Women receive the majority of cosmetic surgery. The second leading surgical procedure is liposuction (first being breast augmentation). In 2009, women accounted for 91 percent of all cosmetic procedures. Since 1997, surgical procedures increased 67 percent in women.
Whether standing in line at the movies, grocery store, or waiting in traffic, sex is being sold. A quick glance at a magazine cover or billboard, and the mind is stimulated by an attractive body . An image of perfection raises personal questions about physique. Our culture has created an image manufactured and manipulated by advertisers to coincide beauty with their goods and/or services. The general public, being the most obedient flock to the Sheppard’s advertisements, follows the every whim of the ever changing market place. Corralled through fields of diet pills and meadows of this weeks latest “minimum work, maximum results“, exercise equipment. When this doesn’t work to carve that body into what graces the most recent cover of People, many give up, and call the doctor. Because it’s the easiest way to become the assumed tone, beautiful person.
This assessment of beauty is essential in causing women to feel insufficient. They are left staring at models in lingerie with enhanced figures, manipulated by an airbrush, computer, or surgery . Men are for the most part attracted visually. This is well known by advertisers, so they use this pushing women to purchase the cosmetic brand that endorses the model their husband can’t stop drooling over in the checkout line’s magazine rack. There aren’t many women that I know who will leave home without painting their face‘s. They purchase clothes to accentuate the curvy figure, again paralleling themselves to...
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Beauty is only skin deep. This phrase is losing its meaning as more and more women run to the doctor’s office to tighten up. There is a sense of shallowness about most cosmetic procedures. A personal choice that is created by a feeling of never being good enough, when really the majority are. So when you stand in the room naked with black lines and dots all over your body, staring at before and after pictures, and reading success stories. Ask yourself if its all really necessary, and if significant other in your life really wants you to suffer through the pain of surgery. It’s not the billboards or women in make-up adds that are attracted to you it’s the men around you. A few women I know had liposuction, and took excess fat and injected it into their breasts’. Sure they a slightly more curvy yet, I don’t find them anymore or less attractive.
Beauty is a cruel mistress. Every day, Americans are bombarded by images of flawless women with perfect hair and smooth skin, tiny waists and generous busts. They are presented to us draped in designer clothing, looking sultry or perky or anywhere in between. And although the picture itself is alluring, the reality behind the visage is much more sinister. They are representations of beauty ideals, sirens that silently screech “this is what a woman is supposed to look like!” Through means of media distribution and physical alteration, technology has created unrealistic beauty ideals, resulting in distorted female body images.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
In every magazine and on every page there is another source of depression, another reason to skip a meal or two or a reason to be self-conscious. In present society people are overly focused and determined on the perfect body that both the fashion and advertising industry portray and promote. Through diction, pictures and celebrities presented they are trying to convey a message to their viewers that is “suppose” to be used as a source of motivation and determination. The message they are truly conveying is self-conscious thoughts, depression, and the promotion of eating disorders. It is estimated that millions of people struggle with depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem; concentrated on dissatisfaction with their body image (Ballaro). The advertisement and fashion industry are conveying a message that creates an internal battle for their viewers, though they should be creating a fire in their viewers that provides motivation to be healthier, take better care of themselves and a source of inspiration for style.
Body sculpting is a fast growing obsession and profession in many parts of today’s self-absorbed world, in which the importance of appearance is overly emphasized. Quickly obtaining muscle, mass, and ultimately reaching ones desired physique becomes hard to do when the standards for a perfectly sculpted body in todays society is becoming harder and harder to achieve. Advertisements using sex appeal rose from 15 to 27 percent in a 20 years period (Pappas). These advertisements constantly push images of photo shopped, unrealistically fit models, pressuring society to aim for unrealistic shapes and sizes. Paralleling the rise in sexy advertisements is the growth of sports products and nutritional supplement vending retail web sites.
Cosmetic Surgery is the procedure done to restore or improve one’s physical appearance. The use of surgery to have an actualization of a want tends to be unneeded since it is not in line with the purpose of reestablishing what was lost or damaged. Although cosmetic surgery intends to be used for restoration purposes, many people have abused it for the sake of vanity. Cosmetic surgery also has good and bad effects on the person in many different aspects.
In society today, people look at beauty as a tall, skinny model or a tan, muscular man. It has brain washed the world to believe that in order to look beautiful, they must look like the images that are seen in the media. Today’s celebrities who are famous for their appearance also encourage the belief that thin is beautiful. These images are all over the media right now and have been for many years. With all of these images that are seen everywhere, a person feels obligated to look just like the people of Hollywood so they turn to cosmetic and/or weight loss surgery. Although cosmetic surgery can improve one’s self-image, it can also have a lot of disadvantages which can lead to many risks, even death.
Due to the risk involved, liposuction is not the answer to having a great body. Liposuction is one of the most popular forms of cosmetic surgery today. Those seeking the perfect body seldom understand the risks involved in this invasive surgery. One of the risks of liposuction is that fat cells can grow back in the area where the procedure took place. Another risk associated with this procedure is over-aggressive fat removal. Poor work performed by untrained doctors poses many problems in itself. Pulmonary Thrombosus, Lidocaine Toxicidy, and imbalances of bodily fluids also are serious risks associated with liposuction, not to mention the ultimate danger with any surgery, death. What exactly is this procedure for which so many people are willing to take the chance?
