Solution to the Media’s Negative View of Women

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In today’s society, the media has become a big influential source for the ideal body-image of mankind. The media paints this vivid picture of a typical woman as beautiful, petite, big chest and slim-wasted with an admiring smile. Although the media portray women as one, their reasons become valid and realistic rather than unrealistic and unattainable to the human eye.In reality,there are women of all shapes and sizes that do not possess these flamboyant features and this is where dissatisfaction takes place.This reaction to the media brought upon eating disorders for actresses, celebrities and normal women who are trying to obtain media standards of women resulting as an extreme hazard to their health. By creating a solution to these problems, women would learn to become satisfied with their body-image and would develop a positive self-image through the process. Despite the negativity portrayed of women by the media, there are some advertisers trying to bring upon a more positive overview for females. Commercials should be more versatile, diverse and realistic. For instance, Cover Girl commercials show that women can be beautiful no matter what size or ethnicity they are. Fruit of the Loom commercials portray women of various sizes and ethnicity to promote flawlessness to sell their product. Dove epitomize that wrinkles are magnificent. Shown by Bernadette Wegenstein’s book, Getting Under the Skin: The Body and Media Theory,she emphasizes on advertisement and breaks them down for their true meaning. For instance, a 2001 Merkur Advertisement depicts a child holding a woman’s nipple to illustrate and promote a support in children motor skills (Wegenstein 86). Another example would be, an Oil of Olay advertisement, whereas, inste... ... middle of paper ... ...give them the power to care more than their male counterparts. With that being said, studies have shown that a good number of women are dissatisfied with their body in some way contributing in poor self-image. It’s just like Claudia Barriga, Michael Shapiro and Rayna Jhaveri said, “… our judgments of the realism of media images of women are biased not only by the over-representation of thin women, but by the gender role context in which they are presented (139). The media is one of the highly influential sources that give reasons to this problem. Their unrealistic views of women create a sense of perfectionism that is unfeasible. By making the necessary alterations in advertisement, women would appear beautiful, alluring and desirable.Instead of women feeling uncomfortable in their own bodies, these solutions would create safe, healthyself and body image for women.

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