MCLA Beacon Online

Last week ABC refused to air a bra commercial during “Dancing with the Stars,” which featured a plus-sized model without much on. I’ve seen it, and it wasn’t any worse than Victoria’s Secret commercials, which ABC has no problems airing. Plus, have you seen the outfits on “Dancing with the Stars”? The guys are shirtless and the girls wear glorified bikinis.

There are a lot of issues here, but what I’m wondering is, what is beautiful? If you’re a straight girl maybe your ideal guy has a chiseled jaw-line, short hair and dark eyes. If you’re a straight guy, maybe it’s blonde hair, blue eyes and the right measurements, if you catch my drift. Personally, I find the whole attraction to blonde girls a bit cliché, but I wouldn’t pass one up.

So, what is beautiful? If the TV networks had their say, it would seem that 6-foot tall, stick-thin models with large chests are the only women who are beautiful. So, Amazonian women are en vogue, apparently. But seriously, have you noticed that beauty in the media only seems to fit into a narrow mold?

Sure a woman like Jessica Alba doesn’t seem to have much in common with Scarlett Johansson at first glance, but most real women would have a hard time looking like them. They both abide by an asset-based definition of beauty. And unfortunately, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing men and women who’d put Adonis to shame. So, even when we know what everyday people look like, we’re still not seeing that represented in the media.No, when you get down to it, real life couples don’t look like Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the star-crossed lovers of the Twilight series. Heck, the classic sit-com pairing of hot wife and fat dad isn’t the most accurate, either.

Fifteen years ago, if you averaged the two mismatched spouses together you might have a realistic picture. But, a real woman, on average, is a size 16, not a size 0. I’m not even sure size 0 is a size. But that’s not necessarily saying someone of either size isn’t attractive or unhealthy.Where are the average women on TV? They’re either in the background or they’re the gimmicks holding the show together.

Think “Ugly Betty.” But take away the braces and replace the glasses with contacts and I’d say hello to the actress playing Betty.There’s a lot going into what we think is attractive. Take one part what the media tells us is pretty, one part reality, one part our body image and personal taste, another part finding beauty once you get to know somebody and shake them together and that’s what we find beautiful.

Beauty is not a size, or a hair color or a body part or nationality. It’s subjective. I mean, my ideal woman is not someone you’d see on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but she’s still unattainable because most ideals are just that. Yeah, beauty can be what someone looks like. But it should be what’s inside that counts. The TV always tells us this while showing us something different, so of course we’re going to be confused about beauty. What good is a pretty face if the words coming out of it are trash?