Both of the articles talked about how body image has changed over time.
In the first article, "What is a Dadbod? A New
World for a Timeless Physique" it was talking about how the
new trend in today's society is for men to have a dad body. Spencer
Kornhaber says, “The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working
out.” Women are becoming more attracted to this as time progresses. And I feel
like that sentence is the thesis statement in this article. It talks about how
it benefits both sexes. The women like the work out look while the men like to
drink beer and can do so while having both qualities. But it also is a
double-standard because how can it be okay for men to be perceived as “flabby”
for a long time, but women have always needed to be “thin.”
In “The Death of Pretty” it is talking about how men want women
to be viewed as “pretty” while women want themselves to be viewed as “hot.”
This has changed over time because back then it was classy to be pretty rather
than hot. So I think the thesis for this article is, “Nobody aspires to
innocence anymore.” Because the whole article is talking about the new thing is
to not be the “good girl” which is dead.
I think that Elli summarizes the Death of Pretty particularly well, the article was focused around how men, Pat Archbold especially, prefer women who are considered “pretty,” rather than those who are labelled as “hot.” I feel like Archbold is missing the social benefits that the change signifies. He states “many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue.” This quote I feel shows the problem with the pretty term vs the hot term. Women wished to seem innocent no matter who they actually were. The switch to wanting to be hot shows that women aren’t being held down by what society thinks they should be.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the blog missed the overall point of the Dadbod article though. While Kornhaber did explain what the dadbod trend was and a little bit of the history of the physique, I believe his main goal for the article was to show the change in the social dynamic that the term is indicative of. “…A catchy name for your physique doesn't mean you're special; it means that finally, you’re just like everyone else,” in this quote Spencer is expressing that having a term for a less than flattering body type, is a sign that finally women can publicly talk about and objectify men the same way that men have been objectifying women for decades.