Women's Misleading Magazines
I was flipping through some channels on the television set one day and came across a woman's talk show, "The View." It caught my attention when one of the hostesses asked the audience of mostly women to raise their hand if they thought they were truly beautiful. Much to my surprise the audience did not respond with very many show of hands. The hostess then introduced a study done by Dove, the makers of the body soap. Dove polled over 6,000 women from all over the country and only two percent of the women polled said they feel beautiful. Women are surrounded by images screaming physical beauty is more important than their talents and accomplishments. Women are deriving their self worth from an ideal of how they think they should look and how they think everyone else wants them to look instead of focusing on their sense of who they are, what they know, and where they are going in life. In "Help or Hindrance?: Women's Magazines Offer Readers Little But Fear, Failure," Mary Kay Blakely states, "Instead of encouraging women to grow beyond childish myths and adapt to the changes of life, women's magazines have readers running in place, exhausted." She goes on to say, "This is a world we have 'made up' for women, and it is a perilous place to exist." One of the biggest culprits feeding women's insecurities are the popular women's magazine that line the book shelves of grocery stores, gas stations, and waiting rooms. They supply readers and the occasional innocent passerby with unrealistic images of what women should be instead of showing diverse age groups and women with natural beauty. Reading through a couple of magazines, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Shape, I found nothing but hidden agendas and...
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...ce in society. And the effects of the ideals behind these magazines are all the more powerful because of their subtlety." Women walk away from these magazines with an empty feeling and feelings of many inadequacies and they really don't know exactly why. The subtle undermining of women's intelligence and cause strips away their sense of worth ever so slowly and leaves them feeling depressed and in search of something that really can't exist together. Growing old while staying young takes many years of complete and internal happiness not many years of collagen injections and the added stress of having to stay unattainably perfect. While some consider these journalists for women's magazines talented writers, I consider them horrendous displays of talent in which they sell out the naturally beautiful women of the world for a quick buck and a popular magazine.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Nickle and Dimed” she explored a life as having a low wage earning by working several jobs in numerous of different places as she tempted to live off the wage she earned. Even though she had a doctorate in science she is known as a journalist and as well as muckraker. In the novel she states her journey on how she pondered how someone unskilled, uneducated, and untrained workers can survive with the minimum wage incomes. Barbara gave us real life experiences of her personal life as she had witnessed firsthand as her loved ones struggled living minimum wage jobs to provide enough utilities for her family.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
The lower class is struggling to provide for their families. Even just for single people, living alone is a challenge. The mix of low wages and high rent prices is killing the lower classes chances of living comfortably. After reading this it is evident that even when you have a job, you still can be struggling. Ehrenreich ends by saying “ours is an economic culture that reflexively rewards and flatters the prosperous while punishing and insulting the poor, no matter how hard they work. Turning this around is the task of a lifetime, at
Our society is entirely based on looks and how “the perfect women should be”. To be pretty you are expected to have the perfect body with the perfect face and hair. You could never cut your hair short because you would be considered a dyke. If you’re makeup isn’t perfect you are considered ugly and if you don’t have the “hourglass figure” you are considered fat and overweight. “Despite higher global self-esteem, women do not feel good about their appearance. This disconnect can be attributed, at least in part, to concerns about body image.” (@PsychToday, paragraph 4) Our society and social media is so caught up on how every woman should look that our own judgment has been clouded and we always believe we need to look and act that way. “The truth is that women’s insecurity about their appearance is driven by competition with other women.”(@PsychToday, paragraph 16) All we do nowadays is compare ourselves to others and that’s not how it should be. You are considered to be a “whore” such as Eve if you sleep around, so women are afraid to do it. You are considered to be “weak” if you stay at home and can’t support yourself, such as Lori. Our world is so caught up in people thinking that they need to be a certain way in order to impress themselves and others. Why do women shave their legs? Why do woman dye their hair? Why do woman get spray tans? Everything we do has to do with our appearance in order to impress
Many Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. According to the Census Bureau, 104 million people. A third of all Americans have incomes below twice the poverty line. While many of these people are unemployed, many others are the working poor, people trying to support themselves with low and minimum wage jobs. The task of such workers was taken up by Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2001 book Nickled and Dimed. The book, which recounts her experiences, is important because it offers a gripping, first person account of the real difficulties faced by many Americans today. One way the book illuminates these difficulties is by showing how a full-time low wage salary isn’t enough to pay one’s living expenses. Ehrenreich begins each experiment with significant advantages over many minimum wage workers.
