White Washed World

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Recommended: The adverse effect of advertising on women

Beauty is often described as being in the eye of the beholder. However in modern western culture, the old adage really should be beauty is in the eye of the white makeup artist, hair stylist, photographer, photo shop editor, and advertiser. Beauty and body ideals are packaged and sold to the average American so that we can achieve vocational, financial, social, and recreational successes. Mass media and advertising has affected the way that women perceive and treat their own bodies as well as their self-concept. Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic images and hold themselves to the impossible beauty standards. First, we will explore the role of media in the lives of women and then the biggest body image issue from a diversity stand point, media whitewashing.
Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...

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...member that negative body image can affect anyone and it should not be overlooked.

Works Cited

Altabe, M. (1996). Ethnicity and Body Image: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. Tampa, Florida: University of South Florida.
Beauty Redefined. (2011, February 1). Beauty Whitewashed: How White Ideals Exclude Women of Color. Retrieved from Beauty Redefined: http://www.beautyredefined.net/beauty-whitewashed-how-white-ideals-exclude-women-of-color/
Elias, M. (2006, July 24). Race Doesn't Reflect On Women's Poor Body Image. USA Today.
Hesse-Biber, S. N., Howling, S. A., Leavy, P., & Lovejoy, M. (March 2004). Racial Identity and the Development of Body Image Issues among African American Adolescent Girls. The Qualitative Report, 9(1), 49-79.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2012). USA Quick Facts. Retrieved from U.S. Census Bureau: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

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