Beauty Essay

The idea of what is considered beautiful has been conditioned into the human psyche, but still differs from person to person. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary beauty is defined as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit; a beautiful person or thing” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 1). The ideal of beauty has been around for centuries beginning with Egyptians wearing braided wigs and eyeliner and the Japanese growing long hair. It has progressed through time, and as in America during the roaring twenties women would have bobbed hair and slim figures. Beauty is a state of mind that changes throughout lifetimes and can never physically be touched.

Magazines have been read since the seventeenth century and have influenced people when it comes to buying the newest products and advice on how to improve one’s life. Beauty magazines today hold women to a higher standard than ever before. For women to be indispensible in society they need to wear their makeup a certain way, dress in a particular fashion, and look utterly flawless. According to Kate Fox, a writer for Mirror Mirror, “Recent experiments have shown that exposure to magazine photographs of super-thin models produces depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, body-dissatisfaction and increased endorsement of the thin-ideal stereotype. Magazines like Vogue and Elle are banned in many eating-disorder clinics, because of their known negative effect on patients ' body-image” (Fox 29). Granted, with the amount of exposure to magazines, women feel aggrieved with their bodies and do not consider themselves beautiful. Aesthetic people come in all shapes and sizes yet the ideal exquisite alters their translation of

Men are idealized and put on a pedestal. Television shows are known for their story line as well as the attractive people playing a role. Women go crazy for a hot male actor that is in their favorite series. Shannon Ridgway talks of her worries with television shows when she says, “There is even evidence that has been studied over the last ten years that suggests that muscular action heroes are negatively affecting boys’ body images” (Ridgway 9). Ridgway points out that even from a young age men are affected by the media’s perception of the man women are attracted to. Given this, when someone watches a television series they can see actors casted on the shows and how they have the ideal body and good looks personified by the media. Evidently, to get more viewers for the show the casting crew is going to cast potential actors and actresses that are attractive and have qualities about them that makes them desirable. As a result, this gives the idea that every man needs to look like those on TV, but in reality not everyone appeals in that way. With this in mind, beauty is altered from a trait someone possesses to a standard determined by those displayed in peoples’ everyday