Defending My Daughters Against the Fashion and Media Elites (Mad Dad 1)

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, the saying goes. I beg to differ.

Hell hath no fury like a parent protecting a child. Now, that’s more like it.

The mad parent in this scenario? Me. And like many other Asian fathers, I claim the divine right to rant, or at least a Confucian one. So stand back, ‘cause I’m gonna LET ‘ER RIP!

But fear not. My anger is not directed at you. Quite the contrary; it’s directed at those who would hurt my two young daughters – and who have also been hurting you.

Of whom do I speak? The global fashion and media elites. They are the ones who decide how skinny is skinny enough or at what point healthy crosses over into chubby. They’re the ones who bombard us daily with zillions of images, drilling into our hearts and minds their ridiculously narrow definition of beauty. They play upon the normal human insecurities of billions of people. And in return, they receive billions in revenues from goods and services claiming to make attainable their impossible standards of beauty.

Don’t get me started. Don’t even get me started!

Add to this the reality that practically every ad featuring a model is Photoshopped or otherwise doctored. So not only is it impossible, for example, for most women to look like the glossy photos of Jennifers Anniston or Lopez, but the Jennifers themselves don’t look as “good” as their pictures! Yet fashion and media tycoons are trying to make women and girls believe they should look like the faux Jennifers! (For some of the best analysis of Photoshopped images, visit BeautyRedefined.net.)

It’s so upsetting, because it’s so wrong.

I can’t draw any other conclusion. Not only are the captains of the fashion and media industries profiting from the stresses they induce in peoples’ lives. They are also fostering the painful presence of body image issues and eating disorders in billions of their fellow human beings.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they purposely push the daughters of Asian America toward disordered eating. But like Tony Stark in the Iron Man films, who comes to recognize the human suffering upon which his fortune is built, the titans of the global fashion and media industries need to recognize that their empires are also substantially founded upon human suffering.

So as a father of two young daughters who will grow up in our skinny-obsessed society, I can’t stand by and do nothing. Yes, it goes without saying that I’ll do my utmost to love my girls unconditionally. I’m extremely committed to helping them develop into secure, emotionally healthy young women, partly because nothing else better prevents body image struggles. But I have to do more.

You may not have many dads who stand with you against the elites of the fashion and media industries, but count me in.

Together, we can give them a helpful taste of our fury.

(This post first appeared in slightly modified form on ThickDumplingSkin.com.)