One must wonder these days if the obsessions with 'goals' and 'ideals', of 'self-image' and any other images has not placed our world on the path to a Barbie and Ken society: the ultimate in bourgeois individualism. Ah goals!, Ah Models! Beauty in the eye of the Manufacturer and Cosmetic Surgeon.

Good fortunes, feminists; it's a long road ahead.

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If feminists genuinely wanted women to be "empowered" or self-determining, they would stop littering these articles with words like "misogyny" and "sexism", which imply that their problems are other people's fault. If they were sincere, they would make women take full responsibility for what they do to themselves.

Women cosmetically alter themselves for the same reasons that men buy motorcycles, sports cars, join a gym, wear flower shirts, join the Hair Club, or date a cute 19-year-old when they're 45: good old-fashioned vanity, insecurity, narcissism, and lacking the maturity to deal with the inevitibility of growing old. Just because it tends to manifest itself differently for men and women doesn't mean it's not the same thing.

Feminists are never going to win any of these so-called battles against the so-called white male patriarchy because they don't want to. They like playing the victims, and they like blaming their problems--real and imaginary--on a common enemy, rather than accept the realities that make life difficult for a lot of us, regardless of gender.

Modern feminism is so ironic. They love the word "empowerment", but maintaining the perception of a lack of empowerment is what keeps them in business.

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Years ago when I was young and oh so fresh, I had decided that I saw nothing wrong with indulging in surgery when "THE TIME CAME". I didn’t think it would negatively affect my own image, smarts or self worth and actually believed that if the time was right and the finances in line, surgery would be a fine thing to do.

Here I am years later and I still feel the same way. Today the procedures are easier, more advanced and cheaper and I see nothing wrong in indulging if you see fit. Why not? I like to keep up in fashion; having a bit of a fetish for shoes and bags is no secret but is a tuck now and then so terribly different?

As far as having those unnatural “stretched, alien, expressionless faces worn by certain celebrities and increasing numbers of everyday women”, well that I suspect is a matter of taste; not of personal worth. Personally I don’t like the emaciated stretched canvases that some women prefer, but who am I to say that they are wrong if that is what they want to see reflected in their own mirror? It is their face and health after all, who am I to judge? If a furrowed brow turns on some, than have at it, I will not think more or less of you; but to judge others because they decide to change a few things seems heinous to me. If I decide to un-furrow that same brow, does that make me less worthwhile of a woman?

These days there are always issues of health and practicality but these same procedures have become a status symbol and to me, that is much more distressing than someone who wants a fuller lip line. Status symbols such as this are nothing I yearn for and add to that ever-climbing ladder of which surgery to do next, but that aside I will still go ahead and have those little fixer uppers as I see fit. Am I less of a woman, less smart or am I somehow letting down all of womanhood? Maybe to some, but I see it as a personal choice to just polish up my own image. Not so bad in my opinion...

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Redefining "the self" has come to include falsification of not only the persona but the physical presence. This is not new. The current issues have a great deal with creating images- often "copycat"style, showing how much money and how little taste it takes, and ultimately how degrading of the derma it can be (Michael Jackson). As a breast cancer survivor, I have learned the real merit of the restorative and reconstructive powers of a good plastic surgeon's talents - it has the effect of making one "whole" again, of restoring what may have been lost through legitimate events, and assuring good health.

Alas the current trend of "feminism" or "empowerment" has nothing to do with either. A true sense of self brings fortitude, fearlessness, and courage. The substitutions available for "a presence" on this earth are so often misused, and then reused.

Why is it that grey hair is in favor, but looking like you are the proper owner of the grey hair is unacceptable? Why does any woman believe that, when "redesigned", she is fooling the rest of us? I treasure my age, and the wisdom it has brought. And I am very grateful to the plastic surgeon who put me back together during breast cancer surgery - with nothing but my own tissue.

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To this man, there is nothing quite like a beautiful smile. As Gracie Slick said, "Your only as pretty as you feel inside."

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I couldn't help but stare at the photo of the lips at the top of the article. One thought kept coming to mind. I wonder what other uses there might be for a set of lips like that. I suppose they would make a perfect seal around a bottle of Coke too. Boy, if I could just afford a woman with a set of lips like that, then I'd be happy. Wait! I think I get it.

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I'm sorry but those people who claim they are having this optional cosmetic surgery "just for themselves" are lying. The reality is they are doing it for the attention that comes from the opposite (or same) sex, the public whom they want to adore them or to convince someone to advance them professionally.

