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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 1994)
OPINION Commercial culture focuses attention on men or years, wormm have bemoaned the female image JL that is presented to them in our i.ommert ial culture Women in advertisements are tall and slender, vet full bosomed, and their skin is smooth and free from blemishes They never sweat, not even when they exercise. and they seem to be able to climb mountains in high-heeled shoes with the grace of an African gazelle. You never see them walk down the aisle in the gr»x;ery store, putting TV' din ners and nachos into their carts, or emptying the dust bin or scrub bing the bathroom floor. The women in Cosmopolitan don’t have time for things like that, because they're too busy with much more important pursuits, such us being beautiful and wear ing the latest collections from Christian Dior. Heal women, the kind of women you'd see if you peeked up from the glossy magazines and the television soap operas, aren't like that, of course: they're some times skinny, sometimes a little Marius Meland hit on the heavy side, anti they frequently exponent* waking up with an unsightly pimple right between their eves Anti, would you believe it. they sometimes become pregnant, so that they won't fit into those French designer clothes, which they couldn't affortl in the first plat* We all know the result of the enormous discrepancy between the ideal expectations perpetu ated by our commercial culture and the less-than-glamorous reality. Anorexia has become a common disorder among voting women, even among girls in their pre-teens The rate of sui cides among young women has LETTERS Guns ‘N Roses Are you a newspaper? Dave Charbonneau devotes one little paragraph out of \2 that the new Guns 'N Roses album includes music by an unrepentant mass murderer who will profit by the purchase of the album. Charbon neau is so out of touch with real issues. Get a clue. Henry Keller Eugene Good music As 1 road the latest on the KVVVA debate in tfit* |an. 10. Emerald. I noticed that a few things were worth commenting on Bret l.andess' suggestion for cutting down on airplay for hands not already aired by MTV, /. Rock. KDUK and KRV'M is to require DJs to play two songs .in hour by some of those recogniz able alternative sensations KVVVA play s at least two songs an hour by the bands l.andess specifically mentions, or those with a similar level of populari ty, Furthermore, if you really want to hear "No Rain," for example, ( all in and request it. Not only will you get to bear it. but so will everyone else who loves that particular song. There's no need for alternative crud above and beyond what the DJs want to play and the callers want to hear KVVVA is the only station I can listen to Blind Melon on without getting nauseous. Lovers of Stone Temple Pilots and Depeche Mode can get it anywhere but KVVVA is the only station you can turn on any time of the day and hear something new and. more often than not. worth listening to. Nick Johnson Eugene Voltaire Salman Rushdie was not the first, and probably not the last to ridicule Islam lie did it in his best seller, Satanic Verses. Two hundred fifty years ago French historian and dramatist Francois Marie Arouet. a.k.a. Voltaire (1694-1778), satirized islam in his play .Mahomet IMohammadl. When Voltaire wrote the play his target was not Islam but the Vatican, which he could not ridicule directly Instead, he chose a safe scapegoat for Christian Kurope. Oriental "other" ns a surrogate target Much to the ire of Muslims, France and Switzerland, among other countries, are greeting Voltnires' 300th birthday later this year with a new production of Mahomet. Should one billion Muslims feel threatened by this production? In a world when* islamic holy places are occupied by Israelis and corrupted by regimes like the House of Sand and Saddam Hus sein's. the choice of this play to celebrate Voltaire will, perhaps, inadvertently further demean Islam Shouldn't there in* some discussion, at least in the m ad emit world, of the choir e of this particular play instead of others in Voltaire’s repertoire' How t an we end the continuing derision of the Islamic world in literary circles as in popular culture in the U S and Kurope' M. Roza Behnam, Ph D Eugene Responsibility In a na cut opinion pit* w titled "Not all forms of life are equal" (ODl:. Jan 12), Dave Thorn asserts that the concept of uni versal equality of all lilt* "doesn't hold up to any serious scrutiny " Regardless