By Stephanie Trembath, Life and
Style Editor

of beauty is shown as a thin,

flawless, sexually available
woman, who is able to balance a
fabulous career and the domestic
talents of Rachael Ray. Iconic actress
Angelina Jolie is the woman every
man wants, with the lips, breasts,
and legs every female desires. Not
to mention her award winning roles
in Hollywood films, her marriage to
Brad Pitt, her acclaimed work as a
humanist, and her adorable tow of
children.

This ideal is manifest through
everyday media by mediums such
as magazines, fashion, celebrities,
and television; we are surrounded
by ultra-skinny, beautiful, and
empowered women who claim
their independence and challenge
previously constructed social norms.
To be successful as a woman means

[: North America the standard

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to be identified by this ideal image of
beauty; women today are financially
independent, spend hundreds of
dollars on designer clothing and
the latest fitness fads, and attempt
to have casual sex like men. In our
desire to be released from the idea
that women are the weaker sex,
females today reject their curves
and have developed a standard of
beauty that invites masculinity. From
damsels in distress to divas with
our own agenda’s, I have to wonder
whether the battle of feminism has
developed into a deconstruction of
our femininity.

Throughout history the female
form has been a constantly changing
point of conflict as it represents the
female role in society and oppressive
standards determined by men. In the
legal Code of Hammurabi in 1800
B.C., women of the western world
were defined as a piece of men’s
property and considered “damaged
goods” if raped. You can usually

fix a pair of damaged shoes, but a
“damaged woman” resulted in exile.
This idea of women as something to
be owned and treated sadistically by
their husbands or fathers was carried
out for two centuries until the early
1900s; it wasn’t until 1962 when the
U.S. court ruled that men do not have
the right to beat their wives, and even
later on in the 1980s that laws were
made stating that husbands did not
have the right to rape. In our modern
age women of the western world have
won back the entitlement to their
bodies, and yet instead of celebrating
our skin and the beauty of ourselves
we feel the need to cut, tuck, dye, and
enhance every part of it through any
necessary means.

While the cultured ideal of a
thin physique is the aspired look of
today, until the 18" century, ample
bodied women were considered the
epitome of female beauty; large
breasts, full hips, a curvaceous figure,
and pale skin were embraced by

 

society and considered the utmost
ideal. Consequently, it wasn’t until
the 1960s when the second wave

of feminism hit that female models
were required to be thinner with less
fat and boyish figures; at this time

the first underweight models were
deemed the standard for fashion and
set a new model of beauty for women
around the globe. It was the end of an
era; as soon as women won the rights
to burn their bras they lost the desire
to keep their breasts.

This repercussion that has
emerged allows women to use their
bodies (again) to reclaim a value for
independence through an ideal that
embraces a more powerful form of
masculinity. With our demands in
a feminist approach, females have
embodied a beauty ideal that is
deceitful and unattainable. Only with
copious amounts of time, money,
exercise and strict dieting can one
attain the beauty ideal of the 20"
century, which has resulted in a