When did women decide they weren’t beautiful?

by Ashley Hinkle, Alestle Photo Editor

Ashley Hinkle

We look at advertisements of females as the ideal of female beauty.

We also learn from advertising how important it is for a woman to be beautiful and what it takes to achieve this level of beauty. It takes a massive amount of time, energy and money. Women who do not achieve this feel as though they have failed.

The ideal is based on absolute flawlessness and is therefore unachievable. The ideal woman has no lines or wrinkles, no scares or pimples and no pores.

Advertisement agencies are able to manipulate photos in order to achieve perfection that in the real world is not possible, and honestly we should all know that by now.

Perfection is the idea, but who is to say that even these women that are in magazines, that have no pores, are perfect? Who came up with this ideal perfect woman? Isn’t everyone different? Are we not all made up of completely different chemical compositions that make everyone an individual and not any of us the same? How is it then that we can determine what beauty is?

Yet women from all over find themselves looking at ads and wishing to look like them. Wishing to be thinner, brighter eyed, sun touched, toned and in-shape.

Advertisements even make us question are beauty even if we do not realize it. We are all effected, whether we want to admit it or not, we have all asked, “Do these make me look fat”?

‘Pregorexia’ destroys two lives, not just one

by Sheena Butler, Alestle Copy Editor

Sheena Butler

In this past year, my sister, cousin and a few close friends gave each birth to their first child. Being consumed in this world of expecting mothers, I gained a profound awareness of many of the concerns that pregnant women face.

Making sure the baby’s heartbeat is normal, taking prenatal vitamins and finding a pediatrician for the newcomer are all common priorities.

Also, maintaining a low (not necessarily healthy, but low) weight for the pregnant mothers was an unexpected and disturbing priority that I found being thrust upon so many of my expecting loved ones.

My sister, who gained just under twenty pounds during her pregnancy, was

repeatedly complimented for “not getting fat.” A lot of women gain double or triple that number during their pregnancy. While she made no attempts to count calories and stay fit, my sister felt the pressure from co-workers, family members, friends and even complete strangers to not let her weight gain get out of hand.

While an emphasis on staying healthy is certainly important, trying to maintain one’s pre-pregnancy weight throughout pregnancy is insane. This insanity, however, is becoming a very real pressure for expecting mothers – one that doesn’t dissipate but only worsens after the new baby arrives.

With magazine images of skinny, expecting celebrities like Heidi Klum “looking great” just weeks after giving birth, not only do pregnant women have to worry about how they will face the challenges of a new child, now they have to be concerned with how skinny they are expected to be while doing it.

The term “pregorexia” has emerged as the term for the condition affecting a number of pregnant women who excessively exercise and starve themselves — and their babies — during their pregnancy. The possible consequences of these actions for the infants are low birth rates, retardation, vitamin deficiencies and several other critical birth defects.

If the images of sick and sometimes dying babies have any correlation with the media portrayals of thin celebrities then shame on the media and shame on us for accepting this as the norm. When women are made to feel that putting their babies’ lives in jeopardy in order to be “beautiful” is acceptable, we have serious problems.  When did the focus become “thinness” instead of healthiness? Has it really come to this?

The ubiquitous nature of this message of unconditional thinness creates a tremendous barrier to overcoming it, but every undertaking requires some first, often small step. Everyone, not just pregnant women, must refuse to accept and proliferate the unrealistic expectation of thinness for all women, especially pregnant ones.

Mothers-to-be should be, of all things, unselfish to be more concerned with their health and the health of their child than with the image of beauty they told to uphold.

Famous lasting words

by Kenneth Long, Alestle Editor in Chief

Kenneth Long

Today I read a long list of famous last words.  Presidents, poets, boxers, generals, all giving their final quote before they knowingly or unknowingly died.  It made me think about how much we say in a lifetime.

When we speak, it’s to communicate with others most of the time. Why talk out loud? I guess for prayer or a chant it has its advantages when said out loud to oneself. But the number of words we say must be staggering.  Picture, if you can, every word you ever said trailed behind you in a long chain of words. How far it must stretch!

