Pretty Woman: Beauty, Money, and Prostitutes

Recipe for Success?

1 man
1 woman
Natural good looks
Billions of dollars

Combine man and money. Mix woman and looks. Allow the new products to cohabitate and voila! You've got yourself a fresh, steaming batch of The Perfect Life! If only this weren't true, or rather, portrayed by the media as truth. However, there is, undeniably, an increasing amount of social commentary on the presure for women to adhere to a stereotypical images of beauty. Celebrities and even marketing campaigns are speaking out about the sexualized images of airbrushed beauties. There seems to be slow and steady movement away from glorfifying the representations of women who do not accurately reflect true and natural femininity. There is, put simply, some sense of awareness. But what about the men? Who is looking at and after the men? Just as a woman is expected to be classicly beautiful, so are men expected to reap the plumpest of paychecks. And there seems to be nothing fighting this image. Have we ever seen a man, clad in a K-Mart tee shirt and a pair of thrift jeans, on the television with, smile entact, saying, "It's okay to be ME!" Not exactly. Are there images of men pulling up outside a swanky bar in a 1998 Ford Contour only to escort a beautiful woman to passenger seat? Hardly.

So while I--as a woman-am constantly and earnestly aware of the unrealistic standards set for my fellow ladies, there seems to be another cause waiting to be noticed. To assume that it is only women who suffer under the pressures of societal constructs would be so, so...1950's!