Re: virus: beauty meme

Paul Prestopnik (pjp66259@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu)
Fri, 01 May 1998 14:00:48 -0400


Sodom wrote:

> 1> defining the meme
> 2> Identifying the sources and outlets for the meme

I can say that in my experience one source is definitely the girl's mother.
I have had 4 different girls tell me that their mothers said that "they
looked dead without their makeup" The first time I heard this I was
shocked. It was from my current girlfriend, and I had never really gotten
along with her mother. (I felt her mother was too controlling of her
daughter.), but I did not think it was a cultural phenomena until I had
heard almost the exact same words from three other girls. I don't know how
common this is, but for me to have heard this so many times I think it must
be one major source of infection.

> 3> Innoculating against the mem (assuming I start from birth)

I would recommend the Taking Children Seriously site for starters. When I
joined and started reading more, I started to understand what the
differences were between my upbringing and those around me. My parents were
primarily non-coercive when they raised me. In contrast some of the other
relationships I have observed are highly coercive. I never could quite
figure out what it was about those relationships that bothered me so much,
but somehow they just didn't seem right.-Paul Prestopnik