Urban Legend ER – CollegeHumor video

more about “Urban Legend ER – CollegeHumor video“, posted with vodpod

 

Glamour Magazine continues to dispel beauty myths

I’ve blogged about this concept of “real beauty” ad campaigns using plus-sized models before. It’s starting to become a reoccurring theme. Shortly after blogging about Self Magazine’s admission that they more or less completely reshaped the woman on the cover of their magazine with Photoshop, I had blogged last month about Glamour Magazine’s choice to display an un-airbrushed image of plus-sized model Lizzie Miller in their pages.

Now because of the overwhelmingly positive response the Lizzie Miller photo got, Glamour Magazine has brought Miller back for a group photo with numerous other plus-sized models to prove that beauty doesn’t require being a size zero.

News From Around The Blogosphere 9.18.09

1. WWII prisoners get out of jail free thanks to Monopoly - Escape supplies British airmen hostages were smuggled into prison inside the classic Parker Brothers game.

2. FBI outlines retooled scams designed to prey upon people’s trust and greed – It amazes me that the FBI doesn’t even have a “share” icon on their articles to quickly post this valuable information to social networking sites.

3. 8 Myths about the Freemasons debunked – Suck it, Dan Brown!

4.  The new Apple iDouche – Uri Geller now has his own Spoon App on the iPhone.  Ugh!

5. Frank Schaeffer Exposes Fundamentalist Christianity:

Glamour Magazine shows real women

Last month I blogged about Self Magazine’s extreme overuse of digital airbrushing for their Kelly Clarkson cover. So I’m glad to see that Glamour Magazine has decided to publish an un-airbrushed photo of plus-sized model Lizzie Miller.

My only objection is calling Ms. Miller “plus-sized.” I’ve seen plus-sized models. And she isn’t it. On the contrary, Miller is quite thin, with only a slight bit of healthy belly fat that would go entirely unnoticed if she wasn’t posed in a position that deliberately and proudly shows off her curves.

This is reminiscent of Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty. And although this doesn’t overtly fit in with the topics I usually discuss on this blog, I consider my job to be fighting distortions of reality wherever I see them, and this includes the media’s extreme measures in distorting the public’s view of how people look and distorting the public’s body image expectations.

So I would like to commend Glamour for doing this and I hope this is the start of a new trend (though somehow I doubt it).

News From Around The Blogosphere 8.14.09

1. Cookie Magazine promotes Jenny McCarthy woo - You’d think they would have consulted an actual doctor to address medical issues but apparently Cookie fucking magazine doesn’t aim very high. And as always, Jenny McCarthy back peddles for mainstream press, insisting several times what a great big fan she is of vaccines. Yeah, she loves them so much she thinks infants should get only two even though she admits it will bring back many life-ending diseases and cause many casualties:

I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s s___.

Oh yeah, she LOVES vaccines. . .even though she calls them “shit.” She’s just anti-toxin. Not botox though. Jenny has praised botox, which is the worst toxin out there. It’s sick how many people will throw their kids under the bus in order to worship in the cult of Jenny McCarthy, autism’s cheif false prophet.

2. Atheist advertisements (or athvertisements) benefit everyone – They get the advertising companies more clients because the religious will inevitably create counter ads. They increase the membership of the advertised atheist groups. And lots of people get exposed for the hypocrites that they are. Everyone wins.

3. Myths about sunscreen debunked

Fox News calls Amsterdam “a cesspool of corruption”

5 Retarded Superstitions (With Logical Explanations)

Ever wonder how rabbit’s feet became thought of as luck? Well now you can find that out along with the origins of such other superstitious classics as black cats, Groundhogs Day, breaking a mirror, and four-leaf clovers here.

Debunking Columbine Myths

This is the tenth anniversary of the Columbine shootings and now USA Today has debunked some of the commonly held myths surrounding the tragedy. Even I fell victim to some of the Columbine myths when I wrote of comparisons between Columbine and the Virginia Tech shooting. Though I think I managed to dodge being completely wrong in that column by prefacing my statements with “They say…” and “Reports surfaced suggested…” So in my own defense, that is what was being perpetuated in the media.

Happy Atheist Pride Day & Happy Vernal Equinox

I reported about Atheist Pride Day a few days ago here. Follow the link if you wish to know more about it and how you can participate. But something that I forgot to mention was that it coincides with the vernal equinox (probably not by accident). Today (Friday) is the first day of spring, which reminds me of an old myth that you can only balance an egg on the vernal equinox. This is a myth that Phil Plait debunks here:

5 Ways People Are Trying to Save the World (That Don’t Work)

Here’s a very interesting article on ways that people think are saving the world that are in actually just myths. The article is worth reading but I’ve broken down the list below:

5. Buying organically grown food

4. Rejecting vaccines (I think this should have been #1)

3. Recycling (I’ll admit it. As a child of the 80’s this one was hard to accept for a long time)

2. Using antibacterial soap

1. Buying carbon offsets

Yeah, I definitely think the anti-vaccine movement easily should have been number 1.