which females look the best? hottest celeb?

Symposium challenges unrealistic beauty standards
Naomi Wolf urges participants to focus on confidence, intelligence

By Katie Humphrey

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Sunday, February 03, 2008

Sarah Mount was in her early 20s and working as a waitress at a seafood restaurant in Florida when the manager pulled her aside.

It was her second day of work. He told her that she should put on some makeup, wear some blush.

Naomi Wolf said industries perpetuate unhealthy standards.


"I quit," Mount, now 39, said Saturday as she sat in the Jester Auditorium at the University of Texas waiting for the Defining Beauty symposium to begin.

She came to the event, which drew almost 400 participants to the keynote address by feminist author Naomi Wolf, interested in furthering the discussion about real beauty.

"I think this should be a more talked-about issue than it is," Mount said.

Wolf and many symposium attendees agreed. They spent the day participating in a panel discussion and workshops aimed at empowering women and defying unrealistic expectations of beauty.

The gathering, sponsored by UT's Center for Women's and Gender Studies, was the third such symposium held on a college campus by beauty product maker Dove and the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, a nonprofit organization of which Wolf is a founding member. A well-known feminist scholar, Wolf has written multiple books, including international best-seller "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women."

To laughter from the audience, Wolf outlined society's standards for a beautiful woman: young, skinny and "pneumatically enhanced" on top. She chided the cosmetic surgery industry, cosmetics industry and dieting industry, saying they perpetuate unhealthy and unrealistic standards of physical beauty.

"How many of us look like that?" she asked. "It's not just a fake ideal of beauty; it's a fake ideal of what a woman is."

Wolf and other panelists ?- including Michelle Valles, a KXAN-TV news anchor, and Gretchen Ritter, director of the UT women's studies center ?- said more emphasis needs to be placed on inner beauty, confidence and intelligence. Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, they said, was a beautiful woman.

Having a realistic view of beauty, both inside and out, doesn't mean someone has to ignore fashion or shun makeup, Wolf said. "I like to play with makeup," she said.

But the models in ads and the products that make unrealistic claims about maintaining youth and losing weight should not dictate society's perception of what is beautiful, she said. Women can work together to correct that image and refocus society's expectations of beauty, she said.

"They don't get to define what is beautiful," Wolf said. "We get to define what is beautiful."

you could have at least put your hottest celeb!

oh yeah, all natural or go home! fake women arent my thing.

green eyes, blue,hazel eyes, black eyes omg. thats whatsup. holy **** for real, green eyes? i mean DAMN, i want to make babies thinking about them.

this post wasnt really about "looks" it was about nationality.