Popular Beauty Ideals and Women’s Body Image
Popular beauty ideals and perception absolutely compel American women to augment their appearance to what they believe it should be. Modern American culture presents an unattainable standard for women to fit, one devoid of any flaws that make us human. A popular belief spearheaded by cosmetic companies and advertisers is that women are meant to appear perfect and must have a certain figure, certain hair, wear certain clothes or makeup and behave a certain way. Women striving to achieve these goals leave behind natural beauty and buy into the fake and augmented beauty created by today’s market.
Models’ images in the media are photoshopped and airbrushed to remove blemishes and wrinkles and make them appear unrealistically skinny. These are presented as
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standards for women to achieve, when in reality it is impossible for most women to attain these ideals. Women see these images in magazines, in television and on billboards on a daily basis. In Britney Spears’ recent music video, entitled “Work B**ch”, the editing team used computer imaging to remove weight from her body. Millions of young women viewed this video and were presumably unaware that this had been done. Women become embarrassed or distressed that they don’t measure up to these ideal images and thus, alter themselves to fit them as closely as they can. The cultural ideas put forth by media and advertisers present “natural” to be underweight women with a large bust, perfect skin with no wrinkles and not having grey hair. This is not how the majority of women look, and so these models are doctored, and airbrushed, and have surgery done and dye their hair. This is all to create the image of how women are supposed to look, rather than how they do. Women are subjected to these standards on a daily basis in media and this has become the bar that has been set for them to reach. Countless women in the US read magazines, watch television, and see advertisements in which these standards are pressed onto them. They see younger models, in professional lighting and they know that they are not as perfect looking, when in reality the models themselves don’t even meet these absurd expectations. Maxim, a men’s magazine, recently published their annual list of “Maxim’s Hot 100”, the hundred women voted to be the most attractive in the US. Maxim itself unwittingly pointed out the absurdity of these standards by describing the top ranked woman as having “impossibly long legs”. Promulgating these images in men’s magazines serves to give men unrealistic expectations of what women should look like. Although women do not generally read men’s magazines, this example shows how the cultural ideal conveyed to men, serves to put additional pressure on women who seek to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex. Coming into contact with and being subjected to these ideals and “perfect” images attacks women’s self esteem.
In a study conducted by Dove cosmetics, it was found that only a shocking four percent of women consider themselves beautiful. The study saw FBI-trained sketch artist, Gil Zamora, sketch women according to their own description and that of a stranger. Zamora had his back to the woman and they were separated by a curtain. He placed the completed drawings side-by-side for the woman to see. In every instance, the description, as told by the stranger, was more flattering than the woman’s description of herself. Women’s magazines are filled with suggestions and tutorials about how to “look better” all the while showing these unattainable physiques and standards. These magazines and ads plant the idea in women’s minds that they are not good enough, that they need this improvement and that they will be happier once they get it. Women turn to these magazines as a source of help and guidance in trying to alter their appearance to more closely resemble these images, yet in doing so, see more and more of these “perfect” images and feel less and less secure about
themselves. A survey conducted by the Harris poll on behalf of the Renfrew Center Foundation in February found that forty four percent of American women feel unattractive when they don’t put makeup on. The purpose of makeup is to enhance or minimize features and cover up and conceal flaws, and in doing so, the natural skin. The makeup industry spends liberally to convince women that their features need improving. In earlier times, as people got older they naturally greyed, and this was more or less acceptable and understandable but now it would be hard-pressed to find an older woman who would feel comfortable with grey hair. People feel that their job security could be jeopardized by not looking as young and that they would need to dye their hair to retain status at the workplace. Advertisers relentlessly push ways to “look younger fast” and seek to press the notion that looking more mature is not favorable for women. Women are pressured to dye their hair late into their sixties even when it is perfectly natural to have grey hair yet they shy away from it. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery “The demand for plastic surgery procedures increased almost 9% last year… Women had almost 8.6 million cosmetic procedures, 92 % of the total… Nonsurgical procedures accounted for 83% of the total number of procedures performed representing 39% of total expenditures… The number of cosmetic procedures for women increased over 164% from 1997. The top five surgical procedures for women were: breast augmentation, liposuction, breast reduction, abdominoplasty, and eyelid surgery.” This is a phenomenal example of how women are not comfortable with themselves or confident with their current appearance. Marketing companies show these “perfect” women with the skinny waists and large busts and so women who want to achieve this “perfect” image of how women “should” look, turn towards changing their body unnaturally. Women are made to feel insecure by these advertisements and unnatural representations of what they are supposed to strive towards. Women continue to try to rise to these standards and so they continue to exist and to try and feel accepted and comfortable, women will still conform to these ideals. Women will never be able to be content with who they are because society won’t let them. These empires built upon women’s insecurities have established these standards for women and will continue to uphold them.
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.
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.
