“All around us are commercial images of the beauty idea. What are three main media messages that women get about beauty, health, and their bodies?” I feel as though this has and will always be a complex issue when it comes to how women are portrayed in media. The biggest challenges for women that commercial images bring via media, in my opinion, are the following:
1. Women’s lifestyles.
2. Reinforcement of primitive patriarchal beliefs. What does advertising today tell us about women? It tells us that what is most important about women is how they look.
3. Women are being dehumanized by these commercial images.
These problems usually remain unrecognized across the world because we are constantly normalizing this oppression of women from
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I was watching a YouTube video called “YOU LOOK DISGUSTING.” There, a woman posted pictures of her face without makeup. She received over 100,000 comments, of which, almost all were negative comments like, “I can’t even look at her”, “Ugly as F*ck”, “Revolting”, and “Disgusting.” The reason why she created this short film was to show how social media can set unrealistic expectations on both women and men. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from acne and the way these commercial images portray women with clear, luscious skin from makeup is part of the reason why people have looked down upon women who don’t “take-care of themselves” as such. Society is only accepting of the females with “nice” clear skin and this creates a huge problem that EVERYONE faces. No matter if you’re a male or female, at one point in your life, I am sure you have had acne. People have major problems with acne and this is only one example of how a woman must cope with her problem. There have been numerous experimental studies that have linked exposure to western, thin ideal in mass media to body dissatisfaction, internalization of the skinny and thin ideal, and eating disorders among women, according to the national eating disorders …show more content…
We see an abundance of women in Japan, Lebanon, and India for example, trying to achieve perfection, which in their eyes is white, blondified, small-nosed, pert-breasted, and a long-legged body. “We’re losing bodies, as fast as we are losing languages.” It took me some time to understand what that statement meant, but now I think I fully comprehend. It is saying that there is no more diversity, even among other countries and nations. Women are slowly “evolving” and gravitating towards the man-made Westernized ideal of beauty, which is being advertised on a global scale. English has become the predominant language now, and more and more nations might run into problems where their own culture, doesn’t even speak or comprehend their native language. I would like to conclude this issue with a quote from the first article I mentioned from CNN. “The word beauty is such a controversial word," says Hardison. "I think that the more that there's exposure (of different kinds of looks), and as long as you expose them consistently, you give people a chance to see what could also be beautiful besides what came before."” Something inside me resonated, when I heard this. Beauty is in the hands of the people with power. As long as there are powerful, wealthy men behind the beauty and fashion industry, there will
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
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
Beauty is often described as being in the eye of the beholder. However in modern western culture, the old adage really should be beauty is in the eye of the white makeup artist, hair stylist, photographer, photo shop editor, and advertiser. Beauty and body ideals are packaged and sold to the average American so that we can achieve vocational, financial, social, and recreational successes. Mass media and advertising has affected the way that women perceive and treat their own bodies as well as their self-concept. Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic images and hold themselves to the impossible beauty standards. First, we will explore the role of media in the lives of women and then the biggest body image issue from a diversity stand point, media whitewashing.
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.
One of the ways photo manipulation in the media is ruining lives is by destroying the image of female beauty. Through all forms of popular media women are being bombarded with image...
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable.
As seen in films like Killing Us Softly 4 and Miss Representation, we can see how much media and advertisements affect everyone consciously and subconsciously. Through images and advertisements, women’s bodies are hacked apart to sell products. This has a negative effect body image and self-confidence in young girls and women all over the world. It is extremely important to understand the extent to which circulating images of women in media affect standards and expectations of women in our society in order to hopefully cease to create such degrading images. Our society hurts itself by producing the types of images we see in media and advertisements today, yet it has done very little to try to reverse the messages put out. For the sake of our
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.
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
The ideal image that the media has created is to be exceptionally thin and tall. This is what the media considers to be beautiful. This ideal image can be seen on a daily basis just about everywhere on advertisements, which promote this unattainable image constantly. Research has proven that women tend to feel more insecure about themselves when they look at a magazine or television, which makes them feel self conscious(Mackler 25). The irony in this is that not even the women in the advertisements are as flawless as they appear to be. In order for a woman to appear in the mass media her image must be enhanced in several ways. A women is often airbrushed to conceal their actual skin but it does not end there. Through various computerized programs a woman's actual features are distorted until a false unrealistic image is reached.
In the media, the portrayal of women has been fabricated. Women are shown as marketing and sex objects rather ordinary people. The portrayal of women has not only affected the way women perceive themselves but also the way society sees them and wants to see them. This altercation has had a huge impact on young women, specifically because they can be persuaded into thinking that their appearance is imperfect. For example, models in advertisements are shown skinny and perfect.
In Thailand, women are urged to grow up wearing countless brass rings to elongate their necks. Young Mauritanian girls are sent to “weight-gain” camps by their parents if they are anywhere near slim. Ethiopia encourages women to practice self-scarring of the body in order to appeal sexually to men in their tribes. Last year, approximately 15.6 million cosmetic surgeries were conducted in the United States alone. All of this leads me to say that beauty is a sway for women in our world. The standards enforced by society put so much pressure on womankind that we tend to take in these prototypes and push out the ideals that we should have about self-acceptance, our right to individuality, and the principle that “different
Advertisements are carefully constructed to appeal to the targeted audience. Products and ideas are sold through advertising across multiple platforms of the media, one being magazines. There is a significant amount of magazine ads that display women’s bodies through nudity and revealing clothes. Not only that, but many ads objectify women, as well as portray them as submissive. This allows for the continuance and implementation of gender stereotyping because, even though most people that see ads do not actively think about any deeper message they contain, seeing those ads has a subconscious effect on the way a person sees women or girls.
“Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep” (teenink.com, nfic2000). We hear these kind of sayings every day, and “yet we live in a society that seems to contradict this very idea”(teenink.com, nfic2000). If looks don’t matter, why is every photograph that is posted in the media, airbrushed to hide the flaws that person has? If looks don’t matter, why are so many young women and men harming themselves because they’re unhappy with the way their body looks?
It’s natural we are attracted to them in order to give our offspring the best chances of living and continuing the species. However, the extremes to which we have taken the idea of beauty and the exclusivity of the features which we deem beautiful today are far a cry from traits which carry inherent evolutionary benefit. Conversely, they’re having a huge and harmful effect particularly on girls and women. For the past few decades, the evolution of beauty has brought a huge metamorphosis in people’s perspective about their appearance. People are more concern about their outer beauty than anything else.