... My wish is that women would be less critical of each other and unite despite our differences. It's the only way we will bring down the patriarchy, and take over the world. bwahaha
Well that's the last straw! That's the last time I'm putting the toilet seat down! (You have to draw the line somewhere.
)
My only complaint about women is the excessive use of makeup. I just have a hard time seeing around it. And I don't want to make that a generalization because it is mostly from what I watch on TV. But I can't help but get the impression that the wearer feels inadequate and uncomfortable without accentuating the size of the eyes and lips. Now I realize it's everyone's right to express themselves appearance-wise. But for me (Mr. Natural) I wish I could see men and women as they are without the distraction. That might just be me, and most men probably enjoy seeing women made-up (so to speak), for whatever reason. Personally I even get put off when the person I'm talking with doesn't automatically remove their sunglasses. I want to see their eyes. That's half of the conversation. I don't want to have to try to see through the kabuki mask.
I have thoughts on this.
There is a lot of social pressure on women, and a whole lot of it revolves around two particular elements: sexualization of women and infantilization of women. Unfortunately, the two go hand in hand. There's a social stereotype of "desirable" women being vulnerable, childlike, and unable to care for themselves - they need men to take care of them. While this deep seated gender bias is gradually changing, it's moving slowly - especially in terms of fictional portrayals of women, which carry a whole lot of weight. We can say whatever words we want, but the perspectives of children are strongly formed by what they are shown. And they are shown "good women" and "desirable women" as having large eyes, small noses, and full lips relative to their head size. These are also, by the way, the characteristics that visually distinguish children from adults. It's actually part of what drives humans to want to care for baby animals - we're hardwired to want to take care of children, and that's true for both men and women.
But we often end up with a combination of women being portrayed as both infantilized and hypersexualized - childlike faces with exaggeratedly sexually mature bodies. One of the most extreme of these would be Betty Boop - giant eyes, no nose, tiny full lops on top of a body with enormous boobs, tiny waist, round hips, and thin legs. And that paradigm has continued through media. Women are often portrayed in makeup and outfits that accentuate those same things... Anime is an excellent example. It's also an interesting one, because often even though the female characters are portrayed as having both physical and mental strength... they're also strongly influenced through fan-service. So those strong female leads are also portrayed as hypersexualized, in skimpy revealing outfits, with a lot of giggling and "girlish" behavior... because that's what male fans want those females to be. Disney's not a lot better, it also tends to feature infantilized heads on top of sexualized bodies for female characters. Disney also tends to show a lot more extreme variation in head shape and facial features for male characters, with a much more cookie-cutter look for females.
That's a long post. What it boils down to is that in general, women are portrayed in media the way that men want us to be portrayed, not as we actually are. Men in media tend to be portrayed either as men actually are (The Simpsons, Family Guy), or as an archetypally masculine ideal, based on a fully mature male body and face. So throughout media, portrayals of men vacillate between how men actually are (normalizing reality) and how men want to be perceived (idealized mature masculinity and strength), whereas women are portrayed who men want women to be.