Just a Girl by Tammie Adele

  You can buy your hair if it won't grow You can fix your nose if he says so You can buy all the make-up That M.A.C. can make But if you can't look inside you Find out who am I To be in the position that make me feel So damn unpretty   Okay, so today’s post is a bit of a contrast the last post , which discussed the unbelievably pretty Victoria’s Secret angels. Today we’re discussing the very unpretty body image issues a lot of women are faced with, whether the issues are real or perceived.             I have a cousin that is known for her good looks. She and her eventual husband met while they were both young and good looking, but after marriage and about five kids I guess the passion was starting to wane. He started fooling around on her. I’m not saying that my cousin wouldn’t have cheated on him – I don’t know if she would have or not – just that with five kids to care for, she didn’t have much of an opportu...

  I feel pretty Oh so pretty I feel pretty and witty and gay And I pity Any girl who isn't me today   So, . . . Victoria’s Secret has retired the angel wings. The reason given for retiring the iconic wings was that the whole concept was too far removed from what women want and too fixated on men’s fantasies . The idea of supermodels strutting along catwalks wearing nothing but scanty underwear and ‘wings’ was conceived in the 70s. The world is very different in the 2020s to what it was in the 1970s, but does that make the angel wings redundant? Yes, the idea was conceived and perpetuated by male executives, and I’ve never heard of a male disrespecting the angels, but does that mean that women don’t like it? I mean, isn’t the whole idea that the angels represent the fantasy – women want to be them, men want to be with them? That said, I think the direction Victoria’s Secret is going in is admirable. They now employ an ethnically diverse crew of over-achieving ‘ ...

    To those of us who knew the pain Of valentines that never came And those whose names were never called When choosing sides for basketball   Many moons ago when I was seventeen my favourite subject at school was media studies. I loved learning about how the media can be used to communicate broader stories, how the media boils down these stories and, more generally, how it is a lens to society and culture. That said, at one stage I found myself watching a group of my female classmates presenting on the portrayal of women in the media. Supermodel @NaomiCampbell ’s appearance in the film clip for @michaeljackson ’s In the Closet was held up as their great example of the objectification of women in the media and the unrealistic images that girls have to aspire to. To try to drive their message home, the group had plastered the walls of our media room with pages, mainly advertisements, ripped out of women’s magazines featuring, apparently, unrealistic images of ...