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Effect social media has on body image
Beauty standards and its negative effects
Social media and self - esteem
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Nothing Is What It Appears to Be
Society considers a woman’s sole focus in life is their looks. Women are held to such a high standard therefore, naturally comparing themselves to photos or videos of women that do not even look as they appear. Many things factor into the way women feel about their physical appearance. Having low self-esteem is a prevalent problem in women today. According to The Ugly Truth About Beauty by Dave Barry, women think about their appearance as “not good enough”. Who is at fault for the views women have towards themselves? Social media, television, and celebrities play a colossal role in shaping the way women feel they ought to look.
Social media is an influential way to entertain society. Unfortunately, social media can be a way for women to communicate cruel things to each other while hiding behind a computer screen or smartphone. According to dosomething.org, “Seventy percent of students report seeing bullying online”. As a result, there are numerous women whose self- esteem is taking a toll because of what other women feel they can say behind a computer screen. Another problem that women face on social media is obsessing over other women online. Young women today focus on following other women’s false lives. Most pictures on Facebook,
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For example, the Kardashian sisters record all of their workouts on social media, so that the world can learn how to look as fit as them. However, their image is created in a plastic surgeon’s office, not a gym. In the essay The Ugly Truth About Beauty, it talks about an episode of Oprah with supermodel, Cindy Crawford. She teaches a group of middle-aged woman how to apply her beauty products in a certain way. Dave Barry expresses the irony in the fact that these women would never even remotely look like Cindy Crawford no matter how they applied the
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.
In "The Ugly Truth about Beauty" (1998), Dave Barry argues that ". . . women generally do not
To begin, social media has created unrealistic standards for young people, especially females. Being bombarded by pictures of females wearing bikinis or minimal clothing that exemplifies their “perfect” bodies, squatting an unimaginable amount of weight at a gym while being gawked at by the opposite sex or of supermodels posing with some of life’s most desirable things has created a standard that many young people feel they need to live up to. If this standard isn’t reached, then it is assumed that they themselves are not living up to the norms or the “standards” and then therefore, they are not beautiful. The article Culture, Beauty and Therapeutic Alliance discusses the way in which females are bombarded with media messages star...
Beauty is a cruel mistress. Every day, Americans are bombarded by images of flawless women with perfect hair and smooth skin, tiny waists and generous busts. They are presented to us draped in designer clothing, looking sultry or perky or anywhere in between. And although the picture itself is alluring, the reality behind the visage is much more sinister. They are representations of beauty ideals, sirens that silently screech “this is what a woman is supposed to look like!” Through means of media distribution and physical alteration, technology has created unrealistic beauty ideals, resulting in distorted female body images.
From the moment we wake up in the morning media is at our finger tips. As our day goes on we cannot escape all the visual media. One image after another a person’s self-confidence is either boosted or destroyed. Through the use of Photoshop a picture can be altered to get the perfect figure, skin, and hair, but when is the line drawn, when has it gone too far. Hailey Magee takes a stand when it comes to the ethics behind Photoshop in the world of beauty, “In this “Ethical Inquiry” we explore the ethics of digitally altering photos of individuals so as to make the subjects appear “more beautiful” in alignment with cultural standards of beauty”. Shiela Reaves, Jacqueline Bush Hitchon, Sung–Yeon parks, and Gi Woong Yun agree with Hailey Magee in the discussion of photo manipulation in beauty and fashion. “This study is concerned with the moral dilemma that stems from the digital manipulation of magazine ads to render models thinner. Exposure to the “thin ideal” has been linked to such damaging psychological responses as body dissatisfaction, loss of self-esteem, and to eating disorders”. Women and men are constantly affected by exposure to models that achieve the unrealistic beauty outcome of the media. Using the theories of social comparison and cultivation/ media literacy we are able to explain why photo manipulation makes women take on the thin-ideal. In the media driven world photo manipulation has become an accepted practice since it increases sales and fulfils the “thin ideal”, but the emotional and physical damage it has on women is catastrophic.
Dave Barry says, “I once saw an Oprah show wherein supermodel Cindy Crawford dispensed makeup tips to the studio audience”. With the help of Cindy Crawford and the makeup tips she gave to the studio audience, all the women knew how stressful it was to apply the makeup and that no matter how carefully they applied it, “they would never look remotely like Cindy Crawford”. They feel “not good enough.” Women are influenced to look as beautiful as possible because of the psychological and social reason to look like a supermodel such as Cindy
Social media was created with the purpose of aiding the general population to communicate with one another. these platforms have other uses as well, but mainly for communication. However, given handheld and other communication devices that are always connected to the internet, it is becoming increasingly rare for people to make human interactions such as meeting up with people face-to-face. In some cases loneliness, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and heightened aggression are possible repercussions of spending copious amount of time on the internet. Using social media gives people, more specifically adolescents, exposure to bullying and harassment. According to a study in UK, social platforms such as Facebook is giving cause to anxiety and increased feeling of inadequacy. In this study, half the respondents stated that social media had changed their behaviour, felt less confident in contrast to their online friends’ achieveme...
