Thank God For Tampons

     After spending hours reading The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg I realized how ridiculously crazy american girls can be about their bodies. Brumberg covers a large span of time ranging from the early 1800's to now. In the beginning half of the book she covers the topic of periods. Jordan if you are reading this post right now I sincerely apologize for making you read that book for the project. If I were a boy I would rather jump off of a bridge then read that book, but fortunately I am not a boy and I happened to enjoy the book very much. It was so relatable to me because I have gone through all of the troubles that the women in the past had too, the only difference is that I have tampons and not reusable pads. Thank god! HA! Enough about tampons.
      The main argument in this book is that women are too obsessed about the way they look and it has been this way since the early 1800's; It has only gotten worse throughout the years. Brumberg uses formal and high diction. She throws in a lot of big words also which work perfectly into the piece. This shows that she is a very intelligent and bright individual and it is okay to use this type of diction because the book is informational and was written for learning, not just for entertainment. She uses a lot of examples of women in royalty to show us that normal civilians are not the only ones who have "girl" problems. This makes us girls feel better about ourselves because we know that we are not alone.  There are so many little factoids in this book and many people would think that is boring, but really all of the facts pulled everything together and it made me enjoy and understand her argument a lot more.
      The documentary that we watched, The September Issue, was not outstanding. To be honest I am not the biggest fan of documentaries but I did think this one was pretty interesting. It is all about the editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour and how she has so much power over the girls of not only the United States, but also all over the world. By using advertisements she tears down girls self esteem by using images of beautiful but fake models and hurtful words. Their argument with the documentary was also to show how much people care about their bodies and also why advertising can have such a big effect on people. Women these days are so obsessed with what they look like that they will do absolutely anything to become something that they have been tricked into thinking is true beauty. That is why the Wintour has so much power. She is also looked up to by so many people as if she is god.
    Both of these pieces were very interesting to me and even though they were very different, they were so similar. They both were dealing with the way society is so screwed up. We believe even the stupidest little things that don't even matter. We see an advertisement with a beautiful model, freak out, then run to the store and get the same sweater that she was wearing and happened to be advertising, just so that we can look "exactly" like her, or at least close to her, we hope. Even though I enjoyed the book, I believe that the documentary was more successful. It was a little bit more to understand and it was so very interesting to me. I loved the examples that were used and seeing the way people looked up to Wintour was intriguing. Who knew someone could have that much power with fashion and beauty.