Mass media and its impact on women

I had to share these paragraphs by Susan Douglas. I agree with her so completely; there's no other way to demonstrate than simply to give you the text. My brain doesn't really turn off these days and it might burn out.

..."We have become alienated from our own bodies. We have learned to despise the curves, bulges, stretch marks, and wrinkles that mean we've probably worked hard in and out of our homes, produced some fabulous children, enjoyed a good meal or two, tossed back a few drinks, laughed, cried, gotten sunburned more than once, endured countless indignities, and, in general, led pretty full and varied lives."

..."The mass media raised us, socialized us, entertained us, comforted us, deceived us, disciplined us, told us what we could do and told us what we couldn't. And they played a key role in turning each of us into not one woman but many women -- a pastiche of all the good women and bad women that came to us through the printing presses, projectors, and airwaves of America."

..."Most women take for granted their own conflicted relationships to the mass media. They assume they are the only ones who love and hate Vogue at the same time, the only ones riddled with internal contradictions about whether to be assertive or diplomatic, gentle or tough. And too many assume that such contradictory feelings are unusual, abnormal. They aren't."

Susan Douglas, Media: A Girl's Friend and Foe