Body image is among of the top reasons for developing psychological conditions in the country based upon the bias of what is shown through the screen. Since the nineteen-nineties an alarming trend has come to pass as a result in the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States, to oppose this the exact opposite became popular to become skeletal in appearance with bones showing naturally through the skin. Becoming an accepted notion to starve in order to attain this new angelic appearance, rising above the notion of overly plentiful food by not eating until the body became undernourished. Even the naturally thin models were not skinny enough trying to appeal to this new craze. The resulting effects became depression in this pursuit of perfection, with competition becoming higher among women with finding mates, with this idealized persona becoming the image to men of what women should
In conclusion it is possible to see how the media promotes a physical and psychological disease among women through the usage of unrealistic body images as it urges them to change their bodies, buy “enhancing” products, and redefine their opinions. Such statements may appear to be ridiculous, but for young women who are seeking to perfect their body according to how the media portrays “good looks” it is the basis for corruption. Confidence, contentment and healthy living are the keys to a perfect and unique body image and no amount of money can advertise or sell as genuine a treatment as this.
Nowadays, since the number of procedures increases, cosmetic surgery has rapidly developed all over the world. According to an annual report of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) in 2015, the United States is the biggest market of cosmetic surgery in the world. Near 16 million cosmetic procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2015, with the five most common surgeries being breast augmentation, nose reshaping, eyelid surgery, liposuction and tummy tuck (“Plastic Surgery Procedures”).
The concept of “beauty” is something that everyone feels, thinks, or wants, in order to fit society’s standards. In today’s society, we are often faced with the unrealistic ideals of what beauty is. Due to society’s constant portraying of unrealistic beauty ideals, this reinforces a negative influence upon women’s idea of beauty, resulting in a negative impact in their confidence, and self-esteem, which leads to others, specifically women to be manipulated by society’s corrupted outlook of what beauty is. To add onto this issue, we are constantly surrounded by sources of this negative influence in our everyday lives, including magazines, television, advertisements, and so on. However, women specifically, are more prone to be victims of this negative effect, thus will have more pressure upon themselves to match society’s idea of “beauty,” which includes unrealistic and sometimes unattainable beauty standards. Women especially, can sometimes be so deeply manipulated by society’s unrealistic ideals of what is beautiful, such that it’s possible that they don’t even realize it Furthermore, in order to do so, women often will receive negative impacts rather than positive impacts, such as in their confidence and self-esteem. The negative effects of society’s beauty ideals also lead women to have an overall corrupted idea of what is “beautiful.” Society creates unrealistic ideals of beauty towards women through the media by creating an unrealistic image of what women should look like to be considered beautiful. Men negatively affect women’s idea of beauty by using the unrealistic beauty standards exposed by society which further pressures women to try to fit society’s idea of what is beautiful. Beauty pageants negatively affect women’s ov...
From a young age, women are taught that to be successful and happy, they must reach a certain standard of beauty first. Rather than grow up thinking that the most important asset a woman can have is her self, young girls are taught through advertisements that their value rests on their appearance. This is an immense social issue. Today, being a successful woman means wearing a sexy outfit that shows just the right amount of cleavage and curve. It means turning heads everywhere she goes- men looking after her in lust, women looking after her in envy.
I would like to begin with the fact that women have always been known to dedicate their time to beauty. Those who are devoted to their appearance most often believe that beauty brings power, popularity, and success. Women believe this, because they grow up reading magazines that picture beautiful women in successful environments; not to mention they are popular models and world famous individuals. Beautiful women are no longer just a priority for most advertising, but we have become a walking target for the working class employers. It is documented that better-looking attorneys earn more than others after five years of practice, which was an effect that grew with experience (Biddle, 172). We cannot overlook the fact that it is always the most popular and most beautiful girl who becomes homecoming-queen or prom-queen. While these are possible positive effects of the "beauty myth," the negative results of female devotion to beauty undercut this value. These effects are that it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of time, and in the long run, it costs a lot of pain.
Throughout history there have been many claims about what is beautiful and what is not on the face and body. America’s idea of beauty in the past changed many times from the fragileness of the Steel-engraving lady to the voluptuousness of the Greek slave. The ideal beauty in America is not so different from the ideal beauty of cultures around the world and follows many of the traditions practiced throughout history. The widespread of advertisement and technology is something that’s said to be the contributing problem to the ideal women phenomenon, but I believe history and trend plays the bigger role.
The world of cosmetic surgery is one of the largest and fastest growing industries worldwide, bringing in billions of dollars each year with cosmetic procedures that both men and women are having, in order to improve their looks, self esteem, and fulfilling societies norms and values. Cosmetic surgery has been accepted in certain cultures, this is a way of expressing who the person is. In my opinion cosmetic surgery is a good thing for individuals to pursue. As cosmetic surgery improves mental and physical well being, cosmetic surgeries through media, as cometic surgeries are improving health related issues, and creating opportunities for people.