TJ Brady

"The Beauty Myth" and "Hair Matters" were two eye-opening readings for me and provided valuable insight into how women think and how beauty is a much bigger and important concept than many people think.  

"The Beauty Myth" stressed that although women might have more right now than they had in the past, they aren't necessarily more liberated than women were in the 1970s.  The author stressed how women still are not free because of the restraints placed on them through their physical appearance (face, body, hair, clothes).   Women are getting more and more self-conscious by the day and its a scary problem, "During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical specialty." (pg 10).  With more women in power now and in the spotlight instead of being at home, more emphasis is being put on their physical appearance.  The idea of "beauty" is constantly being chased by women through new clothes, new products, and sometimes even new body parts.  Men can possess beauty through their wives so they naturally choose the attractive women.  All of this is shown through the 33 billion dollar diet industry, 20 billion dollar cosmetics industry, and the 300 million dollar cosmetic surgery industry.  I'm not going to say that how attractive a girl isn't important to men because it is.  I just think that women put too much emphasis on it in the wrong ways.  I see girls wearing ridiculous amounts of make up and I personally think its disgusting.  I would much rather have a confident girl wearing shorts and a t-shirt then a self-conscious girl who has to get dressed up all the time to feel good about herself.  The self-conscious girl might get talked to by more guys but no guy wants to deal with a self-conscious girl all the time, confidence is attractive.  

The "Hair Matters" article was interesting and something I didn't think about before.  Hair is important to black women because it can portray a voice and empowerment.  The author got different opinions on black hair from multiple black women through interviews.  The one I agreed with the most was Ronnie, "I think anyone who loves their self for who they are and doesn't really care what anyone thinks is powerful.  Now, if that's wearing a perm, wearing locks, wearing braids, whatever it is.  As long as you're happy within yourself and you can say I'm truly happy, then that's powerful."  I completely agree with Ronnie because this talks about the same things that I talked about with the last article.  Confidence is the most important thing and how you feel about yourself personally.  Now although Ronnie is able to feel this way, doesn't mean all other black women feel this way.  Stereotypically nappy hair is shameful and they feel that they have to straighten it.  This wasn't in the article but I remember talking about how black girls are confused on what their hair should be because growing up they all played with white barbies with straight long hair.  There is no black barbie with a different hairstyle and although it might seem trivial it is a big influence on what little girls think.  Other women like Indigo and Elantra say they kept their hair "nappy" as a "fuck you to society".  The thing I took away from this article is how important hair is to women, especially black women.  I personally never thought about this because i never put much thought into my hair.  My entire life I've showered and let it air dry without doing anything to it or using any products.  It was good to get an insight on how important it is to women.  

I thought that both of these articles were very interesting and eye-opening to a guy who didn't think about these topics.