What Are The Media's Double Standards

In the United States today, we are completely immersed in media. We are constantly bombarded by images that set our standards of what is considered beautiful; these standards are generally unattainable for the majority of people. Since these messages are unavoidable, we fixate on becoming “beautiful” to the point of obsession, which can prove to be very dangerous.
There is a “double standard” in the amount of pressure that the media exerts on males and females, which results in a disparity in the way each sex is affected by their beauty standards. Firstly, the media creates very strict rules of beauty for women. According to these rules, women should be extremely thin, tall, blonde, tan, and curvy (ideally a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio, as dictated

by biology), just to name a few. Obviously, many of these characteristics are traits that women are born with that cannot be easily changed, so these women cannot achieve the ultimate level of beauty. The few women who do fit this description are lauded for their attractiveness. This small percentage of women dominate television, movies, magazines, and other forms of media because they are considered “ideal” and generally better than women who cannot achieve high levels of beauty. This leads to a lot of stress for “normal women” because it creates immense pressure to abide by these rules of attractiveness. For men, on the other hand, these pressures are present, but not to the extent that they are for women. There are rules for attractiveness for men, such as being tall and muscular, but the media does portray men who do not fit this description. This lessens the pressure on average American men to adhere as tightly to beauty standards as women have to, because men do not have only one idea of what is considered attractive.
The intense pressures of the media have notably negative impacts on female body image, particularly in adolescent females. As an adolescent female myself, I have struggled with my own body issues and watched many of my friends struggle as well. Many of my friends have been suffered eating disorders while trying to achieve the thinness that is praised by American culture. A few even ended up in the hospital, which demonstrates the lengths that females will go to in trying to achieve beauty and how dangerous this quest can be. Even after recovering from an eating disorder, body image issues do not go away, and often plague women throughout their entire lives.