I found this awesome talk by Renata Forste, a sociology professor at BYU, after one of my friends posted it.... the talk was given at BYU's Women's Conference this year. The entire talk is well worth the read or watch.... but the following newspaper column Sister Forste shared was one of my favorite parts:
The humor columnist, Dave Barry, captured this well in a column published in 1998
called: Men should look out if a woman asks, ‘How do I look?’ Mr. Barry wrote:
If you’re a man, at some point a woman will ask you how she looks. “How do I look?” she’ll
ask. You must be careful how you answer this question. The best technique is to form an honest
yet sensitive opinion, then collapse on the floor with some kind of fatal seizure. Trust me, this is
the easiest way out. Because you will never come up with the right answer.
The problem is that women generally do not think of their looks in the same way that men do.
Most men form an opinion of how they look in seventh grade, and they stick to it for the rest of
their lives. Some men form the opinion that they are irresistible stud muffins, and they do not
change this opinion even when their faces sag and their noses bloat to the size of eggplants . . . .
Most men, I believe, think of themselves as average-looking. . . . Being average does not bother
them; average is fine, for men. This is why men never ask anybody how they look. Their
primary form of beauty care is to shave themselves . . . .[and] if, at the end of this four-minute
daily beauty regimen, a man has managed to wipe most of the shaving cream out of his hair . . .
he feels that he has done all he can, so he stops thinking about his appearance and devotes his
mind to more critical issues, such as the Super Bowl.
Women do not look at themselves this way. If I had to express, in three words, what I believe
most women think about their appearance, those words would be: “not good enough.” No
matter how attractive a woman may appear to be to others, when she looks at herself in the
mirror, she thinks: woof. She thinks that at any moment a municipal animal-control officer is
going to throw a net over her and haul her off to the shelter.
Why do women have such low self-esteem? There are many complex psychological and societal
reasons, by which I mean Barbie. Girls grow up playing with a doll proportioned such that, if it
were human, it would be seven feet tall and weigh 81 pounds, of which 53 pounds would be
bosoms. This is a difficult appearance standard to live up to, especially when you contrast it
with the standard set for little boys by their dolls. . . excuse me, by their action figures. Most of
the action figures that my son played with when he was little were hideous-looking. For
example, he was very fond of an action figure (part of the He-Man series) called “Buzz-Off,”
who was part human, part flying insect. Buzz-Off was not a looker. But he was extremely self confident.
You could not imagine Buzz-Off saying to the other action figures: “Do you think
these wings make my hips look big?” But women grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie,
which for most women is impossible, although there is a multi-billion-dollar beauty industry
devoted to convincing women that they must try.
I once saw an Oprah show wherein supermodel Cindy Crawford dispensed makeup tips to the
studio audience. Cindy had all these middle-aged women applying beauty products to their
faces; she stressed how important it was to apply them in a certain way, using the tips of their
fingers. All the women dutifully did this, even though it was obvious to any sane observer that,
no matter how carefully they applied these products, they would never look remotely like Cindy
Crawford, who is some kind of genetic mutation.
I’m not saying that men are superior. I’m just saying that you’re not going to get a group of
middle-aged men to sit in a room and apply cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of
Brad Pitt, in hopes of looking more like him. Men would realize that this task was pointless and
demeaning. They would find some way to bolster their self-esteem that did not require looking
like Brad Pitt. They would say to Brad: “Oh YEAH? Well what do you know about LAWN
CARE, pretty boy?”
Of course many women will argue that the reason they become obsessed with trying to look like
Cindy Crawford is that men, being as shallow as a drop of spit, WANT women to look that way.
To which I have two responses:
1. Hey, just because WE’RE idiots, that doesn’t mean YOU have to be; and
2. Men don’t even notice 97 percent of the beauty efforts you make anyway.
Take fingernails. . . . I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about
women, heard a man say, “She has a nice set of fingernails.”
Anyway, to be back to my original point: If you’re a man, and a woman asks you how she looks,
you’re in big trouble. Obviously, you can’t say she looks bad. But you also can’t say that she
looks great, because she’ll think you’re lying, because she has spent countless hours, with the
help of the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, obsessing about the differences between herself
and Cindy Crawford. Also, she suspects that you’re not qualified to judge anybody’s
appearance. This is because you have shaving cream in your hair.
like Brad Pitt. They would say to Brad: “Oh YEAH? Well what do you know about LAWN
CARE, pretty boy?”
Of course many women will argue that the reason they become obsessed with trying to look like
Cindy Crawford is that men, being as shallow as a drop of spit, WANT women to look that way.
To which I have two responses:
1. Hey, just because WE’RE idiots, that doesn’t mean YOU have to be; and
2. Men don’t even notice 97 percent of the beauty efforts you make anyway.
Take fingernails. . . . I have never once, in more than 40 years of listening to men talk about
women, heard a man say, “She has a nice set of fingernails.”
Anyway, to be back to my original point: If you’re a man, and a woman asks you how she looks,
you’re in big trouble. Obviously, you can’t say she looks bad. But you also can’t say that she
looks great, because she’ll think you’re lying, because she has spent countless hours, with the
help of the multibillion-dollar beauty industry, obsessing about the differences between herself
and Cindy Crawford. Also, she suspects that you’re not qualified to judge anybody’s
appearance. This is because you have shaving cream in your hair.
Watch:
Read:
I was at Womens Conference, she was an amazing speaker. I have this whole talk on my iPod, I laugh outloud everytime I listen to this part.
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