Further, they believe that the Creator made some kind of "mistake" in their design and thus need someone to correct those flaws. Gone are the days when one "ages gracefully", rather people try to fight aging "tooth and nail".

I don't include in this those people who have been disfigured due to accident, injury or disease unless they go overboard.

I wonder though, why people are so concerned with surface beauty when many have become ugly inside and society as a whole is ugly; no amount of cosmetic surgery for the oustide will correct the inner and societal ugliness. That can only be accomplished when we stop harming one another with words and actions, blaming others for personal shortcomings, allowing the wealthy to determine and define our lives and the quality of our lives, prejudging others because they don't conform to the twisted norms that have been established or for that matter don't look like the "standard" and stop trying to use others to advance ourselves among other things.

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In response to comments that women put on makeup and get plastic surgery simply because they're vain and narcissistic...

You're ignoring the entire social context in which these beahviors take place. When the only images we see of women in advertising and movies are of women who are thin and have flawless skin and hair, is it any wonder the self-esteem of girls plummets when they hit adolescence (while boys's self-esteem does not)? Is it any surprise that eating disorders are hitting epidemic proportions if the only images we see of women in the media are of thin women?? It sends the message that if you aren't thin and have perfect skin, you aren't cool or beautiful. It is most definitely NOT the same for men.

Please enjoy this video on the portrayal of women in advertising:
Killing Us Softly 3

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...cosmetic medicine exists because sexism is powerfully linked with capitalism -- keeping a woman worried about her looks in order to stay attractive, keep a job or retain self-worth.

It's also possible that men are just biologically shallow, and surgery addresses a very real awareness that, in a still-male-dominated economy, the less sexual interest men have, the less likely women are to eat or have a place to sleep.

History shows that women will take care of males they are not necessarily attracted to. Males, unfortunately, are not so altruistic. They simply have a lower capacity for community, unless it directly relates to enhancing their own social status, or mating.

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At least a third of my women friends have had cosmetic surgery, but it's ludicrous to link any of it to feminism. First, there are the women who had their noses re-built as teenagers to mitigate against the stigma of "looking Jewish"; some were, some weren't, but it always made me sad, since it was a tacit concession to anti-Semitism. Then, as we aged, I began to notice little improvements after long vacations among friends in competitive jobs—brow lifts, eye tucks, new boobs, etc. In some cases, this added years to their worklives and, in others, it attracted new men. This is not a testament to feminism but to ageism, or perhaps "lookism."

In fact, elective plastic surgery runs counter to my highest hopes for feminism, that women might value ourselves for who we are, and that seeing this, the society will be compelled to share those values. After two prominent NY socialites died during cosmetic surgery from anesthesiology gone wrong, I promised myself that short of a disfiguring disease or catastrophic accident, I'll stick with what I've got. A media career seemed like a long-shot anyway.

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One thing I find about the Ms. Magazine crowd is that they take the advertisers a little too seriously and underestimate the common sense of our gender. It's fine for Virginia Madsen to use injectables - after all, her face is a large part of her livelihood. She won't convince me to do the same, because my job does not involve public contact, and if I lose the man I have, I'm not particularly interested in pursuing another. Personally, if I were going to spend that much, a first-class set of wood carving gouges is more of a turn-on. I think most other women make the same sort of considered judgements, and do not salivate at every ring of the advertiser's bell.

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How to get this across? Alex Kuczynski and a few thousand mainstream writers to the contrary, feminism is not primarily about helping individual women get whatever they want. It's about identifying and dismantling the barriers that confront women as a class. The barriers can be laws, traditions, or attitudes, and they vary from place to place and across time. Some of the attitudes are gasp! in our own heads. As those barriers are identified and dismantled, more and more women will have more and more options -- but that doesn't mean that every choice we make is a feminist choice, even if feminism helped make the choosing possible.

Jennifer Cognard-Black writes: "Yet the cosmetic-surgery industry is doing exactly what the beauty industry has done for years: It's co-opting, repackaging and reselling the feminist call to empower women into what may be dubbed 'consumer feminism.'"

Exactly right (though I'd just as soon leave the F-word out of it). This is what our sell-sell-sell culture does to everything: repackage and sell it back to us. The advertising industry really is amazing. It can take "the best things in life" (i.e., the ones that are free) and sell 'em back to us for big bucks. Love, sex, fun, health, revolution, feminism -- even spirituality, which by definition isn't about Stuff, gets turned into products and services that you can buy in the marketplace. (The "free" market abhors the thought that anything could possibly be free.)

