Complaint: More Disney Kvetching

The Disney Princess Phenomenon (DPP ™) is alive and well after my daughter’s fourth birthday. Did you know that Aurora a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty has violet eyes? Have you ever met anyone with violet eyes (who wasn’t using colored contacts, obvi)? How hard a beauty standard is that to attain when it rarely exists in nature? Talk about setting up girls and women for a fall. Every one of the princesses has shiny, glossy, LONG hair, except for Snow White; she was invented near on 80 years ago, so she has a different do. But they all have perfect skin and big boobs and no body fat. I bet they don’t even have to do crunches.

I caved and bought a magazine I don’t know that I’ve ever bought before: Shape, primarily because I’m obsessed with my belly fat. And apparently I’m not alone in that obsession, since most every magazine I saw at the checkout line aimed at women had at least two different headings about it. “Blast the brutal belly!” “Ab-tastic in five minutes a day!”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is on the cover of said magazine looking annoyingly buff at age 48. But then again, she probably has someone else cooking for her and taking care of her kids so she can take glorious runs and eat healthily. It’s her freakin’ job to look good. She doesn’t have to show off though, does she? (Apparently, yes.)

But I bought the magazine. Why? Stupidity? Naivete? Foolishness? All of the above.

Am I going to read any of it? Probably not. It’s the same principle as shopping for the person you want to be, as I wrote about many posts ago. But I bought it because I buy into the same old stupid perfect-perpetually-young-and-firm-female-body-ideal. Buying a magazine won’t change anything, but for five minutes, it feels like it will.

On an equally superficial but more positive note, I actually did wear one of my Cute Blouses two days ago, which made me, at least for the day, Cute Blouse Girl. I didn’t even spill anything on it. Yet.