TCH News

Issue date: 11/27/06 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: www.christmasteddy.com Barbie and Ken

What is image? That depends on whom you ask. Ask a dictionary, you get the step by step technical breakdown of verbs, nouns, and articles; the bare bones of what makes the word. Ask an artist, they'll show the trees and houses of a countryside canvas; the background and the purpose of the word. Ask a writer, they'll tell you it's the frigid night engulfing the heroin, her cigarette smoke curling from her flaring nostrils; the potential of what the word can do.

Image bombards our every sense today; we're faced with blaring lights and celebrity testimonies, midnight ads telling us we need to be skinny and fit and to buy! Buy! Buy! This workout machine or this super drug because we need to worry about our image. We need to become these images so that the world can see how beautiful we really are, and how much we stand out! But beauty and image in the old days were far from the silicon and airbrush we know it as today.

It began in ancient times with the Mother Earth figure. She is a very large, robust woman whose size and weight is seen as holy and a connection to the life force, things beyond, whatever it is you believe. Images such as the Venuses of Willendorf and Laussel were carved in miniature and large stone formations, homage to a deity known as The Goddess.

According to Dr. Witcombe of Sweet Briar University of Virginia, idols like these were found everywhere ranging from France to Siberia, so this wasn't an isolated occurrence. It was the first advertisement of an image! Try putting that on the cover of Cosmo nowadays; the editor would die laughing. But Mother Earth, during the Paleolithic Era when these images were carved, was considered beautiful. The focus here was more on making a connection to the earth, and imagery was a more spiritual experience. But something changed as societies evolved, and the large woman was pushed off of her perch in favor of a new look.

I'm sure at least a good majority of you have heard of Twiggy; she was a super-skinny model from the 1960's whose image was a basic pattern for women thereafter to follow. Fat was out; thin was in. Beautiful women were now wire thin, according to societal standards. Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad about being thin. It's a body type; I have no problem with it. The problem arises when the image of others people's perfection is forced onto the rest of the population.

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