Liberation isn't something you can buy over the counter or off the rack. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. In our sell-sell-sell culture, liberation inevitably involves disconnecting the buttons in our brains that automatically respond with buy-buy-buy. And it's a hell of a lot easier to do this when you're in the company of other feminists than it is when you're totally on your own.

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These procedures aren't even all that safe. Worse still we are suddenly expected to see beauty as somehow liberating for women - rather than jobs, financial independence and human rights.

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More BS from the Ad business!

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...that many of those waging this kind of critique are really critiquing the beauty imperative itself. One commenter see it as her personal choice to polish up her image, but do she have a choice in whether she is seen as an image at all? What's wrong with this beauty imperative, so many feminists have argued in the last 20-30 years, is not that it soley affects women, but that it constitutes the the basic mode of supposed female power, dare I say "girl-power."

Is it true that men, too, are image driven? Sure, but there are far less rules to obey, and far less and harsh of penalties for breaking them. What's more is that the image of male sexuality and virility is not the basic ticket for male-power. A look at our own government and practically every male business leader in the world could attest to this. It's a near-sighted misnomer to argue that patriarchy solely shits on women, though that is different from saying that it categorically disadvantages and thereby sub-ordinates women in relation to male power. Men get shit on by the same social structures shitting on women, but far less of the time, far less extensively, and ironically with the same social structures to prop them back up.

Just to re-iterate though, sex appeal is not valid-power for women, because it is a part of an image created by male-power. This image, which the aforementioned commentor claims the free choice to "keep up," is not in her or other women's interests, except to the extent that subserviance to it gives them some lee-way under the eyes of those making the rules. You might say---others certainly have---that women are the ones making the rules, but why would women make rules that bind them to heteronormative male approval for their efficacy and call that really their choice, their exertion of power? That sound neither like choice nor power, but a highly convoluted and subtle bread and circus of ideological banalities. Even if "made by women," such rules serve male power and fantasy, including women alligning their own notion and exertion of power with this gendered image of it.

I agree with one poster that more thought has to be put into how we are to look at our own implication in the social structures that dominate us. We too are social beings; we too constitute these structures. However, the practical problem still remains: when these social structures ecclipse the very possibility of their unthought, of thinking of alternatives to them, and constitute for us reality itself, then something else is to be done besides just shrugging them off or "working with them." This very denkverbot, that prohibition of thinking otherwise to these social structures manifested in their organic pervasiveness and opacity, itself must be called for what it is before we can begin to think past it, lest we simply rename and more deeply integrate it in the next "revolution."

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Why is Hillary exempt from ANY contempt, praise, ridicule- whatever comments you feel appropriate- for the NUMEROUS changes she has made on her face? Has the MSM been warned off? There has been absolutely no reference to this either in MSM -or Blogs. This is very curious.

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I can't get too worried about plastic surgery, until it does become an echo of that Twilight Zone where everybody who doesn't look just a certain way is considered ugly. Insofar as it becomes seen as "letting yourself go" or whatever if you don't tighten everything up at a certain point, that's a very disturbing thing. Let's not think that way, okay? That's about all the control we have - over how we ourselves think about things.

It would happen, though, that all this would be marketed as a form of power, wouldn't it? There certainly IS an element of self-determination involved, but it's a much more superficial form of it than what we'd really like to see.

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just like I can with some old dude sporting a "rug". He might as well be wearing a coon-skin cap for that matter! It is all so fake looking. Hey, if everybody can tell then who are you fooling?

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Just a quick rant:

Botox does not fill in wrinkles. Botox is an extract of the botulism toxin that paralyzes the muscles it is injected into so as to not creates more wrinkles.

Get that people? BOTOX IS A POISON THAT IS INJECTED WILLINGLY INTO THE HUMAN BODY!!

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People with this disorder can't stop "altering" themselves. Most anorexics & bulemics also suffer from it. And look at Michael Jackson w/his surgeries gone bad... he couldn't stop. That's what people with BDD do. If you feel you need plastic surgery, you aren't accepting of yourself, period. You need psychotherapy, not surgery. And I'm not talking about people with deformities. That's originally what plastic surgery was for. Now too big a percentage of our society thinks they are "deformed". I'd say there's a BDD epidemic in this country.

