time on gaining power and authority so that men are the ones still in those spots of power and authority.