Red Carpet Ready: Pack Your Spanx, Botox and Hemp

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"Soooo glad I drank that hemp protein smoothie!" Image by greyloch via Flickr

Yesterday in the A.M., when I should have been working out like my pal MizFit, I was sitting on my duff watching the Today Show.

There I was mindlessly enjoying my coffee when on came a segment called “Celebrity Diet Secrets to Get Red Carpet Ready.”

I filled my coffee cup up again for this one.

Here’s the video for those with an attention hopefully longer than mine.

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I liked the healthy food stuffs they talked about, so that wasn’t the issue for me. The issue for me was the connection they were making between the perfectly perfect celebrity in the gorgeous Vera Wang custom-made dress and the suggestion that, somehow, their love of juicing and hemp protein powder smoothies was how they looked so fantastically perfectly perfect.

It wasn’t the…

Personal trainers

Personal chefs

Personal assistants

Stylists

Spanx

Facials

Botox

Designer dresses altered to fit them perfectly

It was so unrealistic to me to suggest that the average woman with bills to pay, kids, and a full-time job that doesn’t afford them the luxury of most of those things, can look red carpet ready like the celebrities who do “just a few little things” to look that gorgeous. I get that being in the public eye as celebrities are requires them to invest a lot into presenting an image. But why are women who are not celebrities encouraged to shoot for some sort of ideal?

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about the images women are shown as an ideal. Who could ever measure up to it? Why would we want to? And who are we doing it for? Who decided what the standard of beauty was anyway?

So please tell me, am I off base here? Or did I just roll out of the wrong side of bed as Negative Nancy? Am I taking it all too seriously, or do you think there’s an unrealistic expectation on women and the media tends to exploit it? And if there is, what can we do about it?

Tagged as: hemp, red carpet ready, Smoothie, unrealistic expectations, Vera Wang

MizFit

you know what? you NAILED it for me with the ‘why would we want to?”
lets say I could afford the trainersbotoxfancyclothingpersonalchefstylist yada yada yada.
is that what I, carla, would WANT?
Ive decided to spend this year focusing on living my priorities.
To that end I could have celeb money and time and Id still not *choose* to use any of it int he above fashion (pun intended ).

Id take my disheveled semicrazy CRAZYinlovewithmychild messy house hair not cut in a salon in a decade life over that any day.

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Love that Carla – “living my priorities” — The more I thought about it after writing the post, the more I thought of why would we choose to live up to someone else’s standard and not our own.

http://kclanderson.com/ KCLAnderson (Karen)

OMG YES I do think there’s an unrealistic expectation on women and that media not only TENDS to exploit it, it EXISTS to exploit it (and anything else that it thinks will bring in viewers and get talked about).

Not only that, and I know I sound like a whackadoo when I say stuff like this, but I think “Big Media” and “Big Food” (which includes “Big Diets”) are all owned by the same few companies and they’re playing Big Games with us. We have “Big Food” super-sizing and over-processing food into junk, then cleverly marketing it to us via “Big Media,” so we become fat and unhealthy, then “Big Media” reports about it and shows us images of “perfect women” so we’re driven back to “Big Diets” which are owned by “Big Food”…and the cycle continues…

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Karen, save a seat for me on the whackadoo bus, because I think the same things!

Katdoesdiets

I really hate how the media tends to give all these ‘simple celebrity tricks’ as though that will do it, or even is all these celebs do. Nonsense. It takes a lot of hard work to look that way.
I also agree with Karen, the media exists to exploit it.
I struggled with all of that for YEARS. Comparing myself to that ideal. Now, I just want to be the best me. I feel good about THAT.

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Thanks for sharing Kerri. I was thinking about all this and wonder how much being bombarded with unrealistic images fuel emotional eating and eating disorders. Food for thought.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jody-R-Goldenfield/100000069514057 Jody R. Goldenfield

I am soooooooooooooooooo with you! I despise it! Whenever a blog writes about a celebrity diet or how they stay thin, I just move on – so unrealistic! What inspires me, REGULAR people that lose weight in a healthy way & have to do it themselves!

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Yes! When someone has to do it all themselves, it’s so cool to read their successes. You know it’s all them, working hard that accomplished it. That’s inspiring!

http://mauishopgirl.com/ Tania

I don’t mind hearing how a celebrity does it but yeah, I’d like to hear the truth. I hate any presentation that shows losing and maintaining weight as simple and just a few magic things…diet, regular exercise and a support system are what it takes. The shake thing drives me a bit crazy too, I’m so happy for everyone who is doing so well but I think many are successful because they are doing the other stuff too, the shake is just one tool in the arsenal. I emotional eat but it is honestly not because of “perfect” images, it is just my learned reaction to stress, give myself a “treat”. Once you get to your 40s, the images bother you less because you know better.

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tania For me, it’s always about being truthful and human.

Anonymous

Can’t speak for women but the same is definitely true for dudes. Lots of guys whose main concern is how white there teeth are show up in our media every single day. Great thoughts Joyce!

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

Hey Ryan ~ the men in the mags are unrealistic too. It’s the whole package of perfection. Really, imperfection is so much more …perfect.

http://www.crankyfitness.com/ Crabby Mcslacker

Well said, Joyce, totally agree!

The thing that frustrates me the most is the way women seem to WANT to keep chasing some unachievable ideal out there, and prefer photoshopped models and actresses as role models. I read somewhere that when women’s magazines, for example, tried to put fuller figured women on the covers women stopped buying the magazines!

Until we stop gobbling up this crap, vote with our wallets and start gravitating towards more realistic images of women, we’ll keep feeling badly about ourselves. But will that ever happen? There are far more “real life” images of men in our media, because guys don’t put up as much with unobtainable ideals. And while many guys want to look hot, few aspire to be like “models” ’cause that seems too gay or something. But that’s a whole other subject…

http://twitter.com/joycecherrier Joyce Cherrier

That makes me sad that women want to see unrealistic images. Is it because it’s fed to them from childhood? In our house there’s no fashion mags for that very reason. I don’t want my daughters to see that as the standard of beauty.

So true about the guy model thing! My husband and I have a running joke about commercials where the woman is nicely dressed and attractive and the guy is unattractive and disheveled. What a screwed up message that sends. But you’re right, until we vote with our wallets….