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My two cents...
Yeah, yeah. This rambling is inspired by the Dove ad stuff, but completely unsupported by research or anything else other than my own strange brain.
Humanity has a lot of fetishes. Seriously, we take sex, which is a basic biological function that damned near every species on earth knows how to perform, and turn it into a three ring circus, complete with leaping through hoops of fire. Some fetishes are fairly common, others are fairly rare. One of the more common, and yet least remarked upon, seems to be the fetish that a marked minority of the population seems to have for turning the opposite sex into adolescents of their same sex. A lot of men seem attracted to small, skinny, breast-and-hipless women who look like teenaged boys. Conversely, a lot of women seem attracted to slender, long-haired men with 'feminine' facial features and mannerisms, who bear a striking resemblance to teenaged girls in both appearance and maturity. So, it's not something you can point at one sex or another and say, "You sexist so-and-so!" It just seems to be yet another way in which we make sex more complicated.
The real difference comes in, however, when one of these fetishes becomes entrenched in popular culture. Most men, I think, would not kick the Dove women out of bed. Quite frankly, after hearing about the ads, I'd expected them to be larger than they were. Instead, they're actually very average: sized 10-14. And yet, the adolescent boy-woman fetish has gained such industrial support, especially in the fashion/beauty/celebrity arena that seeing an average adult woman in her underwear on an ad (as opposed to a fifteen year old girl who looks drugged) is bewildering and, apparently, 'disturbing'.
And that's the tragedy. Not that many men are attracted to skinny women, but that the alternatives have been ousted from the public view, so that a bunch of very attractive women of average size draws a "Yikes" and catty comments about fat thighs.
Humanity has a lot of fetishes. Seriously, we take sex, which is a basic biological function that damned near every species on earth knows how to perform, and turn it into a three ring circus, complete with leaping through hoops of fire. Some fetishes are fairly common, others are fairly rare. One of the more common, and yet least remarked upon, seems to be the fetish that a marked minority of the population seems to have for turning the opposite sex into adolescents of their same sex. A lot of men seem attracted to small, skinny, breast-and-hipless women who look like teenaged boys. Conversely, a lot of women seem attracted to slender, long-haired men with 'feminine' facial features and mannerisms, who bear a striking resemblance to teenaged girls in both appearance and maturity. So, it's not something you can point at one sex or another and say, "You sexist so-and-so!" It just seems to be yet another way in which we make sex more complicated.
The real difference comes in, however, when one of these fetishes becomes entrenched in popular culture. Most men, I think, would not kick the Dove women out of bed. Quite frankly, after hearing about the ads, I'd expected them to be larger than they were. Instead, they're actually very average: sized 10-14. And yet, the adolescent boy-woman fetish has gained such industrial support, especially in the fashion/beauty/celebrity arena that seeing an average adult woman in her underwear on an ad (as opposed to a fifteen year old girl who looks drugged) is bewildering and, apparently, 'disturbing'.
And that's the tragedy. Not that many men are attracted to skinny women, but that the alternatives have been ousted from the public view, so that a bunch of very attractive women of average size draws a "Yikes" and catty comments about fat thighs.
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Even stranger, its ressonating inside my head with Wee Free Men wich I just finished re-reading recently.
Its like there is this large group of people who have gotten caught up in the dream of skinny being beautiful and now they don't know how to get out. So when someone says, "Hey, there are other kinds of beautiful too." they get all disorented and snarky.
As much as people don't like thinking for themsevlves, they dislike being told that they have been thinking the wrong things even more. Ironicly though, if the new way of thinking catches on, those same people will clame they secretly thought that way all along. People are very silly like that.
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It's less they're-not-pretty and more they're-not-the-right-kind-of-pretty. Which is just odd.
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All the rest of the addvertisers are currently paying very carefull attention to this. It goes against a lot of the basic ideas held by the advertising community. (You tell people your product makes them better, not that they are fine the way they are.) Of course the Dove add still does that, just on a more subtle level than most people are used to. "Our product will make you happier with who you are."
Its most amusing all the mind games advertisers try to play, is it any wonder that a lot of psych students go on to enter the advertising industry? ^_^