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What is beauty? Different individuals have different perceptions of beauty. However, society has corrupted beauty into giving it a particular shape. Studies show that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. Globally, 11% of girls are comfortable using the word beautiful to describe themselves. 72% of girls feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful. 54% of women globally agree that they are their own worst beauty critic. Media has created beauty standards through the idea body for women all around the world arising many unnecessary predicaments. These standards created through media have turned into something even bigger. Not only are they a certain group of standards, but they are also unreasonable, unreachable, and unhealthy. The ideal body is now an archetype around the entire globe. In fashion shows, beauty pageants, magazines, music videos, the recurring pattern always noticed is a stick skinny female with a youthful, symmetrical face. It causes women to truly believe that in order to live a happy life, they must look like these models. It becomes almost a ritual for them as the strength of the subliminal message increases. Although, social expectations do not dictate that we change ourselves, media representations on the ideal body negatively affect women of different shape due to predetermined norms indirectly enforcing women to strive towards looking a certain way. Often media representations cause financial, physical, and mental dilemmas. Media has discovered how to make more money through the degrading of women. As the ideal body is set and commercialized through numerous mediums of media, women of different shapes feel discouraged about themselves. They get the mindset that beauty is exactly ... ... middle of paper ... ...As money is wasted, women run into financial difficulties. Moreover, women go to extreme measures to lose weight in order to change their body causing physical complications. Furthermore, eventually women face mental concerns as self worth is lost and mental health issues is gained. Media highly impacts women who are shaped differently. It not only targets them but wins the fight as well. Women must stop to realize that there is absolutely no classification for beauty. It is subjective. Beauty is within the eye of the beholder. Works Cited http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/Self-Esteem-Statistics.aspx http://www.plasticsurgerystatistics.com/number_performed_canada.html http://www.ehow.com/about_5480898_average-cost-plastic-surgery-canada.html http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/lose-weight-dangers http://ostracism-awareness.com/recovery/
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.
Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...
The media is a fascinating tool; it can deliver entertainment, self-help, intellectual knowledge, information, and a variety of other positive influences; however, despite its advances for the good of our society is has a particular blemish in its physique that targets young women. This blemish is seen in the unrealistic body images that it presents, and the inconsiderate method of delivery that forces its audience into interest and attendance. Women are bombarded with messages from every media source to change their bodies, buy specific products and redefine their opinion of beauty to the point where it becomes not only a psychological disease, but a physical one as well.
Our society’s unhealthy obsession with being beautiful has led girls at very young ages into very unhealthy decisions. Plastic surgery is the number one thought in my head. I personally like to blame the media for making girls believe that it is not about being healthy and looking healthy but doing things that have developed into very serious and dramatic issues such as eating disorders. Why not encourage diverse body types instead of skinny ones? Thankfully, I feel as if I do have control and a sense of what is realistic beauty, however, as mentioned in my biography, my personal experiences related to beauty insecurities are linked to the more important and broader social forces of the world.
Society plays a big role in how people perceive their body image. Everyone has their own definition of body image, but it is simply one’s logic or ideal image of what one's body is or should be like (Dictionary.com, 2015). Females of all ages have high standards in society. Even though social expectations do not dictate that women change themselves, the media effects body image by giving us an image to strive to be. Sometimes this image is unrealistic. Over the past 100 years, body image has evolved. Each decade a new body image and style of how the ‘perfect’ female is supposed to look changes.
