Before & After

Some more of FASH235!

FASH235 Model comp card

Chanel Iman

Bridalplasty

By Chanel Anderson

 The show follows 12 engaged women who are competing for the wedding of their dreams and their dream plastic surgery procedure. Each woman would have to complete a plastic surgery wish list. The women would have to complete wedding theme challenges in order to win the surgery of her choice. The winner of the week's challenge will get one plastic surgery procedure from her wish list. 

Lil Kim

Jone Rivers

Jocelyn Wildenstein

Heidi Montag

Being Uncomfortable in Your Own Skin

By Chanel Anderson

            A significant number of women are so uncomfortable with the way they look that they would consider cosmetic alternatives to change them. Why majority of our women in society today have plastic surgery is because they do not feel comfortable in their own skin or they don’t feel good about themselves. The insecurities about their true inner self is also another big factor as well as the pressure that the media and Hollywood has; over the years the rates for cosmetic surgery has increased tremendously. The sense of feeling and wanting to be important and knowing that your loved are some characteristics that women look to get from others. An important question to ask yourself is, “are you comfortable in your skin”? Often women focus on what they don’t like about themselves rather than what’s great. Some women may believe their imperfections make them feel unique when in other cases is seems to be the complete opposite, were they feel that their self-confidence would improve if they could reduce the appearance of skin imperfections. Confidence comes from believing in yourself and happiness increases when you take full advantages of the experiences and accomplishments that you value. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing what’s important to you. For some it’s being capable (achieving goals, accomplishing tasks, or learning something new) and for others it’s about being desirable (being liked, spending time with people you care about, being viewed as a good person). When you know what you value then you know where you’re vulnerable and that’s when doubt gets influenced. When you focus on solutions instead of problems, other people will pick up on the fact that you are confident, fearless, and expect results. Pretty soon, you’ll start believing it, too!

An Unrealistic Perfection

By Ceu Cristina Casimiro

In today’s society we are bombarded with images and pressure from the media. The media is portraying a “perfection” of women and stereotypes, which in reality is unrealistic and does not exist. Having these high standards and social pressures to achieve “perfection” has really had a negative impact on woman today.  Too many young girls today believe they are overweight and suffer from depression. All of this media pressure has caused woman to put their health and their lives at risk as more and more woman every year are suffering from anorexia and bulimia. There are too many stereotypes, such as models have to be thin that are constantly surrounding us, which eventually causes us to believe that they are true.  We need to help these girls and show them that they are looking up to and trying to achieve a “perfection” that is not there. Below is a video to show us girls that all those celebrities and models we look up to are not as perfect as they appear in photos and magazines. Behind all the makeup and plastic surgery procedures they are average woman just like the rest of us. We need to change our way and society’s way of thinking. Beauty is much more than a pretty face and a nice figures, true beauty is more than skin deep. So stop comparing and idolizing their “perfection” and realize how beautiful you are! 

The Grass is Always Lighter/Darker on the Other Side

By Molly Ratcliffe 

Humans are funny. We always want want we don’t have. Whether you live in cold Alberta and want to live in Los Angeles, or you straighten your curly hair, people always seem to strive to have what they just can’t have. 

What is scary is how far some women have taken it to the next level. Altering your skin or facial features to look like that of another race. For example. I have always been a fan of Beyonce. I think she is extremely glamorous and when she and her mother invented a clothing line that caters to women size 0-27, I considered her one of the best female roll models of the 21st century. However, what has now confused me about Beyonce is her skin. She is of obvious African-American decent, with a gorgeous dark skin tone and dark hair. In every movie she has been in, she has obviously been cast as an African-American female lead. However, after seeing this recent comparison photo...I’m not sure what type of race you could cast her as. 

Beyonce in 2006                               Beyonce in 2011

Beyonce has given into the popular trend of skin bleaching. It is the process where a cream chemical substance is rubbed over the skin several times a day in order to whiten the skin pigment, killing the cells that give your skin it’s natural colour. This cream was originally invented for the purpose of making freckles and moles less visible, but many woman have taken it to the next level by rubbing it over their entire body. 

In this video clip for the the recent TV show My Strange Addiction, a young African-American girl admits that she is addicted to bleaching her skin. She claims that there was pressure in her school to have light skin...how can there be pressure to change something you were born with? Her friends and family ask her why she is addicted and she doesn't really seem to know. 