From the moment we wake up in the morning media is at our finger tips. As our day goes on we cannot escape all the visual media. One image after another a person’s self-confidence is either boosted or destroyed. Through the use of Photoshop a picture can be altered to get the perfect figure, skin, and hair, but when is the line drawn, when has it gone too far. Hailey Magee takes a stand when it comes to the ethics behind Photoshop in the world of beauty, “In this “Ethical Inquiry” we explore the ethics of digitally altering photos of individuals so as to make the subjects appear “more beautiful” in alignment with cultural standards of beauty”. Shiela Reaves, Jacqueline Bush Hitchon, Sung–Yeon parks, and Gi Woong Yun agree with Hailey Magee in the discussion of photo manipulation in beauty and fashion. “This study is concerned with the moral dilemma that stems from the digital manipulation of magazine ads to render models thinner. Exposure to the “thin ideal” has been linked to such damaging psychological responses as body dissatisfaction, loss of self-esteem, and to eating disorders”. Women and men are constantly affected by exposure to models that achieve the unrealistic beauty outcome of the media. Using the theories of social comparison and cultivation/ media literacy we are able to explain why photo manipulation makes women take on the thin-ideal. In the media driven world photo manipulation has become an accepted practice since it increases sales and fulfils the “thin ideal”, but the emotional and physical damage it has on women is catastrophic.
The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ...
In modern society there is more and more digital editing without the knowledge of consumers. Currently there are various reasons for why women develop negative body image, low-self-esteem and eating disorders. According to Naomi Wolf in her novel “Beauty Myth”, one of the many reasons women obtain concerns with their bodies is due to the universal images of young female bodies presented through advertisements in fashion magazines. Advertisements in magazines are altering and shaping the desires of men and women. Magazines sell viewers images of beautiful, skinny, flawless confident young women. When people are constantly antagonized with the magazine industry’s ideal of “perfect beauty” the viewer’s then, subconsciously believe these images to be true and begin to form biases about what they themselves should look like and what other people must also look like. People who view magazines get mislead by advertisers because they are unaware that all the images displayed are digitally altered through Photoshop and airbrushing. Today’s magazines are formed completely on false ideals of flawless beauty and unattainable body images, to prevent women and men from falling victim to the magazine’s deceitful images we as a society need to become aware and educate ourselves.
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.
...r young, impressionable mind will have been exposed to more than 77,000 advertisements, according to an international study. Last week, it confirmed the link between the images of female perfection that dominate the media and increasing cases of low self-esteem among young women..” (Shields,2007). The propaganda techniques such as liking, sex appeal, and celebrity endorsements are used in advertisements constantly. Commercials on television, billboards, magazines, and various other advertisement types are everywhere you look in America, and sadly it has become very important for women of all ages to try to be perfect. We come into contact with these messages every day, and the beauty industry is getting bigger and bigger. Propaganda has molded our worldly perception of beauty and will only continue to hurt us and gain from our lack of self-esteem if we allow it to.
From social media, television, magazines and billboards, there is never a lot of diversification among the faces that grace the media on a daily basis. As a community, many people have become conditioned to believe that these women are what society has normalized as “beautiful.” Their body’s and faces are “perfect” and people have begun to try to emulate these women to become what society believes as “beautiful” too. According researchers at various universities, “Media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin (Yamamiya, 2004). Although, even thought this women think that by altering their bodies to societies standards, they are actually contributing to the fact that “an idealization of thinness is positively correlated with body image dissatisfaction” (Yamamiya, 2004). In this study, one hundred and twenty-three white women at Old Dominion University were exposed to media featuring women who were considered to be “beautiful.” They were first told to fill out Thompson’s questionnaire and then they the women were spilt into two groups where there were shown the pieces of media. The study should that individuals in the control group had higher internalization of the media than the individuals in the alternate group. Ultimately, researchers found that the only what to alter the way the way that
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,
Extra Credit Essay Winner of the 2000 Academy Award for Best Picture, American Beauty stands out and remains with audiences for it’s exploration of multiple social issues and because it’s very accessible to the common audience member. American Beauty follows the Burnhams, a middle class family each dealing with their own issues in suburbia. The film resonates with audiences so well because it hits so many different issues, in such a seamless way that most viewers can relate to it on some level. All points of the plot offer another opportunity for the audience to build an empathetic bond with one or multiple characters. What makes this film so unique is that it tackles these issues through the different perspectives of each family member, Lester the middle aged father of the family, Carolyn the middle aged mother, and Jane the teenaged daughter.
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.
Image is everything in today’s society as women are increasingly putting more emphasis on their appearance. Women today are growing more conscious of how others perceive their outward appearance. Even in a relatively Oriental society like Singapore, it does not come as a surprise to see women going to Botox clinics during lunchtime hours to receive their dosage of Botox, a chemical used to paralyse certain muscles to prevent wrinkles. Furthermore, beauty advertisements nowadays feature women models that are barely out of their teens. Even with older models, they are usually models featuring in slimming centres or skin improvement advertisements.
What my innocent little heart didn’t know though, is that not even makeup can make a person look like those women. Those women don’t even look like those women. This fantasy that I had built up in my eight-year-old head about magically turning into a perfect, airbrushed version of myself was not a realistic one. As it turns out, the figures in those magazines are not beautiful people; they are normal, ordinary human beings that were morphed into Western culture’s idea of beauty through the able abilities of Photoshop and makeup. How Westerners generally visualize beauty is simple to describe: narrow waist, large breasts, tanned skin free of blemishes, defined cheekbones, and an overall hourglass figure. Now that I am older and have experience with using beauty products, I know that this perception of beauty is still lusted after by almost all women.
First, women spend huge amounts of money to improve their looks. So here we are unable to escape the reality that we can never be flawless or blemish free; moreover, as long as women have the belief that all greatness de...