Does Body Image Affect People's Perception Of Beauty?

“Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep” (teenink.com, nfic2000). We hear these kind of sayings every day, and “yet we live in a society that seems to contradict this very idea”(teenink.com, nfic2000). If looks don’t matter, why is every photograph that is posted in the media, airbrushed to hide the flaws that person has? If looks don’t matter, why are so many young women and men harming themselves because they’re unhappy with the way their body looks? It’s because our society promotes this certain body image as being beautiful and perfect, and it’s far from the average woman’s size, 12. This unrealistic standard of beauty that women have to deal with everyday gives them a goal that’s impossible to reach, and the effects are devastating,

These unrealistic images shape people's perception of beauty - especially women who are much more susceptible to the pressure caused by the “perfect woman” in magazines and on TV. Although the female gender has succeeded in overcoming many obstacles, teenage girls still compare themselves to the girls on the Seventeen magazine cover, and to the Pantene commercials, where Selena Gomez is the face of “flawless” hair and skin that every girl wishes to have. Advertisements set unrealistic standards for beauty. Though “many argue that Photoshop is no worse than makeup or lighting, makeup cannot change a woman’s figure or the size of her eyes; makeup enhances the beauty, it doesn't change it”. Teenage girls look at these pictures and “feel as if that's how they are meant to look” when in reality nobody actually looks like that, not even the model herself looks like the photo of herself because it has been edited to perfection. There has been a rise in cases of anorexia and poor body image and this substantial rise has been blamed on the media’s unrealistic portrayals of the “perfect” female. Girls look at these images and the only thing that runs through their heads is to wish that they can look like these models. They want beauty so badly they would be willing to do anything to achieve this idealistic representation of beauty; however, this is beauty is

Without even realizing it, we come to expect flawlessness as much from models and celebrities as we do from ourselves. Many campaigns have been started among companies, for example Dove started a campaign for “real beauty” with woman of all shapes and sizes, as well as H&M and Aeri have now started using plus size mannequins and untouched and unedited photos as advertisement for their companies. Anti-Photoshop advocates have been working hard for years to put some kind of regulation in place for excessive use, and it looks like they are finally getting somewhere. A new bill called “The Truth in Advertising Act, and it has been in the Congress, it promises to regulate Photoshop in advertisements to maintain a certain level of realism, the bill came into existence because of the strong research that clearly shows that the dissemination of unrealistic body standards has been linked to eating disorders … and have a particularly destructive health effect on children and teenagers” (congress.gov/bill). Though it is still unclear of how the bill intends to regulate the use of Photoshop, one suggestion is placing a disclosure label on advertisements indicating that the model’s appearance in the image has been altered. In Europe, this kind of Photoshop regulation have been in place for