But then just as we are wondering why a woman of colour would want to be light, we see lighter skinned women wanting to be dark! You often hear the expression “I am so pasty”, “I can’t wait to go down South to get rid of this pale skin”. My sister who is a natural red-head has often worn jeans and a sweatshirt during the summer because she is self conscious of her pale skin and thinks it looks gross. Here in the same show My Strange Addiction, another young girl is addicted to tanning her skin...why does this remind me of the other girl? Because they are both literally uncomfortable in their own skin. 

If darker skinned women are claiming that dark skin is ugly or gross, then why would lighter women want to be dark? And if a lighter skinned woman thinks being light is ugly or gross, then why would a darker woman want to be light? Maybe life would be easier if we were all one colour...like the blue people from Avatar. 

But in all seriousness, this is just another example of how humans always want what they don’t have. And just like our blog Designing Women, this shows that even if you try and make yourself the “perfect woman” you never truly will be, whether you are comfortable in your own skin or not. 

The Simulated Woman

By Molly Ratcliffe 

When you think about the phrase “Designing Women” what do you think about? For some reason, I think about the computer game The Sims. In that game you basically play God. You can choose to make a man, a woman, a teenager, a baby and make them look however you want. The Sims give you the option to change their skin tone- anything from a natural skin colour to bright green or blue. You can make them fat, skinny, big breasted or flat chested. Basically you can design a woman however you like. 

Now, although this is all fun and games, and I can’t help but think that it could be used as a pretty legit psychology experiment. If the game was given to a group of teenage girls of different nationalities, how many would make their Sim fat? How many would make her flat chested? Would a black girl make her Sim lighter while a white girl would make her Sim darker? What kind of clothing would they put her in? A modest t-shirt and jean set? Or something that attracts sexual attention? How many would make their female Sim marry a hot, male Sim and have two kids and a dog? While how many would possibly make their Sim a lesbian with an awesome graphic design career and an adopted kid? Some may claim that in this "designing process" they are making their Sim look the way they want, when really, the majority of the time they are probably making them look the way society wants. 

My sister showed me a forum post on a Sims website where a girl was asking for “Cheat-Codes” to make her Sim thinner when she’s an adult. She claimed that when her Sim was a young adult (Age 18-30) her body was toned, and her legs and arms were very thin. She was angry because when her Sim became an adult (Age 30-50) her legs and arms became wider and her body was not as toned. I hate to break it to you Sim-Girl but that’s usually how it works!!! In a later post she claimed that she was much happier now because her Sim had become an elder (Age 50-80) and she had become much thinner again....I have to wonder what the girl playing with this Sim really looked like. Was she blonde and petite like her Sim? Or was she a lot heavier? The truth is she could be either. 

The Sim from Sim-Girl's forum.

The point of The Sims game is to reflect reality, but at the same time, give you the option to make an alternative reality. I would not say The Sims  is responsible for making us reflect our societal norms onto our Sim- they give us the option to make our Sim look however we want! It does however put us on the spot and have us admit to ourselves that we have fallen into societal norms. I have made a Sim that looks like me before and I played with her until I got bored, but I have also made Sims that look nothing like me. I admit that when I create a Sim, I want her to look toned, slim, with awesome long hair and a tan. Do I look like that? No. I am 5”4, pale-skinned, flat chested, and covered in freckles. Am I making that Sim to look like everything I am not? Not necessarily, but then I have to think WHY do I want my Sim to be tanned? WHY do I want her to be a size zero? WHY does she have to have long bonde hair? I try to swallow my words but the only thing I can think to say is: “Because she looks good”. This doesn't mean I think everyone should look like this nor is it something I am striving to look like, but it does show me how much the media has brain washed me into thinking that a tan, toned Barbie is my first option when making my idea of a “perfect woman”. 

"Boys Don't Cry" Movie Review- What is Gender?

By Molly Ratcliffe

Boys Don’t Cry is a feature film biography based on the life of Teena Brandon (Brandon Teena), a young woman with a sexual identity crisis. I have owned the film for several years now, I remember watching Hilary Swank take home her Oscar for Best Actress in 1999. I have also recently noticed that the film has been added to the Canadian Netflix to which I subscribe monthly. Netflix categorizes it’s films based on thematic elements. This film comes up under two categories: “Gay & Lesbian”, and  “Strong Female Lead”. At first, one might think those categorizations make sense, but after watching the film and really analyzing it, one will notice it does not fit into those categories at all. 

The reason why it does not fit into the “Gay and Lesbian” category is because Teena is not a lesbian. In one of the first scenes of the film she is hiding in her friends house while a gang of homophobic men who are after her bang on the door. Brandon’s friend yells “Why don’t you just admit that you’re a dyke?” to which Brandon replies “But I’m not a dyke”. 

