Update

First off, I will be going to Taiwan at the end of this month!!!!!
Yay! So, hopefully, I will have a lot of great pics to share with everyone. I'm going with one of my girl friends. Originally, it was going to be three gals enjoying the food and shopping of Taipei, but one of them is still a little young one and couldn't make it. :(

On another note, I was analyzing very deeply on a subject matter.
Last night, I had a nightmare. It was a very unusual nightmare... no monsters, no dying loved ones, no betrayals... I had a dream that my parents nonchalantly mentioned to me that when I was little, I had my ears pinned back, and that if it hadn't been for a procedure, my ears would resemble those of Perot's.

My questions about this are:
1. Why does it matter so much to me, and why does it seem so horrible that another person artificially enhanced me when I was a tiny tot? Why is there such an enormous gape (at least to me) between natural beauty vs. surgical beauty?
2. Why do looks matter so much to me that I have a strange dream like this?

On the note of surgical beauty, I think most of it is ok actually... I may not understand some of it, but for most procedures, it has very little bearing to me. I don't care what other people do. But, I must say I do look down on some people, especially when they get something done like a huge boob job. It shows that the particular woman does not care if they objectify themselves and finds the root of their self confidence from being cheap.

Anyway, I didn't write this to condemn others. My opinions on others don't particularly matter. I wrote this to question myself... so back on topic.

I also watched a 30 minute show today of a woman who has had a career in advertising. She chose and edited ads for magazines. There were several points that she brought up that were interesting to me.
Many commercials and television ads will focus on only one female body part for its entirety. For instance, just a shot of the back of a skirt. Never noticed that, but that is very true.
Female body parts are very often made into objects such as bottles.
Commonly, women of color are decorated into animals such as lions or leopards.
The male will always be taller and/or standing above the female in a picture unless the male is a minority.
I guess the average American sees 3000 ads a day.
Many female picture ads nowadays are created by the dissection and integration of over 10 females to make one "perfect" woman.
And, I guess, according to some study, out of 3 billion women, there are only 8 who can have the measurements of a potential model without surgical enhancement and dangerous starving.

And, you know, the ads in my sister's magazines really bother me sometimes. They're intensely sexual and are targeted mainly to young young girls. A woman's empowerment is always represented in sexuality and beauty.

I really look up to the girls who don't seem phased and altered by media and society, that don't give it a second thought. I wish girl toys were less demeaning, and do not revolve around makeup and fashion.
50 years ago, you would see an ad that would be obviously sexist to almost everyone today. The woman was portrayed to only have three thoughts: children, husband, and cleaning.
But, have we really gone a long way from that? Sure, women have had made huge advancements. I'm an engineer. That was unheard of 50 years ago. However, I think women are still very much objectified, in fact maybe somewhat more, just in a different way. Girls in the 1950s certainly did not have as many issues with their body image as they do now. They say that nowadays 4 out of every 5 women in the United States unhealthily obsess over their weight. And, in the 1950s, I'm sure those ads promoting "motherliness and docility" did affect everyone.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of those girls who can just look past all of it, and not care about looks. But, what's worse is, even though I look up to the girls who truly see what is really important about themselves, I still make fun of them. A girl could invent something grand, and in the deepest little part of me, I'll still say, "she's ugmo though." It's very sad...