And fake boobs? Please. The whole concept is sick. I have a very good looking male hetero friend who actually said "ugh" when this beautful, slender and BIG-BOOBED waitress came to our table the other night. I asked him why the ugh and he said "I hate those fake boobs." I can't understand how anyone would EVER say a boob job is a good thing. Breasts are not sexual organs but there's some weird fetish with them in this country that folks from elsewhere tell me is fairly uniquely american. Women who have low self-esteem because of small breasts probably would do well to look inward rather than stuffing their chests full of dangerous chemicals and plastics. I have been small-breasted all my life and couldn't be happier with it. It always has confused me as to why anyone would want those big-ass things bouncing around on their chests. It would really annoy me while playing tennis for one thing. I think they are ridiculous. Sometimes (since I live in Los Angeles & see it a LOT) it's all I can do not to laugh when a woman with an obvious boob-job walks by... it's just surreal to me in a way I can't explain. As if too many people don't get how utterly ridiculous boob jobs are.

I think that it comes down to, for the most part, acceptance of oneself and enjoying our differences. Corny and old-fashioned, but true.

I've found that the people I've been most attracted to, whether as friends or lovers, are those with self-confidence, who exercise, eat right & just enjoy life, treat themselves well, etc. and none of them looked like movie stars. They were just the folks you'd love to be in the company of and their attractiveness was borne out of their just being their wonderful selves. I would never date a guy who had fake hair or anything else. It grosses me out. It just smacks of low self-esteem.

As another commenter said, it doens't matter how much plastic surgery you get, really. You can be as 'beautiful' on the outside as can be, but if you can't back it up with inner beauty it's all a waste anyway.

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As young girls, we bought into the idea of looking good. Make-up, hair, nails, clothes, those high shoes. I loved it, actually, in my teens, twenties, thirties and even forties. From fifty on, however, the cosmetics don't work so well, the clothes don't transform you, you can't wear the high shoes. I was a part of the feminist movement. I wanted to look like Gloria Steinem, with the streaked hair, the big eyes, the great figure.
Now that I am 60, I don't like to look in the mirror. I know that the eyeliner and all the other junk I still buy is not going to create the reflection that I once saw. It is painful. It is difficult. You do not get any support for "looking old." I color my hair because once y ou succumb to grey hair, you are really through. People look past you; you are invisible. That being said, I will not have any surgery or shots or anything because I believe that what you do in life is what matters, not how you look. I worked as a teacher in an inner city high school for 36 years. I feel that I contributed something important in my own way to our society. Yet, this does not make me joyous when I look into the mirror.

It is very, very hard for older women in this society which still enshrines youth or youthfulness and does not revere the wisdom of the old. How you look matters and when you cannot look "good" anymore, you cease to matter if you are a woman. Except, of course, and hopefully, to your family, your loved ones. If you just give up, you risk isolation, lonliness, marginalization, ridicule, so I do understand why older women have plastic surgery. Really to avoid the pain that our society inflicts on women who don't look young anymore. The concept of beauty is manufactured by the media. I feel powerless to change it. I think feminism is really dead. We have all succumbed in one way or another.

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No.

plur

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I think a big part of why the women's movement has rolled backward during the "Third Wave" (which I call free market faux feminism, or anti-feminism) is this whole "Choice" credo. It completely LENDS itself to effortless co-option by market forces. WE NEED A BETTER TAGLINE.

I have been hearing for the past 7 years in the media: women using "Choice" to defend all sorts of actions that are the ANTITHESIS of feminism, like "reclaiming" stripper poles, high heels, "Mrs." Can you imagine African Americans "reclaiming" the Confederate flag and calling it "irony," saying, "Well we are equal now so it means something different." “We don’t HAVE to work on cotton plantations now, so it is our “Choice” to go back and serve masters.” NOT!!!!!

Then, in an Orwellian tautological loop, if you argue against their "Choice," then YOU are the conservative, even if THEIR so-called "Choice" catapults us right back to 1955. YOU are the sexist because you don't think women are "smart enough" to make their own choices. WAR IS PEACE! SLAVERY IS FREEDOM! It’s a great way to silence anyone who speaks against the machine.

FREE MARKETS fought for "Choice," or for the illusion of "Choice," while really offering you the "Choice" to do exactly as you are told to keep the free market machine steam rolling smoothly. Conversely Feminism, which started with Abigail Adams in 1776 in this country--not in the 1960s--has always fought for THE DISMANTLING OF PATRIARCHY AND AN END TO THE LEGAL, SOCIAL, SEXUAL, AND ECONOMIC SUBJUGATION OF WOMEN to men, and the liberation of men to be empathetic, creative HUMAN BEINGS rather than automatons, killing machines for kings, depersonalized wallets.