But how many of those words were said out of anger? Or love? Jealousy, avarice, deceit, lust, any emotion possible… But those last words, they’re the ones that really matter.

The coup de grace of a human life. The stinger of a long crescendo in the world.  The veritable cherry on the sundae of this existence. How lucky it must be to choose what your last words are.

I mean, there’s no way of knowing when you’ll go. But if Beethoven’s last words of “Friends applaud, the comedy is finished,” weren’t without a forethought, then lucky him.

Likewise, Henry David Thoreau’s last words were “Moose…Indian.” Unless those were his ushers into whatever afterlife exists, it falls a little flat.
Whatever a person’s last words are — whether they have some deep meaning or they come from the unknown darkness that clouds a dying man — they resonate. Not only do they resonate in the death-filled room, but in the hearts of any who hear these parting words.

They echo in the corners the dead man filled, whispering their last song, whether it be dirge or requiem. Those final words… they can matter more than what a man has ever said.

I suppose it’s morbid to have some last words prepared before death begins to loom over your head. Better prepared than not, I suppose.
Could I get out my final thoughts before I die? Hopefully. Otherwise, it could just be a death gurgle of nonsense. Then again, people have made great careers out of extended death gurgles of nonsense.

But, of course, we can’t all be Rush Limbaugh.

Technostressed out

by Rachel Carlson, Alestle A&E Editor

Rachel Carlson

You know when you’re sitting at your computer minding your own business, just reading Texts From Last Night or finishing up that final paper, and the Internet slows down or your computer freezes? Immediately you freak out, cursing the computer for not working. How dare this machine — holding your pictures, music, papers, countless e-mails, computer programs and, of course, solitaire and “Mines” — crash on you?

Then comes that headache and feeling of absolute dread that you’ve lost everything you’ve been working on. Plus, how are you going to update your Facebook status?

The stress you’re feeling because you feel disconnected or lost actually has a name: Technostress. And it seems to be taking over our generation.

Just think how many times do you check your e-mail a day? Your phone? They seem insignificant in theory, but inevitably waste our time and cause us stress when we can’t seem to work them or they malfunction. Nine times out of 10, it’s probably our fault they’re not working.

Not only are you checking your own updates, but if you get on Facebook you’re most likely “creeping” someone’s page to see what they are  doing or what their status says their weekend plans are. Who wrote on their wall or tagged them in a picture? Don’t forget Twitter either. Ashton Kutcher could be buying  milk at the grocery store and you might miss it. (To read Aleste photographer Sean Roberts blog on Twitter, click here.)

Seems borderline needy.

I’m not being anti-technology right now (Where do you think I typed this?), but it is true that we let it take over our lives. Can you imagine one day without your phone or computer? Seems like it would be hard, but doesn’t part of you wonder how nice it would be to have no interruptions? No loud beep of a text message or ring of the cell phone.

I got to try it this summer when I went on a float trip  and luxuries like a cell phone were unnecessary. To be completely honest, it felt nice to be able to ignore the world for a weekend.

Tweeted out: How Facebook killed that little bluebird

by Sean Roberts, Alestle photographer

Sean Roberts

A once mostly redundant social networking site is now completely redundant.

With Facebook around, people must have wondered what exactly the point of Twitter was. After all, Facebook provided most of the functionality of Twitter already, plus a lot more.  The only thing lacking from Facebook was tagging people with an “@” and searching. Facebook has now added those features.

Why would I ever want to use Twitter? I already have all of the functionality of Twitter with a much more rich and diverse social networking site I am already part of.

Twitter has reached its necessary end. Most individuals have no need for a Twitter.  Those who actually continue to use it are either news services that can gain some benefit from the Twitter service, or stragglers who just like the old, but redundant system. With a few small tweaks, Facebook will not just be equal to Twitter, but far surpass it. Hopefully, when that day comes, Twitter will be seen as redundant.

After all, why tweet about your new underwear purchase when you can update your Facebook status to a much larger and more embarrassing audience of friends?