inherently different

I was going to post a video journal, but for some reason, it craps out in the middle… just when I’m explaining how my video would be better than limey’s because I, unlike him, have mastered the English language. I’m trying to work it out so please be patient.

On a more successful note, I’ve built three new players. I intend to customize these players so that they’ll fit any blog color scheme and layout. For right now, the players are about 200 pixels wide which means that anyone with the standard sidebar width of 200 pixels in a three column layout will experience problems. If your sidebar is wider than 200 pixels, no worries. I’m still playing with the player layout and I’m sure I can fit all the various pieces into a 150 pixel wide layout.

NOTE: I’ve revised the players and now you can have your choice between a skinny, healthy player of only 150 pixels in width which is just perfect for those who prefer 3 column blog designs (you know who you are). For a limited time, I will create a custom player skin for you featuring your blogs colors and any artwork you want featured…

Here are the new player options…

Black w/ Green Accents:

Blue with Dark Blue Accents

and Pink with Magenta Accents:

As stated previously, I’ve created a mp3 music player that you can use on your blogs. Implementation is a bit tricky and until I have a few hours to customize the player in different colors, you can play with this one. If you aren’t familiar with the upload file feature on your typepad blog, shoot an email over to me at monkeydiarist at gmail dot com (remove the spaces and replace at and dot with symbols) and I’ll walk you through the process via IM.

If you use a blogger blog, you can still use this player… you just have to find a host for your files.

This could very well deteriorate into a chicken vs egg argument, but Laura (daxahol) made some rather interesting points in her comments to my Useful Idiot post. The big question is: Does the print media control the broadcast media or is the broadcast media controlling the print media… Even if we had an answer to this we could continue arguing the merits of historical and cultural shifts in the idea of attraction and beauty. But as my favorite general, Sun Tzu, once said, "Wage war with one enemy at a time lest your enemies gang up on you and kick you in the crotch!" I’m paraphrasing.

I mean, should we begin our discussion with media (art really) in the early 1500s when Sandro Botticelli was painting pictures of women with "child bearing" hips? Should we move forward to the late 1500s and early 1600s when Peter Paul Rubens was painting larger women and single-handedly gave millions of out of shape women in the future the ability to write RUBENESQUE in their Match.com profiles with a straight face?

The idea that media controls male perceptions of beauty is flawed for the simple reason that men don’t really care. They like what they like. Otherwise you wouldn’t have groups on the Interweb solely devoted to BBW or as some prefer to call them, plumpers.

Women are infinitely more concerned with their weight than men are. So long as you have big breasts and a firm (notice I didn’t say small) ass, you’re golden. Granted, most men want their women to be happy and healthy… but supermodel thin? Doubtful.

But for the sake of argument, lets explore some possible causes for unrealistic perception of women in the media. I could point out that the "ideal" weight isn’t generated by the media as much as it is created by lazy fashion mass merchandisers. I mean, it is much easier to set a standard (such as they are) that is general (size 0, size 1, size 2, size 3, etc) and hope that a majority of women fall into the pre-sized standards. Once the sizes became relatively standard, then the merchandisers saw that certain sizes sold better than others. With that data in hand, they ordered more "small" sizes. This information is shared with fashion magazine editors who in turn extrapolate that the major portion of the female population can be readily placed in the "smaller" size category.

Does this explain it? Hardly.

You then have to take in the very real idea of female vanity. Women don’t want to walk into a shop and buy a size 15… so they’ll buy a size 10 with the idea of dropping some weight and fitting into the new fashion item. Of course, this once again pads the numbers for merchandisers who order more size 10s and less size 15s. It is a vicious cylce of self-loathing. Women don’t want to admit they are bigger than they’d like so they buy smaller sizes in order to motivate themselves into losing weight.

This is an issue of both cultural and economic supply and demand.

Now, Maxim and Stuff and whatever other magazines do publish pictures of highly airbrushed women. But can they be blamed for perpetuating the myth of the female form? Once again it is a chicken egg argument. Are we responding (we as in Men) to an inherent attraction to skinnier women or are we responding to the available media perception? Its hard to say, but I do know that subconciously (and instinctually), the alpha male is more attracted to women with wider/child bearing hips. Historically, men have always liked larger women up until the late 50s and early 60s… guess what happened during that time? Women started controlling fashion magazines rather than just controlling editorial.

Want to blame someone for the start of female objectification and the beginning of the unrealistic interpretation of the general female form? In 1965 Helen Gurley Brown remade Cosmopolitan after the success of her bestseller Sex and the Single Girl.

Overnight millions of fashion mags started to innundate us with incredibly skinny girls who looked "healthier and more vibrant" than the normal housewife.

Am I saying that it is all your fault ladies? Yeah. I am. So long as you keep buying magazines (and fashions) that perpetuate the unrealistic image of women, you have no one else to blame but yourselves.

You’ll notice that almost immediately upon load, music starts playing. The most current working version of the monkey music radio player is on your left. I’m just learning to work with actionscripting so, be gentle with your critique. I know, the other one was nifty, but it was cumbersome to change music. This new one uses an XML play list. Now instead of having to update the FLA, I can just update the XML file and voila! She is done! Anyway, hold your horses and soon I’ll deliver a post (in fact, a video post to rival limey’s christmas post) that will knock your boots off.

And as far as the music player is concerned, here is my christmas gift to each of you… If you want one of your very own, I can customize one for you that you can put up on your own blog. The only thing you would need to do is have some server space available to you… if you’re on typepad, you have plenty of room to both store it and stream the content. I can help you with it if you’re remotely interested.

My Top 5 Films of 2005

05. The Wedding Crashers 04. Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire 03. History of Violence 02. Crash 01. King Kong

Discuss?