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Firm but Shapely, Fit but Sexy, Strong but Thin
Alina Ilief-Martinescu
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2016.08.008
Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania
Most women know very well that appearance is perhaps the crucial way by which men form opinions of women. For this reason, feelings about self-image get mixed up with feelings about security and comfort. The way women look is vitally important: The success of social relationships hangs on being desirable, and being desirable is all about visual impact. Feminine appearance is shaped by the mass media, fashion, and related industries. Being feminine involves, among other things, a particular mode of consumption. A conventionally gendered appearance requires a good deal of grooming and, especially for women, beauty work. A feminine identity has to be worked at. This is work that most women are happy to do. It is an everyday aspect of women’s lives and through doing it they can hope to establish for themselves acceptable social identities as women. In this view, women are not just turning themselves into “sex objects”. They are actively involved in self-creation. When, women go shopping for clothes and cosmetics, they make decisions about how to feminize themselves. Femininity spans institutions, discursively organizing women’s lives. Femininity is articulated in and through commercial and mass media discourses, especially in the magazine industry and in the fashion industries of clothing and cosmetics. But most of all, it is articulated on women’s bodies, by women themselves.
femininity, consumerism, feminine identity, popular culture, gender oppression, capitalism
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