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Medias negative influence on body image
Analysis of the beauty myth
Medias negative impact on body image
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"There is a secret under-life poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control." In this quote from Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, the very core of the issue is brought to light by emphasizing the degree to which women feel they need to compete amongst themselves.If you Google "beauty" and go to images, it is no surprise that all of the images contain women in full professional makeup. The vision of beauty has not deviated from the stereotypical sense. Too many women view ugliness as a disease and try to cure it all costs, which equates to the billions spent on health and beauty products every year. A woman, no matter how confident she may
seem in her own skin, is forever plagued by doubt as to her worth. From the outside looking in we may think that particular women have achieved ultimate beauty, however looks can be deceiving. Without knowing the person, you do not know the struggles in which they endure to project the allure of confidence. Far too often, the epiphany of perfection is perceived as being pristine. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty should not only be measured by how women look, but by their personalty, actions, and intentions. Pertaining to the picture below, just because these women do not fit the stigma of textbook beauty, they should not be written off as being inferior to other women. These women are beautiful regardless of their so-called "imperfections."
What woman doesn't want to be beautiful? Women want to please and will go to extreme measures to achieve the beauty ideal. Over the centuries, women have mauled and manipulated just about everybody part - lips, eyes, ears, waists, skulls, foreheads, stomachs, breasts and feet - that did not fit into the cookie-cutter ideal of a particular era's ideal of beauty and perfection. Women have suffered, sacrificed and punished themselves under the tyranny of beauty.
When we look into the mirror, we are constantly picking at our insecurities; our stomach, thighs, face, and our body figure. Society has hammered into our brains that there is only one right way of looking. Society disregards that there are many different shapes, sizes, and colors. Then society makes us believe that corporations can shove detrimental products to fix our imperfection. As a consequence, we blame media for putting all the negative ideas into women’s brain. It is not wrong to say that they are in part responsible, but we can’t make this issue go away until we talk about patriarchy. In the article Am I Thin Enough Yet? Hesse-Biber argues that women are constantly concerned about their looks and if they are categorized as “beautiful” by society. These ideas are encouraged by corporations that sell things for us to achieve “beautiful” but the idea is a result of patriarchy. Hesse-Biber suggests that if we want to get rid of these ideas we need to tackle patriarchy before placing all the blame on capitalism.
.... "The Beauty Industry Promotes Unrealistic Beauty Standards." Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2007. Rpt. in The Culture of Beauty. Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.
In “The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialism and Global Feminism in an Age of Terror,” Mimi Thi Nguyen argues that beauty as a measure of moral character functions to regulate an individual. Nguyen explains that beauty promises to be redemptive and bring an individual from the outside in relation with the world(362). For example, the United States through nongoverenmental orgainizations (NGO’s), have promoted beauty to Afghanistan women because it is a way if liberating them from an uncivilized barbaric society that oppresses them to hide their beauty through the veil. According to Kant, the veil is considered ugly because it hides the body, which is associated with the erotic. Kant claims that beauty made visible is true and good, while the invisible is ugly and erotic (266). Nguyen claims using Kant that beauty is connected to morality because it makes visible what the “ugly” is trying to hide by providing a pathway in which beauty can improve ones life. Nguyen asserts that individuals use beauty as a serious of techniques to produce knowledge and emotions that function to portray the individual with dignity in comparison to the “ugly”. Thus, the use of beauty as an educational tool that measures their character is an important factor in teaching women to associate themselves with the rest of the world.
I was flipping through some channels on the television set one day and came across a woman's talk show, "The View." It caught my attention when one of the hostesses asked the audience of mostly women to raise their hand if they thought they were truly beautiful. Much to my surprise the audience did not respond with very many show of hands. The hostess then introduced a study done by Dove, the makers of the body soap. Dove polled over 6,000 women from all over the country and only two percent of the women polled said they feel beautiful. Women are surrounded by images screaming physical beauty is more important than their talents and accomplishments. Women are deriving their self worth from an ideal of how they think they should look and how they think everyone else wants them to look instead of focusing on their sense of who they are, what they know, and where they are going in life. In "Help or Hindrance?: Women's Magazines Offer Readers Little But Fear, Failure," Mary Kay Blakely states, "Instead of encouraging women to grow beyond childish myths and adapt to the changes of life, women's magazines have readers running in place, exhausted." She goes on to say, "This is a world we have 'made up' for women, and it is a perilous place to exist." One of the biggest culprits feeding women's insecurities are the popular women's magazine that line the book shelves of grocery stores, gas stations, and waiting rooms. They supply readers and the occasional innocent passerby with unrealistic images of what women should be instead of showing diverse age groups and women with natural beauty. Reading through a couple of magazines, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Shape, I found nothing but hidden agendas and...
