Saturday, August 7, 2010

Christina Hendricks as poster girl for what "real" women are... or are not

Well, it took me long enough to realize who this lady was, but I guess I looked her up a few months ago. She was an actor from the show Mad Men. Known for... are you ready?

Dyed hair and large breasts. ....Yes. She is clearly a breath of fresh, fresh air in the world of Hollywood.

While she may very well be a decent person with nothing worse done than wearing immodest outfits for magazines and sometimes on the red carpet, I can't see how she managed to become such a quick role model for overweight women, or the "sexiest woman alive" or, as the title mentioned, a poster girl for "real" women.

If you remember some of earlier posts about what curves are and are not, you probably also remember that in one of them, I made a reminder that 1) If it's born with lady parts, IT'S A REAL WOMAN. 2) Having large breasts, rolls, or "padding" on you has nothing to do with realness. It means you have a big chest, are overweight, or just have extra "padding" on you. 3) Not to bash her, but she's actually pretty far from "real" if you meant "realistic". Let's look at some examples:

Like most actors, she wears an enormous among of makeup she doesn't need. I don't find her very nice-looking but her face improves with less on, at least without the dramatic styled makeup (which rarely suits anyone anyway). It's pretty clear plastic surgery is involved, even without seeing younger photos of her with a significantly smaller chest (no, her being less skinny now does would not in any way make anyone's chest grow THAT much) but she also wears a very strong corset, padded push-up bras, and flattering dresses, because there's a thing called gravity that large breasts are far from being immune to. I'd also like to see how she looked with her natural blonde hair color, but if she's been dying it since she was young, I doubt it will show if she let her red fade away.



So.... a heavily made-up, airbrushed, dyed, already-huge-chested-plus-the-unneeded-help-of-a-push-up-bra woman is the new ideal and definition of what a real woman is? Can anyone else understand how I'm scared? This is how high and unrealistic the beauty standard is becoming... or standards.
"Curvy" shapes like hers (well, she is actually pear-shaped but  as it's "cooler" to claim you're hourglass shaped, she wants us to think she's hourglass, or else she wouldn't dress like one or buy those breasts) are rare. A lot of women will also not want to be made to feel inferior because their chests, whether A or DD, or not as large as her so-called perfect ones. And by the way, I'm sure that is not what she wants to be known as: a pair of huge breasts that acts sometimes. Granted, she does like to put them on display quite often, which is obviously her own doing, so I hope she doesn't complain when and if no one takes her seriously because they're too busy staring at/fantasizing about those breasts.

I understand NATURALLY big or fat women, few as there are, deserve role models with similar body types/shapes too, but I'm sorry- even though Christina is overweight, she is nothing like this:


She is big, mostly on the bottom, but not this kind of big. She is no more real than any slimmer or smaller-chested women or the woman above.

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