In the book, Ehrenreich documented her experiences working a series of minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a maid and a nursing home dietary assistant. Ehrenreich found that in order to make ends meet and afford a place to live and food to eat, she needed to work two jobs, which left her in a constant state of exhaustion and pain. She also observed of her fellow servers that, “everyone who lacks a working husband or boyfriend seems to have a second job” (2001, p. 48). Many of her co-workers shared the same challenge with affordable living arrangements, some living in a van, with their mother, sharing rooms with strangers or even living in a dry-docked boat (Ehrenreich, 2001). Not only did Ehrenreich find that the wages offered unskilled workers were not enough to meet the basic needs of food and shelter, but that there are a “host of special costs” (2001, p. 27) incurred by the working poor. For example, workers are required to invest their own funds in partial uniform and pay ...
When we look into the mirror, we are constantly picking at our insecurities; our stomach, thighs, face, and our body figure. Society has hammered into our brains that there is only one right way of looking. Society disregards that there are many different shapes, sizes, and colors. Then society makes us believe that corporations can shove detrimental products to fix our imperfection. As a consequence, we blame media for putting all the negative ideas into women’s brain. It is not wrong to say that they are in part responsible, but we can’t make this issue go away until we talk about patriarchy. In the article Am I Thin Enough Yet? Hesse-Biber argues that women are constantly concerned about their looks and if they are categorized as “beautiful” by society. These ideas are encouraged by corporations that sell things for us to achieve “beautiful” but the idea is a result of patriarchy. Hesse-Biber suggests that if we want to get rid of these ideas we need to tackle patriarchy before placing all the blame on capitalism.
Within the beauty industry there are numerous examples of media propaganda that can be investigated, but the television and magazine industry privdes a very specific representation of what women experience daily through the media. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the ...
“The mass media serves as a mediating structure between individuals and their bodies by sending a powerful message to society: only a determined physical stereotype of beauty is valued” (Sepúlveda & Calado, 2012). Women develop a sense that they are not beautiful unless they look like the women in the photographs that are being advertised, thus causing a large impact on their health putting them at risk to develop physiologic issues possibly leading to eating disorders as discussed in the information presented above. This correlation does not affect women here and there; across the United States women are being impacted by the advertisements perused by the beauty industry because of the popularity of mass media in the current
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
Cerebral palsy, also known as CP, is quite prevalent in today’s society and continues to be the most common physical disability. It is estimated that about one in every 400 children born in a developed country will have cerebral palsy (Aspinall, 2007). In the United States, it is estimated that nearly 800,000 children and adults could be exhibiting some symptoms of the condition (Aspinall, 2007). Despite medical advances all over the world, newborn children and infants continue to be diagnosed with this condition and there seems to be no decline in numbers over the years (Aspinall, 2007).
“Beauty is only skin deep.” Everyone knows the quote, yet why is it that we still struggle to look our best? Why is it that some women bother to wake up an hour early to do their hair and makeup? Its simple etiquette, some might argue. However, etiquette aside, why is it that twentymillion people in America alone suffer from eatingrelated disorders? Why is it that a 38 inch plastic doll is a little girl’s role model? This is why (visual aid). Magazines, movies, newspaper advertisements, the internet. All of these tend to showcase seemingly thin, beautiful, toned models and celebrities, causing many women in the world to be pressured to have the ‘perfect’ body image, never satisfied with their own bodies and looks and willing to do anything to achieve the ideal image, even if it means having to subject themselves to dieting, hunger and eating disorders. Now, what should blame for this unhealthy obsession that has bloomed among today’s women? Of course it would have to be the media. Don’t get me wrong, there
I would like to begin with the fact that women have always been known to dedicate their time to beauty. Those who are devoted to their appearance most often believe that beauty brings power, popularity, and success. Women believe this, because they grow up reading magazines that picture beautiful women in successful environments; not to mention they are popular models and world famous individuals. Beautiful women are no longer just a priority for most advertising, but we have become a walking target for the working class employers. It is documented that better-looking attorneys earn more than others after five years of practice, which was an effect that grew with experience (Biddle, 172). We cannot overlook the fact that it is always the most popular and most beautiful girl who becomes homecoming-queen or prom-queen. While these are possible positive effects of the "beauty myth," the negative results of female devotion to beauty undercut this value. These effects are that it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of time, and in the long run, it costs a lot of pain.
Lee, T. (2013, August 2). Best Buy CEO Indicates Company Will Stay in China. Retrieved from http://www.startribune.com/business/218123261.html
What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror? A seed sticking out from your teeth? Bed head from just waking up and sleepy eyes? The truth is every time we look at ourselves in the mirror we can not help but notice some of our imperfections. Whether it is our nose, eyes, lips or ears there is always something. The beauty standard pop culture has today on women is unattainable. Women somehow have to have a thin body, giant chest, big rear, and tiny waist. Unfortunately these are the molds young women in America wish to fit into in order to feel beautiful. The word beautiful has many different meanings, but most interpret it as a physical description. Many young women believe that in order to acquire this beauty standard they need