Because everyone in Brandon’s town knows that she is really a girl, they assume that because she likes women she must be a lesbian. This is a perfect example of people confusing the terms “sex” and “gender”. Sex is the physical and reproductive characteristics you are born with, while gender is your masculine or feminine identity. Yes, Brandon was born as Teena. That is her sex. But she is really Brandon, a male, which is her gender. By calling Brandon a dyke or a lesbian would imply that she is not at all a man. If she were a lesbian, she would be a woman, and would admit that she was a woman. We can make this even more confusing by adding the hypothetical situation that if Brandon was to like men, that would not make her straight, that would technically make her gay. 

The reason why the film does not fit into the “Strong Female Lead” is because as established before, Brandon, although physically a female, is a male. Yes, Brandon is a very strong character, one that an audience would have to have no heart not to sympathize for. But a typical “Strong Female Lead” would be a woman that embraces her gender, her sexuality and her femininity and doesn't let gender stereotypes stop her from doing what she wants. For example like another character Hilary Swank played as Amelia in Amelia Earhart.

The film takes place in Falls City, Nebraska where Brandon moves after leaving his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. While there, he makes friends with a group of young adults, three girls, Kate, Candice, and Lana, and two men, John and Tom who are both ex-convicts. 

Brandon is known only as a boy to the town and to his friends. Because Brandon is physically a girl, she does have slightly more feminine features such as small hands, thicker lips, and a smaller bone structure. Because of this, Brandon’s guy friends tease him by calling him gay or referring constantly to his small hands and small body. Again, what if Brandon was physically born a male and had those same features- why should that result in him being called gay? It reiterates the stereotype that femininity is a sign of weakness. There is an interested scene in a bar where Brandon steps in to defend his friend Candice who is being sexually harassed by an older man. The man proceeds to punch Brandon. Would he have punched him if Brandon was dressed as a girl? Probably not. 

Although the scenes that take place in Lincoln are slightly eerie and uncomfortable, the town of Falls City is even worse. The town resembles something out of the 1930’s- a good description would be a cross between the films The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance. Before Brandon leaves, his friend warns him “You know they hang gays there”. That doesn't stop Brandon. 

When I say the film resembles the 1930’s I don’t only mean the houses, the stores, and the industry. The town’s views on gender and marital rolls never evolved and they are still living in a society where men are seen as above women. The men in the town are lazy, most of them into drugs and alcohol and have a criminal record. They work in blue-collar jobs and spend a lot of time with their friends rough housing, like the scene where they all go “bumper skiing” as a form of entertainment. 

The women in the town are also into drugs and alcohol, most of them teen moms who stay at home and look after their kids and their husband, and if they do work they are secretaries or line workers in factories. They don’t do much for entertainment since they are considered weak and fragile, so they just sit around and watch their men...bumber ski. There are several scenes in the film where older men (in their 50’s and 60’s) are going after young girls (Between 13 and 20). It is not uncommon for girls to be victims of sexual assault, Brandon even catches his friend John touching his own 4 year old daughter inappropriately. 

Eventually Brandon’s friends find out that he is a girl, beginning with his girlfriend Lana when she picks bales him out of jail and he is in the woman’s holding cell. I like how the film then goes against gender stereotypes; Lana falls in love with Brandon when she believes he is a boy. When she finds out that Brandon is physically a girl, she does not leave him and wants to carry on the relationship. Did I mention Lana is not a lesbian? This makes me think though; what if the one you loved turned out to be something they’re not? Would you still love them? I think this was a great example of progression and what it means to truly love someone.

Spoiler alert: The film sadly ends with Brandon being brutally raped and then murdered by his two friends John and Tom. The reason they rape him is because...well...I don’t know why they rape him. They do it as punishment when they find out Brandon is actually a girl. I just can’t comprehend how you can go about being someone’s friend one minute, and the next minute you are punishing them for something about their personality that you don’t like. But again with the double standard. Would they have raped Brandon if he was a boy and let’s say took their girlfriend or stole their money? Probably not since they would not want anyone to question their sexuality. But of course, as it has been since the beginning of time, a “rightful” punishment for a woman is to belittle her with rape. 

It’s incredibly sad that this film is a true story. It is sends shivers down my spine to know that when I was playing with Barbies and other girly things, things I wanted to do, a young woman, only 15 years older than myself was being murder for something she wanted to do, and that was to be a boy. I remember that in Hilary Swanks Oscar acceptance speech, she said that society will take a long time to change, but she hopes that this film has opened up a few eyes for future generations. It has been 12 years since the film has been released, and I am hoping that eyes are still being opened.