Thigh Gaps?

 

There is an odd trend going on on Instagram, Tumblr, and other social media websites. Its the craze of being so underweight your collar bones and hip bones stick out, and you have a gap between your thighs. I believe this is derived from what young girls believe is attractive on themselves. This treng has caused two sides to arise. Those who are working to achieve the ultimate weight, usually lower than 100 pounds for seemingly tall women, and those who object to the idea and fight back by commenting on how awful it is.

I first noticed this strange trend on Instagram. Many females began posting their weight and photos of different parts of the body. Usually the posts were the stomach, thighs, and chest area. The odd thing was that there was nothing wrong with the photos themselves, but rather how they perceived themselves. Most would feel worthless, unattractive, and desired to push themselves into losing crazy amounts of weight. Many would post up photos of their ideal body, usually the "thigh gap"

The thigh gap is apparently desired by females to feel like their slender and attractive in their clothes. You have a thigh gap if your thighs do not touch. Usually the wider the gaps the more coveted it is. It was something you wouldn't notice unless someone had pointed it out like in this case. Girls do a lot from not eating to crazy diets to get this gap! Some do exercises that promise to create the thigh gap. This is shocking because it creates eating disorders in younger females. Most don't realize that starving yourself really helps you gain weight. 

I'm unsure why females want to have these grotesque, unreal bodies. Most males wouldn't even know what thigh gaps are. Most people wouldn't notice hip bones or collar bones unless one was a scary skinny skeleton.

 

Entry #5

Media Synthesize

Media is a powerful thing. It is everywhere we look. It's our phones, our laptops, on our drive home, the entire country is full of all different types of media! The assignment made me really focus on the rhetoric advertisers show when producing an ad or commercial. Some advertisers are down right offensive while others tend to appeal to family ethics. Overall there are all kinds of messages being sent to viewers and listeners that might not be so easy to catch on to. The assignment made me analyze certain aspects of movies and ads differently. Particularly on the messages that are shown and the ethic values of each. For example, we can begin to analyze certain offensive ads more cautiously than those who are not so obvious.

There are plenty of ads that idealize extremely unrealistic female bodies. At the same time we shoot down those females who are overweight or do not fit that idealized figure. Not only do most ads with females degrade them, they often portray men who are also extremely unrealistic. Many females are too skinny with a full lips and thick eyelashes. Most people could view these ads with "natural" faces and feel down about themselves. Many females often fail to realize that the ads are full of crap. The ads of these women have fake eyelashes and photo shopped skin, and of course full coverage foundation.

 

I found that most advertisements and commercials tend to use sex to appeal to the audience. This says alot about the type of creeps behind the ideas and those who enjoy those ads. Many of them show males as the dominant gender. What happened to equality there? I dislike those ads with inappropriate content because marketing creeps don't stop and realize that children are exposed to messed up stuff as well as the rest of the family. Look at the photo below and figure out the message one can assume.