Boing Boing: Fake beauty, video about transhuman tricks used on models
That is, when I have a daughter. But the likelihood of me having a daughter is pretty good. I mean, the first kid has about a 50/50 chance of being a girl, right? So if I plan to have multiple children, which the wife currently is on board with, I have a better than 50/50 chance of having a girl.
Anyway, the point is, how would you explain this to a little girl? The video shows an attractive but perfectly normal woman, and the process to make her face into a billboard. Makeup, which isn’t surprising, but then the digital manipulation of her face is a little shocking. They make her neck thinner and longer, raise her eyebrows, make her lips fuller.
I can’t imagine explaining that to my (As yet unborn, or even conceived) little girl when she’s six and asks me why. There’s a long time in a kid’s life when they understand enough to ask hard-to-answer questions, but they may not understand enough to hear the real answer. Assuming there is one. I mean, I don’t know why we’ve built up completely unreasonable expectations of beauty.
I’ve heard the arguments that some of it is based on propagation of the species, and the claim that a fit woman with wide hips is well-suited for reproduction. But what do full lips and a long, slender neck have to do with reprodcution?
Absolutely nothing, that’s what.