Different but not Equal

I am a woman, and believe me, I’m all for the “real beauty” and “love yourself” movements. Great. Let’s make women feel great about themselves. But really? The extent to which we ridicule everything that is remotely fashion-forward or honest? The only reason that I’m really allowed to express these opinions is because I’m not thin – If I were skinny and beautiful, it would make me “bitchy” or “self-absorbed” to say that I’m over the ridicule of beauty advertisements.

Why in the world does it have to mean that women are submissive, powerless, sex objects, and abused because they are posing in a certain way? So what if the woman has a hand covering her mouth or a finger to her lips? Maybe this is a jewelry ad and she’s displaying a ring or bracelet? Because her leg is popped behind her, she’s unbalanced and needs rescuing? Or MAYBE, this is a shoe ad and the pose is used to draw our attention to her feet? Why do we automatically jump to these conclusions? Apparently, it empowers us to believe that we’re being exploited. If we cut out all of the supposed “submissive” and “sexualized” posing that models do, every advertisement would feature a women, dressed moderately, facing the camera with an intellectual facial expression (whatever that means), with her hands at her sides. Why is that appealing at all? What’s wrong with being intrigued by a flexible woman in strange poses who looks sexy in some cool clothes? Don’t we all want to look cool and feel good about what we wear? Why would we display the artifacts that communicate our personality as plain and boring?

The big question is: Why does different have to be negative? I can completely agree that the way we display men in advertisements is completely different than the way we display women. What’s wrong with that? There’s a difference between equal rights and equal. We’re not equal – men are not women and women are not men. Just because we should be treated equally does not mean we have to look the same, nor should we want to. We celebrate individuality but ridicule anything controversial or too revealing in an advertisement. If you don't like the way that products are displayed in an ad, then don't buy them - good luck finding many products that are displayed so plainly.