of whether or not this is true, the arguments which Thorn uses to support Ins claim are less than compelling. Thorn cites the unique intel ligence of the human animal, which allows us to manipulate our environment, as proof of our "superiority" over other forms of life. In reply to this I would ask is it intelligent to pollute and degrade one's environment to a point at which it becomes barely habitable? If so, then Thorn is employing a very narrow defin ition of intelligence. I propose that our unique intel ligence engenders not superior ity hut rather a very solemn responsibility. Until we stop thinking of our world, and the life which it supports, as playthings upon which to practice our manipulative ability, we will never mature as a species. Brad Wright English inc reused rapidly over the past twenty years, no doubt part I \ be» auso of tin* intense pressure to conform to society s unattain able ideals But revenge is sweet Now a days, chances are that if you open the pages of one of the high-fashion magazines, the two-page advertisement from Calvin Klein won't feature an outlandishly beautiful Venus de Milo dresser! in the latest variety of the maple leaf Rather, it will be Marks Mark, a rapper-model with well-documented mental deficiencies, but one redeeming quality a well-sculpted body Guys like Marky Mark, how ever slow-witted and politically incorm t they may tie. ant giving normal guvs an inferiority com plex And he's not alone today 's magazines are full of tanned, scantily dressed. mu $4 ular men advertising everything from Levi's jeans to Obsession cologne. Last week, as | skimmed through a ris ent issue of Vanity Fair. 1 saw a nuked male demerit that was supposed to promote - of all things • a new lino of low-fat yogurts And if you go to the movies these days, you'll probably see more naked men than naked women up there on the silver screen. Last year belonged to Sylvester Stallone, whose naked body bedecked the cover of Van ity Fair after Ins performance in two of 1993’s most popular action films And tins year's /'he Piano devotes it kirv.it deal of it*; timv to ii homage of the the male body, ns represented in the hrawnv shape of Harvey Keitel I urn on MTV. and you'll see a music video with an artist called lereinv Iordan He's not wearing his T-ahtrt because he's got a well sc ulpted upper hodv to show off to his audience, pri manlv consisting of teen age girls In fai t. even Sting, whom people one e regarded as a seri ous artist a cut above singers of Mr Iordan's caliber, has pulled off his T-shirt in the video where he sings ironically - the title music from the film IVmo htmri Man It's enough to make you won der, as you stand in front of the mirror in votir underwear in the morning, whether you're abnor mill (list because your chest doesn't bulge out like Mnrky Mark's These days, many men are experiencing pist the same anguish and anxiety that women have suffered for decades because of the i ontorted ideal of lieauty found in i ommen lal i ul ture |ust like the women of the turns sought to at hieve the sii k. skeletal figure of Twiggy. men of the 10‘Mls may strive toward the abnormal, steroid fueled hodv of a Markv Mark or tt Sylvester Stallone As our culture shifts its foe us from female In male sexuality, many women will indubitably derive some pleasure from the fin 1 that moil now are lining fori oil to suffor tho samo nnxi otios and inferiority complexes that hnvo agonized thorn over tho yoars Perhaps women should ho allowed to relish in their vengeance for a while. It is, after all. considerably more excruciating to lie coerced into a corset than a Calvin Klein undergarment. Hut ultimately, the way adver tisements portray beauty - mule and female isn't good for any one It gives rise to insecurity, lack of self-confidence, and unhealthy eating habits among young people And worse than that: it makes people with per fectly normal bodies think that they're somehow abnormal Perhaps it would ho too much to expei t to find a Calvin Klein advertisement featuring I.vie l.ovett in the next issue of CQ ( amimeri lal culture is. after all, a hazy dream world, separate from the world of real, ordinary people. Hut the latest cover of Vanity hill' may gise us some hope It features Kosonnue Arnold, dressed in sexy lingerie and sit ting in a provocative position She's shed some pounds, that's for sure, hut she's still consider ably larger than, say, a waif model sin h as Kate Moss And you know what? 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