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Beauty and the human body in Australian mens magazines

Beauty and the human body within Australian magazines

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This pdf is a combination of slideshow and text, every second slide is what I will be saying when I present the topic, the slides are there to add context and interest.

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Beauty and the human body in Australian mens magazines

The popular magazines of Australia are misrepresenting the human body, narrowing what constitutes female beauty, dictating what men should desire and what men should look like and confusing how we relate to ourselves and each other. How the human body is represented in these magazines affects how men and women view themselves and each other. It also affects how we relate to each other. On top of that it narrows gender and sexuality down to a heteronormative view point. !So if the magazine are wrong about beauty, then what is beauty……

• http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/beauty

Define Beauty

• http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/aesthetic#aesthetic__4

*Define Beauty - Oxford dictionary definition I started exploring the topic of beauty within my own experiences. I realised that in my life I had heard the word beauty attributed to so many varying subjects. I have heard it used in reference to landscapes, food, music, dance, art and of course women. I have, like all of us, I have my own concept of beauty, one which includes waterfalls, cati, coffee, guitars and Sandra Bullock. I came to realise that my knowledge of beauty was limited by my opinions and experiences, so I started to research. When attempting to examine a subject for deeper understanding I always start with the dictionary. So here is what Oxford, my favourite dictionary, has to say about beauty. “Beauty - A combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses,

especially the sight: I was struck by her beauty, an area of outstanding natural beauty….. “A beautiful woman: a

blonde beauty”

This definition, strangely contains an example sentence about a blonde woman. Perhaps the writer prefers blondes, regardless, it is worth noting at this point that the concept of subjective beauty has been omitted from the definition. This omission lead me to explore the concept of beauty away from any strict dictionary definitions. So I searched the internet and found many philosophical papers regarding the matter.

Subjective and Objective

*Regarding beauty and subjectivity- “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” - Plato,

I do believe beauty is subjective, yet this is to me an incomplete statement on the subjectivity of beauty, I prefer the following; “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each

mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of

beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those

of others.” (Hume 1757, 136) I consider it important to respect the view of others in regard to what they find beautiful. When a person attributes beauty to something we perceive as hideous or plain it is our duty as creative practitioners to respect that opinion and even try to understand it. As I read on I found that some were not entirely convinced that beauty is purely subjective: “if beauty is entirely subjective—that is, if anything that anyone holds to be or experiences as beautiful is

beautiful (as James Kirwan, for example, asserts)—then it seems that the word has no meaning, or that we

are not communicating anything when we call something beautiful except perhaps an approving personal

attitude”,

“it seems senseless to say that beauty has no connection to subjective response or that it is entirely

objective”. - Crispin Sartwell

I agree, I also think it is possible that somethings are universally beautiful. My opinion is that beauty itself is not objective nor is it subjective but that there are some things which are beautiful to all and other things which are beautiful only to some. For examples, sunsets… I aint never met nobody who didn’t like a sunset.

Beauty

some things I find beautiful - just to illustrate the subjective side of beauty. Before I start let me state, I make my argument not to ingratiate myself with anyone but to state my concern regarding the state of the so called male mind, and as I stated at the beginning the way women are shown in magazines affects everyone’s perspective of self and others. *The Picture Vs Women’s Weekly Now, imagine the most popular women’s magazine in Australia is a soft porn magazine containing pictures of impossibly muscular nude men and advice columns from male strippers. Now imagine that the most popular men’s magazine is all about celebrity weddings, fitness tips, diets and recipes. Wouldn’t that be weird…… or is that to hard to imagine. Let’s move on…. What is Australia’s top selling mens magazine?

!

what the magazines tell us

Media Beauty

what the?

(According to http://www.bauer-media.com.au/ The Picture is Australia's top selling men’s mag and Women’s weekly is Australia’s top selling women’s mag. These two cover conflict in terms of their visual message about the female body.)

The Picture - is Australia’s top selling men’s magazine and the following is an overview of the magazine by the magazine !For almost 25 years now, The Picture has been the average Aussie bloke’s first stop for funny local stories, jokes, stunning nude girls,

bizarre photos, puzzles with swear words in them and advice columns written by strippers. A weekly magazine squarely aimed at

anyone who has a sense of humour and likes looking at women without their clothes on. There isn’t another mag on the planet that

looks at the world the way we do: through a pair of beer goggles. The Picture – don’t let the name fool you. There are words in it,

too.

!I take less issue with nudity and more with the lack of diversity of race and body shape. I also take issue that the focus of these magazines is not intelligence but the body. I find it strange that this body focus is on a type of body that is created through digital editing and not naturally. You are most like already aware that photoshop has been used time and time again to make models thinner, taller, more buxom, to edit out so called imperfections. Are you aware to what extent this editing is practiced in mens magazines such as People and The Picture. !You may not want to know the following but please bare with me now as I believe we need to know this !The Australian classification board permits soft porn magazines like The People and Picture to show full frontal nudity but only with discreet genital detail. This means that magazines are ‘forced’ to digitally remove the labia minora, thus transforming the vulva into a ‘neat’ single crease. This edited body type is untruthful, but even if magazine photos were unedited the selection of models is still narrow. It is hard to find models who aren’t caucasian in ‘The Picture’ and the last time I saw a plus sized model was for a dove add.

http://www.menshealth.com/

Whats my point, you may ask, well here it is; Reality is very different to what is shown in these edited pictures, and the issue is not isolated to depictions of the female body, male models show a hyper muscular male form which does not accurately depict the average guy. If ‘Mens Health’ is the worlds largest men’s magazine and ‘The Picture’ is Australia’s top selling what does that say about the mentality of the so called ‘average Aussie bloke’. I personally don’t want to be represented as having an obsession with being muscular and only being receptive of one body type….. !the following slide is a collection of bad taste memes, they are all from ‘The Picture’s’ Facebook page.

Beyond the way in which these top mens magazines portray the human physical form there is a concerning mentality being portrayed by the memes featured on ‘The Pictures’ Facebook page. These images cause me to wonder what kind of mentality is being sculpted in the casual readers and fans of this magazine and magazines like it….

With memes like these…….

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/ !http://www.bauer-media.com.au/ !http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/beauty ! http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/aesthetic#aesthetic__4 !https://www.facebook.com/picturemagazine !http://blog.ted.com/2013/01/16/6-talks-on-beauty/