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.
Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth," discusses the impact of our male-dominated society upon women. Wolf argues that women's most significant problems associated with societal pressures are a "fairly recent invention," dating back to the 1970s (6). She explains that women have "breached the power structure" by acquiring rights equal to men in areas such as, education, professional careers, and voting. As a result, Wolf suggests that the "beauty myth" is the "last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the power to control those women" (3). Considering that the beauty myth is women's last battle, the struggle is increasingly more difficult. Wolf claims that women are currently experiencing "a violent backlash against feminism," noting the recent rise in eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and objectification of women's bodies (3,2). While Wolf accurately defines the beauty myth, she incorrectly states that eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and pornography are recent issues, resulting from an intentional "backlash" against women's rights.
Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, we witness the effects that beauty brings. Specifically the collapse of Pecola Breedlove, due to her belief that she did not hold beauty. The media in the 1940's as well as today imposes standards in which beauty is measured up to; but in reality beauty dwells within us all whether it's visible or not there's beauty in all; that beauty is unworthy if society brands you with the label of being ugly.
my opponent may argue but I assure you, the vast majority of today 's youth is this way. With the stars on the radio, and plastered onto our Tv’s how can you escape the views of the perfect woman? Now a lot of people may wear makeup to make them love themselves... another topic that I will refute. How come they don 't love their bodies and faces? Because Brad the head dick of the football team is more concerned with the skinny waisted cheerleaders? So because Brad doesn 't like her, she wears makeup to cover up her feelings, and dosing her true unrivaled beauty. Some make up once and awhile sure, I understand that too, but trying to look like a plastic barbie doll, is not healthy. The celebrities makeup seem essential, when it 's truly not. To add onto that, how is picking someone else apart because they didn 't wear makeup a good thing? There is very deep gender roles that make women torture themselves simply because they aren 't perfect and I think the people around them play a big role in
Youth, timeless beauty and the pursuit of perfection seem to be on the forefront of everyone’s agenda. From television portraying reality shows such as “Extreme Makeover” and fictional dramas such as “Nip and Tuck”, it is no wonder Americans are obsessed with finding the ultimate secret to looking flawless. The beauty industry is a 40 billion dollar enterprise,
According to Greek philosopher Plato, “...justice is a human 'human virtue' that makes a person self consistent and good; socially, justice is a social consciousness that makes a society internally harmonious and good.” (Bhandari 19). Which means that justice, for Plato, is a part of human virtue and the bond that joins man together in society. It is the identical quality that makes us all good, social, harmonious, equal, honest, and just. Which can also be pertained to types of social control, or the different way society tries to control people in an attempt to maintain some kind of order; particularly social control of the female gender. Like the essay, “The Beauty Myth”, by Naomi Wolf, where she argues about the Beauty Myth, a social standard that controls women by imprisoning them within their body. She also discusses topics such as how the fashion
...ibillion dollar industry of beauty. She argues that “Scientific studies have proven that human beings are hard-wired to respond more positively to beautiful people”. She also cites a recent report published by the University of Bristol which states Neanderthals wore “makeup” as long as 50,000 years ago, all in hopes of attracting a mate with the chance for successful breeding (Zilhao 2009).
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.
I would like to begin with the fact that women have always been known to dedicate their time to beauty. Those who are devoted to their appearance most often believe that beauty brings power, popularity, and success. Women believe this, because they grow up reading magazines that picture beautiful women in successful environments; not to mention they are popular models and world famous individuals. Beautiful women are no longer just a priority for most advertising, but we have become a walking target for the working class employers. It is documented that better-looking attorneys earn more than others after five years of practice, which was an effect that grew with experience (Biddle, 172). We cannot overlook the fact that it is always the most popular and most beautiful girl who becomes homecoming-queen or prom-queen. While these are possible positive effects of the "beauty myth," the negative results of female devotion to beauty undercut this value. These effects are that it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of time, and in the long run, it costs a lot of pain.
...ounds, having good hair, and covering themselves in makeup are what beauty should be perceived as. Every time someone flips through a magazine, sees a picture of a model and wish to look like them, they are contributing to an idea they are supposedly disgusted by. People might think that they have never done anything to support this, but everyone has. Everybody feels the pressure from society, because it is pressure from us. They only way to stop this is by not supporting “things” that advance this idea and by not feeding into it, so in the end it will eventually die.