Anyone who consistently makes "Choices" that only serve to REINFORCE human subjugation is NOT a feminist because that contradicts the definition of the word. "Choices" left unexamined within the framework of social conditioning are not "Choices," they are demonstrations of internalized socialization. If one "Choice" gets you societal acceptance/economic rewards and all others get you penalized, said "Choice" is a social dictate. Social dictate is the antithesis of "Choice."

One reason for the "Choice" motto’s popularity is that women and men have become TOO WIMPY to stand up in the face of the Christian Right and say boldly, “I AM PRO-ABORTION RIGHTS.” "Choice" sounds more "polite."
Another reason is, the Third Wave has grown up with no challenge to free market hyper-capitalism. This whole idea that "self" empowerment=feminism is not only very free market friendly, it also sounds like pure Republicanism. This makes sense being that the Third Wave has known nothing BUT Republican economics and strategies, even via Clinton. The sad part is that most American youth cannot IMAGINE another reality anymore.

This whole "self" empowerment focus also seems to be leading to a whole re-booted battle of the sexes. It is a battle for male or female supremacy and power OVER the other. This regressive struggle rages daily on Alternet. I don't get it at all. IT IS BEYOND PATHETIC. The people around me look at those sort of struggles as something that went the way of Billy Jean King and Andre Agassi: point proven, game over. How about cooperating to lift all boats, all brothers and sisters?

EQUALITY: It is possible! It is harmonious! It means thinking about your self in relation to community, rather than clawing over other women, other men, other countries, to be the Alpha, only to be left standing alone on a cold windy mountaintop. It means listening to one another, and growing from the exchange. It means letting go of being FEAR-BASED and embracing each other. Just try it before slamming it! Try it for ONE WEEK as a test. It doesn’t hurt a bit! It feels really good, in fact!
EMPOWER YOUR ***HEART!***

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the pro-WAR NAZIs on Capitol Hill and of course Corporate America !

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The trouble with this article is that you lose me in the third paragraph, when you call Botox an injectable wrinkle filler. It's not; it's a muscle paralyzer. You might think the distinction is specious, but when your facts aren't accurate it reduces your overall credibility (and thus the persuasive power of your article). What happened to fact-checking?

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It all gets down to human beings and humans beings valuing certain things.

I was the unusually good looking one of 7 seriously abused, neglected and finally abandoned siblings. I was eight when we were left to the care of the State. People with resources have always bent over backwards all of my life to "have" me. Qualities of sweetness and light, that I really do not actually posess in any great degree, are always being attributed to me.
My other siblings of average apperance did not get chosen by the people with the most resources. This went on all of my life. The men I have attracted have always had more resources. To emotionally damaged children/young adults, the level of resources made all of the difference in the world. I could rest, relfect, heal - to a great degree.
The three siblings after me are all dead now - very brutal lives from the time that they were small. No time to heal, let alone survive. They were used in different ways and for different reasons then I was. It was years before I actually realized what had made all of the difference.

If I did not look the way that I do my life would have been very very different.

So altering what you look like is an investment, for sure. Believe me, I get it.

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I think feminism would allow the woman to do what she wants to do without having to listen to irrelevant chastising.
People think of nothing having their bloodpressure helped with pills, their cholesterol level maintained by other drugs, their heirloss taken care off by chemicals, or implants. Their eyebrows painted, their eyelashes tinted, their eyesight enhanced with contact linses or glasses to see better.
Men take drugs to enhance their sexual prowess, or lack therof.
I hear no one complain. Why not leave it to the individual to do what they need to do to feel good about themselves? I don't think it has anything to do with empowerment, or any of the nonsense people might want to call it.
Leave me to decide what I want to do. Get off my back.

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To me the height of feminine dignity and power peaked in the sixties hippie culture. They might have gone a little too far in eschewing artificiality to sometimes appearing unkempt, but that was an overswing of the pendulum.

They were confident enough in their abilities and personalities to compete without the need for an artificial advantage. Today, women are in a downward spiral. Advertisers make them feel inadequate and the more "self-improvement" they buy the more inadequate they feel. I'm not saying that men are any different. This whole Viagra culture makes men feel just as inferior.

The inevitable result will be a total loss of self confidence by the majority of people, who will live in fear. They will be thankful to be slaves to religious, political, and cultural "leaders" who will tell them what to do.
Bob Reichenbach,
Director, The Lincoln Initiative.

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