Media's Distorted Perception of Beauty

Misperception of Beauty “The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair” (“Audrey Hepburn.”). If only young girls and women could see this themselves and understand that beauty is not on the outside but the inside. Our society has us thinking and believing that we are to look and act a certain way to be accepted in society, and perception in the media has influenced women to change the way they look. The media within our society have given women the wrong message for decades. The misinterpretation the media has on women, that women they are viewed as objects with little value. For example, when a little girl gets to the age where she plays with dolls, she is given a Barbie

I had come across an ad about a modeling school in the town I lived in and I decided that I wanted to go to modeling school. My mother enrolled me at there, and after my mother spent hundreds of dollars on books, clothes, and on photo shoots, so that I could follow a dream of being this beautiful model like I seen in these magazines. But what they didn’t tell us was, in order for me to be a model I would have to go through great lengths to stay at a certain weight to walk and talk and mold me into someone I wasn’t. The demands of staying thin and eating healthy, the do’s and the do not’s were extremely stressful on me. I found myself doing what it took to weigh under 120 lbs. and that meant not eating heathy but starving myself. The reality is this, beauty is within not what is seen on the outside. The media tells us different, and the advertisements that we see say that it is. According to an article written by Taylor M. Chapman, “Women in American Media: A Culture of Misperception”, states “Being a woman in America’s media-obsessed culture also means living up to the beauty standard that advertisers set in place. Being beautiful is, in American society, the most important role a woman should fulfill”

It is really sad that more companies don’t work on building self-esteem for young girls. And while Dove is also making billions of dollars from using social media they are doing this in a different direction which is aimed in a positive