There are so many women, my girlfriend included, who suffer from a lack of self esteem. This is largely due to the hollywood image of the perfect woman. Women are shown supermodels all the time on TV and they are expected to have similar bodies. What people don’t understand is the amount of torture and pain that these women go through! They are expected to be under a certain weight, which may not be a healthy weight for most people! This article talks about how women are subjected to having the “ideal” body. And it’s not just movies that are body image dominated cultures. Music and sports are the same way! I can name at least ten artists that aren’t very good singers but they are drop dead gorgeous. With today’s technology it is easy to make them sound good so they have a leg up because of their personal appearance. It isn’t right and it causes women everywhere to be less self confident and to look down upon themselves even if they are completely healthy.

I was really surprised to find out that aerobics was first made for men. I have always thought that aerobics was originally designed for women because in my lifetime it has always been something designed for women. I remember the videos that my mom used to have of that guy Steve doing aerobics and he had like 20 women doing the workouts with him leading it. I felt that the way they attacked this topic was very weak. They say that aerobics is looked upon as something for women to be more sexually appealing but in reality that is a good thing. The same things are designed for men. When you see a boflex commercial on TV, they show guys with huge muscles and perfect abs. That definitely makes me want to look better! It isn’t derogatory to design something for people to look better. Especially when the same thing is tailored toward men.

This article talks about how workout magazines are typically for men. Sports magazines are aimed to interest them. Anything in these magazines that involve women are specifically labeled as such. I think that people make too big a deal about this however. There are so many magazines that are tailored toward women. Magazines such as Sports Illustrated are tailored toward men while Cosmopolitan is aimed at an audience of women and teens. There are reasons that the audiences for these magazines are gender specific. Most women aren’t interested in sports enough to read a magazine about it. Just like most men don’t care about women’s sexuality enough to read Cosmopolitan. People need to be less critical about gender labeling.