Lingerie models look like real women should

Right smack dab in the middle of prime-time television the other night they had a special show about women's underwear. Models working for the Victoria's Secret catalog paraded up and down a runway in New York showing off the latest in underwear fashions. They had the same show last year on ABC. This year, the show was on CBS. I certainly watched enough of it to form an opinion; this was some of the best public-service television programming I have ever seen, and I didn't see any need at all for Don Shelby to have blanched so visibly when the show came up on his 10 p.m. newscast. I guess Don went nuts or something last year when the same show was on the other network, but on this occasion he was speechless. He apparently wanted us to know by virtue of his silence that he was appalled that right smack dab in the middle of prime-time television his very own network had a special about women's underwear.

In fact, to distance itself from the show, the local newscast assembled a panel of civilians to watch the show, and they also interviewed a director of women's studies or some such thing at the University of Minnesota. What the panel of civilians and the director of women's studies seemed to insist was that the likes of Heidi Klum, Gisele Bundchen and Tyra Banks don't look like real women. Yes, I will admit that up here in the great frozen north you don't often see a gal parading around in her underwear with angel wings attached to her butt, not even on Halloween. But that's not what the experts mean when they say that the models don't look like real women. What they really mean is that models are pretty darn good looking and not nearly as beefy as your typical gal trying to get her kids out the door for hockey practice.

Of course, the newscasters, local academic experts and what have you are the same people who tell us on a daily basis that America has a terrible obesity problem. Fat people have replaced smokers as the new whipping boy on the news block. The news people are always doing things like snooping around school cafeterias to show us the dangers of guys and gals eating snack foods out of vending machines. Or else the newsies will troll their cameras through the State Fair so they can cluck their tongues in admonishment at all the guys and gals wolfing down corn dogs. Why, in Thursday's newspaper there was a story about a couple of gals in New York who are suing McDonald's because the gals are terribly overweight and it must be the fault of the fast-food business.

So, along comes a special in the middle of prime-time television that featured runway models who have obviously watched their figures. In other words, if we have an obesity problem in America, doesn't it stand to reason that you might show by example what a gal is supposed to look like? Of course it does.

Put another way, a young gal might take Tyra Banks as a role model over some tub of lard who finds a lawyer desperate enough to sue McDonald's. When it comes to style, aerobic fitness and skin care, I would imagine that a gal will go with this Banks or Bundchen any day of the week. Gee, the way these experts babble on, you would think that these models were dropped out of some spaceship or something.

No, these are hard-working gals who watch what they eat and make sure they get their jog in every day and otherwise lead the kinds of lives that they need to lead in order not to have an obesity problem. I don't know what all the fuss was about. Besides, it could have been worse. In London, a television crew filmed a doctor who charged admission and performed a public autopsy. Sure enough, the guy the doc carved up was a fat guy.

They are blessed with good genes.

My best friend in high school went to N.Y. city to be a model. She hated it though. She said it was so fake. I knew her as Amy, the modeling industry knew her as "meat".

She didn't like people commenting on things that were "wrong" with her, taking notes and making her walk "this way" and "that way". (NOTHING was wrong with her) She was beautiful (at least in h.s.she was.)

When I saw Amy, she looked NOTHING like her photos. It was almost like looking at a different person. I saw her in her "natural state". I guess when you have hair and make-up people working to make you look like that, they can make a nasty woman look somewhat good.

Haven't spoken to her in years but from what I hear she is now with children, happy and married. (She was safe from 9-11)

(hard to be best friends with model material) :)

All right, it's not politics, but I'm going to ring in on it anyway.

Women's bodies, the images of them they carry around, and the idealized versions our media culture promulgates, have been a cultural battleground for at least twenty years. Men have one set of preferences, and women have another. Basically, men want women to look sexy, while women want to be comfortable with their figures, their clothes, and themselves.

These two aims are not incompatible.

While I have qualms about the accelerating sexualization of the broadcast media -- I don't advocate censorship; I just wish the broadcasters would show some discretion about places and times -- I think the larger subject of how women "ought to" look is soluble. The broadcast of the VS lingerie show will undoubtedly touch off fusillades over it, so I guess now is a good time to get my shots in.

First, a healthy body is obviously more important than any other physical consideration. Overweight is very bad for you in many ways, and we should all avoid it. There's a funny thing about that, though: good health is sexy. Excellent health -- proper weight and proportioning, combined with enough vitality and interest in living to show in your face, your posture, and the vigor of your movements -- is overpoweringly sexy.

Second, clothing matters. Yes, we've been trending toward a greater casualness in our workplace attire, and non-workplace attire now seems to allow anything and everything. However, when a smart woman wants to make an impression on a man, she dresses up. She doesn't kid herself about how the "inner person" is all that matters. Physical attractiveness is primarily about how one looks and how one smells, and there's nothing complicated about it. So, on those occasions, our smart gal will dig out the filmy lingerie, the form-following clothes made from silky fabrics, the high heels, and the enticing perfume, and deploy them all to their best advantage. Those who don't do this and expect to get intense male interest anyway had better have extraordinary native assets, or they'll be bitterly disappointed.

Third, there are times when a smart woman does not want to be sexually alluring. She might not want to look dowdy or drab, but she doesn't want every man's first thought upon seeing her to be: "1. Undress. 2. Ravish. 3. Repeat." At those times she should be guided by a different set of rules for dress and grooming, which go beyond the scope of this tirade.

Fourth, it's entirely justified to ignore the whiners -- male or female -- who want the rewards of sexual attractiveness but are unwilling to undertake the required effort. It's a bit like claiming you should get the respect due a Ph.D. but refusing to go to college. No one in his right mind would take such a demand seriously. And it is conspicuously the case that the women who claim that productions like the VS lingerie show are "degrading to women," or "give women destructive inferiority complexes about their bodies," are overwhelmingly often unwilling to do anything to improve their appearances.

Or, to put it more briefly: As ye sow, so shall ye reap, ladies.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

A-hem...I consider myself a real woman, and I look nothing like a teenage boy with silicon attached to his front.

A-men to you...there isn't much in nature to compare to the looks of a lass who is one. I don't recall which of Rodgers and Hammerstein was the lyricist, but their musical suggests we're not alone in this attitude. There was the song at the start (of South Pacific) suggesting "there is nothing you can name that is anything like a dame."

Then Mitzi Gaynor intoned that "where she's narrow, she's narrow as an arrow...and she's broad where a broad should be broad."

Ah, the examples are endless...starting right here at home.

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