According to the article by Dave Barry, "The Ugly Truth about Beauty", the article compares between men and women. Barry illustrate that men think of themselves as average looking unlike women they always think that they are not good enough. Barry think contributes to this difference is that women when they were young they used to play with a Barbie which make them feel that they have to be perfect just like here and that generate low self-self-esteem. On the other hand men used to play by their action figures. Which they are not a good looker. In this article Barry offer advice for both gender. That women must have self-confidence and men should care about their look just a little more. I am a women and I know that we are some times be obsessed
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.
Nowadays, we females have no self-confidence. We tend to look in the mirror and always down ourselves about something on our body. Whether it’d be a pimple on our face, make-up, clothes being too tight or too loose, and or the fact of not feeling pretty enough. Social media plays a role in this where females won’t post a picture if their makeup is not done or if they look to “fat” in the image or even if they just aren 't satisfied at looking at themselves. Females tend to feel this more because they compare themselves to other
Eighty percent of women report that they are insecure because of the images on television and in movies. This was admitted in the article “How Do I Look?” in an issue of People’s magazine in 2000. Only ten percent of the women that were interviewed said that they are completely satisfied with their body. How could the media have this much control? According to this poll ninety percent of women are not completely satisfied with how they look. The statistics are even worse for teenagers and children. Many steps need to be taken as a world wide community to lessen the media's effects on young women; young women are choosing unhealthy methods to lose weight, young women are thinking less of themselves because of the media, and overall the media has too much say in what the average citizen should do and say.
“I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time –Betty White (“Betty White Quotes,” 2014, para. 1).” This quote can be interpreted to fit with several of the social media avenues that many people spend their time on. Day in and day out people post, tweet, share, and pin countless times throughout the world. These different forms of communication were first created for an easier way for people to connect with others. Yet now, so much time is spent on these social sites that it has warped the interactive part and is causing more damage than good. Many are growing a desire and are living for the amount of “likes” they can receive on a post or how many re-tweets they can generate. Instead of going to these outlets to participate in a partial portion of their social lives, people are filling that time with the technological aspect of communication. As White said, this can become an inordinate amount of wasted time and can ultimately grow into further damaging circumstances. These different social media channels can cause emotional harm through disparaging the relationship between friends, conjuring of a narcissistic personality, and the retrogradation of ones self-esteem.
Alexandra Scaturchio, in her article “Women in Media” (2008) describes the media’s idea of beauty as superficial. She supports her argument by placing two pictures side-by-side; a picture of a real, normal-looking woman and her picture after it has been severely digitally enhanced. Her purpose is to show young teenage girls that the models they envy for their looks are not real people, but computer designs. She also states, “the media truly distorts the truth and instills in women this false hope because…they will live their lives never truly attaining this ideal appearance”. Scaturchio wants her readers to realize the media’s distorting capabilities and feel beautiful about themselves, even with flaws.
There is a reason why the quote, “Beauty is Painful” is known in today’s society. This quote was not made up just for an expression. There are women all over the world who has a different portrayal of beauty and its true meaning. Not all women love their bodies, and not all women have the perfect physical appearance. In today’s society lots of women believe the true portrayal of beauty is a low BMI, narrow hips, prominent bust, and hair-less genitalia. Many would refer to it as the perpetuation of a Barbie doll. Everyone is beautiful in someone’s eyes, but more women are worried about their specific image of beauty. Lots of women try to make their appearance like the women on television or in the media, women think that is how everyone sees the potential of beauty in today’s society when it is not. The impossible-to-achieve standard of beauty causes pressure, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders in women.
There are so many different opinions on what beauty is. The idea of beauty is purely opinionated. Beauty is your own idea, skinny or thick, long hair or short hair, light skin or dark skin. How people define beauty is unique in many different ways everyone has a different opinion. No ones idea of beauty is the same. In society today it has become more materialistic based if you wear the latest designer or you have the newest pair of sneakers out and the true meaning of being beautiful has escaped our souls. Beauty is not just what we see on the outside it is so much deeper then what we see its what we also have to offer on the inside.Your intelligence is beauty your mind, body, and soul. Beauty is not a single image, but the active embodiment