Beauty in the Media

Beauty in the Media: Unattainable Beauty- Self-Improvement or Self-Destruction?

Sexy lingerie, skimpy clothing, high heels, and lots of skin; this is what can be seen walking down any street, flipping through any magazine, browsing online, or shopping for groceries. Everywhere a person turns women’s bodies are being graphically used to sell a vast variety of products. Sex sells is the mantra of the advertising world and why would it not be when the use of sexual images dramatically, and provable increases sales. Sex has become the selling point of a product, rather than the value of the product or service itself. Beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder, it is a set standard that can only be achieved by living up to impossible standards. Women struggle to change their attitudes, their looks, and their morals all in an effort to conform to a exceedingly high standard that through years of watching these images on television, and seeing them in magazines have become normalized to the point where, often unconsciously, they are accepted ideas, values, and standards; for women far more than for men looks are crucial and more defining and it is hard to achieve and maintain the image that media has defined as attractive, sexy, or desirable and the media promotes this through an continual barrage of visual cues.

In the ad shown above the manufactures are promoting their product using familiar advertising tactics. What the viewer sees of the woman is not much as the viewer cannot see the woman’s full body; the over tone of the ad suggests she is wearing little or nothing other than her stiletto heels perfectly accentuating her long legs. Her legs are seductively spread as if to suggest she is open to any prospect that might come he...

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... modification—and that the female body is merely an object to be perfected. Jean Kilbourne argues that the overwhelming presence of media images of painfully thin women means that real women’s bodies have become invisible in the mass media. The real tragedy, Kilbourne concludes, is that many women internalize these stereotypes, and judge themselves by the beauty industry's standards. Women learn to compare themselves to other women, and to compete with them for male attention. This focus on beauty and desirability "effectively destroys any awareness and action that might help to change that climate”. Sex and beauty are tools to sell more products; the poor body image and low self esteem only help to further sell items to enhance appearances; and slowly this has become an acceptable practice. The way we talk and think about appearances could use a radical makeover.