I was just surfing reddit and found a link to a blog on a feminist website discussing news that The Weather Channel has now launched a Five-Day Beauty Forecast: a weather forecast aimed at women that includes how the weather in the upcoming days will affect their hair and/or skin. The blogger commenting on this new forecasting feature was frustrated that this application was aimed only at women when she knew of men who were just as concerned about how their appearance is affected by the weather. Furthermore, she noted that there are women who are smart enough to know how the weather affects their hair and skin. Though I understand this position, I also think that it is not addressing the deeper sentiment that this forecasting option sets forth.
With this new feature, The Weather Channel promotes the idea that the most important thing in women's lives is or should be how their beauty will fare over the course of a day. I do my best to place less focus on my appearance each day because I have spent too much of my life trying to live up to society's ever-out-of-reach beauty standard. I tried shrinking my body and wearing more makeup because the messages I received were that being thin and beautiful were the only ways you were worthy of love. Though I now know, at least logically, that this is not true, I still struggle to believe this with messages everywhere I go telling me to be smaller, better, smoother, prettier... I had hoped that reading up on the weather would be one place I would not have to fight to maintain a sense of self not tied to physical appearance. I guess I am going to have to keep my guard up no matter which websites I browse.
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