Overheard Today at Target

Several mothers and daughters were looking at the tanning lotions, the kinds that color your skin to look tan.  They were talking about the pressure to look tan, and how one of the young teens there was very fair.  One of the daughters said, "Do you know what they called a girl at school because she had really pale legs and you could see her veins?  They called her a leper!"

Nice.  Nice world we live in, when young girls are taught from a young age that they're not OK the way they are, that they need to alter...well, just about everything about themselves in order to be suitable to appear in public.  I know it has always been this way to some extent, but it just seems so much worse now, with the media putting unrealistic (Photoshopped) images in front of us all of the time.  People start to think that they're supposed to have dazzling-white smiles, perfect skin, and perfect figures - according to some odd standard the gay men in Hollywood who are generating all of this media and designing women's clothes have dreamed up.  Have you noticed that the "perfect figure" for a woman looks more and more like a young boy's body than a young girl's body?  Do you suppose there's some odd psychology at work there?

Oh, and while I'm on a rant, I saw a woman carrying a bag from Abercrombie & Fitch with a photograph something like this one, only even more risque, if you can imagine it.  The guy's pants were all but off, showing absolutely everything short of his parts that it could.  She was with her two small children.  I just had to wonder.  No one sees a problem with this?

Almost every store I went into had a loud soundtrack, enough to drive me right back out again.  I think the kids are in control of the volume these days and they're all half deaf from listening to their iPods at high volume.  It's insane.

I feel old.