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Dating apps: A platform for appearance pressures and racism

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First published at The Conversation here. As the dating app  Tinder turns five , new research shows  men who regularly use the app  have more body image concerns and lower self-esteem. The research  found Tinder users reported lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and higher levels of shame about their bodies. And users were also more likely to view their bodies as sexual objects. This is hardly surprising given that Tinder�s �evaluative factors� have the potential to intensify preexisting cultural beauty ideals. The app�s �swipe right to dismiss� facility, along with the limited number of words a user can write on their profile means appearance take centre stage. In other words, the  more conventionally attractive your photos are , the more likely you are to be clicked, swiped or hit upon by other users. But whether men use Tinder or not, most will  report  dissatisfaction with some aspect of their appearance. This could be anything from heigh...
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The pure erotics of Brazilian Waxing

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One of the questions I often get asked when I talk about my research is how much longer I think the trend for full pubic hair removal will last. I�m hesitant to give an exact expiry date if I�m honest. But I think this question opens up into broader discussions about what impact social, political and economic change has upon our bodily surfaces, and how embodied ideals of womanhood and femininity can both shift and remain constant over time. More revealing than any answer I might be able to give about the potential longevity of the Brazilian wax, is the asking of the question itself.  It demonstrates an understanding of pubic hairlessness as �current�, constructed, transitory, and it encourages conversation about where the norm has originated from, and why women in particular feel pressured to conform to it.  My Google Alerts notified me recently of an online survey examining men and women�s pubic hair grooming preferences, undertaken by Cosmopolitan.com , and suggesting that ...
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No filter needed � �Insta� diversity

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A couple of weeks ago, while scrolling through my Instagram feed, up popped a picture of Alexandra Shulman, former editor of British Vogue , in a swimsuit; undoctored, natural, highlighting all of her 59 year old self.  It stopped me in my tracks, mainly I think  because   it was in stark contrast to the homogeneous representation of beauty that the magazine she was at the helm of for 25 years propagated, and was consistently met with criticism for. There is a sense of melancholy in how an undoctored picture of a 59-year-old in a bikini is seen as an act of revolution. For women in Western cultures, the mass media tends to portray slender or thin bodies as attractive and associates them with success, youthfulness, or social acceptability, in contrast to overweight bodies, which are often linked to a lack of control or laziness, leading women to be dissatisfied or pressuring them to either lose weight or be thin (Grogan, 1999: 6; Mask & Blanchard, 2011:54). Social cogn...
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