"Innocence lost" or talking about a fallacy?

Impurity by yuumei on deviantart

Some ideals and concepts are so deep engraved on our brain from an early age, that many times we fail to see what's in front of us. Take the above picture for example: When I saw the stunningly white dress the girl wore, I immediately linked it with virginity and the blood with the loss of it. The title also was connected in a similar way to my thoughts. Well, after reading the description of the creator, the idea she wanted to put across was something totally different. It had to do with the beauty of the dress and the ugliness of the crime commited to obtain it (the murder of the swan).

Yet what was it that lead me to such conclusions? Most probably my upbringing. That connects purity with virginity as well as the cultural connotations in West associated with these colours. But is it really like the conservatives claim to be? And were there a time when we were pure-hearted? A time of innocence?

Eve vs Adam- The Battle of Pornography

One of the most striking and fundamental differences that define our place in society is our gender. Right from the moment we are born, we are going through this separation, when our parents dress us in blue and pink*, then our relatives and family friends gather to give us our presents, dolls and Barbies for girls, military men and airplanes for boys. This is the way things go for a long time, for most people for their whole lives. Thus, different values are born in our minds and hearts and the war between the sexes begins.

We have all felt it and experience it: when our friends joke about how unmanly we look, or when our parents tell us to dress more girly. We act against it when we say “no papa, I am not going to wait until I get married to have sex” or we accept it when we agree to smoke or put on a mini skirt just to attract a member of the opposite sex.

This is my introduction to a series of articles dedicated to gender wars. I have decided to call the series “Eve vs Adam”, because these are two symbols in our culture that represent our many views of how we treat such issues and stereotype our views on man and womanhood. I hope that through these articles, we will find many ways to redefine and analyze our definitions of gender and sex. I deeply hope you find some usefulness to these thoughts and you are free to post any comment you might want to.

*The colors differ from culture to culture. Blue for boys and pink for girls is the norm for America and most countries of the European Union.

We Can Do It (Again)! Anorexic models and Advertising

What is common between a lady that wishes to see men drool like pathetic dogs, a proud anorexic woman, a little girl with a mafia attitude and a proper lady whose skirt is raised up by the blowing wind, letting all of her "special parts" open for public view? They are all woman in ads, some of them even made exclusively by real women.