Appearance is the Solution

http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler

Botox, plastic surgery, spa day, working out, fake tans, blonde hair and skimpy outfits. These women truly work hard to keep their bodies in tip top shape, but why? If they already have the guy what is the point in still working so hard to look hot? Well, Real Housewife of Orange County, Peggy Tanous shows us all why. It was her husband Micah’s birthday and for his gift she decided to take some sexy photographs of herself and bind them all together in a book (Peggy’s Portfolio). Her reason for doing this was so that when they were older he can remember that he had a sexy wife. This is completely demeaning to women because it really shows that the main thing holding their relationship together is based on how she looks.

This idea relates with many other housewives, for example when Tamra Barney and her ex-husband Simon were having problems with their relationship she went and got his name tattooed to her ring finger. I know this doesn’t correlate completely with the idea of having a “hot body” but it shows the importance of ‘things’ not ‘love’ to solve relationship issues. In the real world, when there is trouble with relationships couples should be talking out their issues, instead of making stupid materialistic gestures in order to prove to the other that they are still in love. This can definitely influence society in a harmful way because with the future getting more and more technology and materialistic based, people might start to look towards money to solve all their problems.

The whole appearance situation represented on TV is a strong stereotype that has lead to many problems in our culture today. This was represented in the previous blog on “Media Sways Values” which used statistical information from Hammers article on Stereotypes in Film. One main stereotype she went over was based on what our culture sees as beautiful and she proved that our society tends to favor the physically attractive (35). This television show is taking this step even further by also influencing women to think that attractiveness can solve all of their problems and can lead to happiness. But another problem with this show is that the happiness that they are portraying is very much so correlated with materialistic goods, instead of what a true housewife would be happy with… aka a happy and loving family.