Fat Chicks?

So I'm listening to the Eric and Kathy show this morning on my drive to work and they are talking about the new Dove billboard ads. And Eric quotes this guy from the newspaper who basically says that in his opinion, the billboards are unappealing because he doesn't want to see "chunky women" up on a billboard. Of course this sparks a big discussion as to the appropriatness of that statement, (i.e. can sizes 6-12 be considered "chunky"), whether or not there is a double standard (i.e. would women want to see "normal men" in the form of beer bellies up on a billboard rather than washboard abs), and, who are the ads geared towards anyway, (i.e. do women really care if men are turned off, because the billboard isn't advertising to them.)

Of course all of this is a product of what society considers beautiful or attractive. One could argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, we are conditioned by today's advertising images to see beauty as thin, gaunt even. And the standard is not equal. Men in advertising are muscular, virile, physically strong. Women are scrawny stick insects that wear a size "0". But in reality, what do we as a society truly find attractive. For instance, a women just walked into the cafe where I am sitting. She is easily a size 10 or bigger. I'll bet you just pictured someone who is "chunky." However, she is anything but. She is tall, has an athletic build, larger breasts and long legs. She is a size 10 most likely because of her height and proportion, not her weight. She actually has a small waist. And I'll bet that every man in the room checks her out appreciatively when she walks into a bar. This obviously does not correlate with what we expect to see in advertising, even "prefer".

What I wonder is whether of not the author of the article would PREFER to see the "chunky" women if that is all he ever saw in advertising? If he wasn't conditioned to think that a size "0" was sexy, would he look at the Dove billboard the same way? For instance if we lived in the time of The Renaissance in Florence during the 1400s, those women on the Dove billboard are actually borderline starving. A full figure during that time period meant that you were well-fed, which translated to wealthy. And wealthy was sexy. Clearly we do not have the same opinions today, but how much is programmed and how much really is in the eye of the beholder? If you are conditioned to prefer something, is it really your preference? Or have we progressed beyond this? Do we understand that advertising is simply the "fantasy" and not reality? Even this is an unfortunate realization - that the fantasy is an unattainable condition both for men and for women. Why are we not conditioned to fantasize about something that we could actually attain?

Of course this raises the question of whether or not advertising brings us what we fantasize about or do we fantasize about what advertising tells us to? Up to this point my argument has been the latter - which I will maintain. Of course given the diversity of preferences today...someone out there somewhere really does prefer the size "0" to the size "6". But it has been my experience that this is not the majority. (To qualify, I bartend and am a great observer of people.) When a guy is describing a woman he thinks is hot, rarely does he refer to her waist size. And most of the men I see in bars and most of my guy friends for that matter do all in fact date "normal" women...not size "0's" - Of course, unless they are a starving model, most size "0" women are under the age of 18...and thus legally off-limits to the men I know and see in bars. Perhaps I have gotten off the subject a little.

At any rate, I do find this interesting, the idea that our preferences are not really our own, but rather what society or advertising tell us to prefer. So how can we ever really be sure of our opinions...or whether or not beauty really is in the eye of the beholder?