Thoughts From an Afternoon at the Mall

I took my girl to the mall today since she still had a $50 mall gift certificate she received for Christmas. I figured I went on my spring shopping extravaganza this past week and she might also want to get a few new spring things and use her Christmas present before her birthday rolls around next month.
The mall is always interesting for its people watching possibilities. The merchandise looks pretty much the same from store to store, but the variety of people is entertaining. I tend to check out the women more than the men because I like to see what everyone wears. Thanks to some inspiration from Kinga I've recently started reading The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and I'm finding it interesting, but I definitely have my doubts about some of her assertions. I don't really agree that the patriarchy has fashioned this beauty backlash plot to prevent women from realizing their full power and potential. I also was taken aback by her statement that, "Women work hard-- twice as hard as men. All over the world and for longer than records have been kept, that has been true." Isn't that just a bit of an exagerration and a fairly bald and unsupported claim for female superiority rather than equality? No, not everything is hunky dory and many women, including myself at times, get sucked into valuing themselves less for their physical imperfections. The awareness that so many of us do unconsciously buy into the manipulation is something I should think about, but I think it's more a scheme of a consumerist society than a patriachal plot to keep women down.
Anyway, that little tangent aside-- what I really wanted to write about was the big picture ad I saw out in front of Lane Bryant featuring a young, pretty, blonde woman in a pink bra and panties, which would be the same sort of thing you'd see in any store except for the fact that this woman actually has some flesh on her. (If you click the Lane Bryant link above you can probably see the picture I'm talking about.) This woman looks like a lot of women in this country actually look like and not some alien from Planet of the Amazons. I almost stopped right in my tracks to stare at the poster because it shocked and pleased me to see it. Then I realized I can't even shop at Lane Bryant because I'm not big enough to wear their clothes and I started to wonder how big that model really is because she seems to be wearing their merchandise but she doesn't look any bigger than I do.