The image of a woman’s body has always been the center of attention to society all over the world. Globally, anyone who thinks of a woman’s ideal body, immediately thinks of a thin body with no cellulite and no imperfections, a small waist and soft skin, between other descriptions that are considered “hot” and “good looking”. Females often feel pressured to attain society’s high expectations because it is easier to fail them, rather than meet them. The music and other industries, like advertisements constantly portray an ideal and beautiful body for women, in most cases thin. When women see these images and then look at their own bodies, which are most of the time different from what is portrayed as ideal in society’s eyes, they begin to think
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In our society today, people would rather see what celebrities are up to than what is going on with our health plan. Watching the news makes us aware of the latest trend, new gadget, who’s in rehab, or who has an eating disorder. In the eyes of society, women like Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, and Megan Fox are the epitome of perfection. What girl wouldn’t want to look like them? Unfortunately, this includes most of the girls in the US. Through TV shows, commercials, magazines or any form of advertising, the media enforces a certain body type which women emulate. The media has created a puissant social system where everyone must obtain a thin waist and large breasts. As a society, we are so image obsessed with the approval of being thin and disapproval of being overweight, that it is affecting the health of most women. Women much rather try to fit the social acceptance of being thin by focusing on unrealistic body images which causes them to have lower self esteem and are more likely to fall prey to eating disorders, The media has a dangerous influence on the women’s health in the United States.
The media’s depiction of female bodies has a detrimental influence on women’s perception of themselves and has come under fire in recent years. Girls growing up in our media soaked culture internalize society’s ever-thinning standard of beauty, believing that they can never be slender enough. The negative effect of the media has been linked to the spread of eating disorders (“Never Just Pictures”, Thompson). This has led to a public outcry against impossibly thin, airbrushed models and a demand for more honest advertising.
Today people look to magazines to find beauty. They are told that its tan skin, perfect hair, white teeth, and a thin appearance. This effects the concept of beauty because although these are nice attributes to a person, this does not consider them a beautiful person. In the article, Breaking Down the Media’s Distorted Views on Beauty, written by Katie Atkinson, talks about breaking down the medias flawed view of beauty. It goes through scenes of young girls comparing themselves to what they see in magazines, movies, and commercials.
This representation is evident in most television shows, magazines, beauty commercials, and social media platforms, which emphasize a smaller body size to be more attractive. Standards like these that promote women to be more sexually appealing are wrongfully endorsed. Instead of motivating women to be confident and accepting of themselves, they actually feel more pressured to achieve unrealistic body type goals. Girls grow up thinking that “a woman’s goal in life is to attract and attain a man” (Ceulemans & Fauconnier, 2015, p.11), thus creating the idea that attractiveness is more important than personality and that the female’s focus should be on her appearance. Also present in society today, a majority of magazine covers portray thin looking females “in bikinis or lingerie, posed seductively, so that the viewer is directed to gaze at and evaluate the women's bodies” (Schooler, 2015).
The media negatively influences the way women are portrayed in modern society and culture. This can severely impact the way a woman views her self worth and beauty.
Leading women to have an immense pressure to look like what they see in the media. According to a statistic from the Melrose Center, 80% of of women in the U.S. don’t like how they look. This was personally eye opening to me considering that I’ve felt insecure myself and was something I wasn’t facing myself. Another study found from Statistic Brain, 80% percent of women say the images of other women in the media makes them feel insecure. Which made me conclude that the media is one of the prime reasons why so many women experience body dissatisfaction.
“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.
It is evident from above mentioned literature that women compare their bodies undeniably with those of other women (media imagery, fashion models, friends and family members). The result thereof is that they often found their appearance wanting, leading to lowered body satisfaction. Wolf also argues that women’s dissatisfaction regarding their body images is also actively encouraged by the fashion and beauty industry. She states that women need to support each other’s beauty choices and body types to help build body satisfaction. Women must also encourage one another to develop a “women-orientated” body image ideal and to accept the variations in bodies of women of different ages, rather than trying to conform to the unrealistic “above average” slender body image ideal promoted by the media, fashion and diet industries (Wolf,
Women and girls seem to be more affected by the mass media than do men and boys. Females frequently compare themselves to others, finding the negative rather than looking at the positive aspects of their own body. The media’s portrayal of the ideal body type impacts the female population far more than males, however, it is not only the mass media that affects women, but also influence of male population has on the female silhouette too.