Ideal Woman

Does anybody know what the ideal woman is supposed to look like? Is this woman thin and tall or fat and short? Why are woman judged on how they look and how they dress, but males are not? Why are images of woman everywhere? Why do woman feel that they have to be gorgeous so society can love her? Believe it or not, society plays a big role in people lives. The biggest role it probably plays is how a female should look. For instance, if you look at the television, if you look at movies, and if you look in different magazines covers, most of the woman appears to look thin. Other woman sees this body image and they began to think they need to look like her. Most actresses today are becoming younger and thinner and some of them have an eating disorder in order to stay thin. Trying to keep the Barbie doll image is very dangerous to woman.

It is kind of hard to believe that some of our wants and needs are based on images, the Barbie doll look. According to Olds, 69% of woman said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body shape (Olds, 1999). The media send messages that if you are thin and beautiful then you will get whatever you want. According to a study by Health and Welfare Canada (1992), they documented that 37% of females age 11, 42% of females age 13, and 48% of female’s age 15 say they need to lose weight (National Eating Disorders Information Centre, 2000). Most women do not realize this but the media sends woman subliminal messages through television. The average woman sees about 400 to 600 advertisements per day (Dittrich), and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media (LaVoie). These messages from the media tells woman in order to be successful you must be attractive and thin, which is not really true. Today beautiful young and thin woman sees everything. They sell products from alcohol to shoes, you see them everywhere. These messages tell woman that appearance is more important than character and personality. According to the Health Canada (1997), “In the western culture slim is promoted not only as beautiful, healthy, and sexy but self-disciplined and good. Attractive people are perceived to be kind, interesting, outgoing, and to have a variety of socially desirable character traits.