What is Beauty: Unrealistic and Unobtainable For centuries mankind has unsuccessfully attempted to define beauty. Greek philosophers, including Plato, tried to define beauty as if it were as simple as any other law in nature. However this cannot be so because the idea of what is beautiful has varied throughout cultures and the ages. In the 1800s women who were pale and rather plump were considered objects of desire; but in today’s society, desirable women are slender and tan, among other things. The fact is that today, beauty is as unobtainable as it is indefinable. All of today’s supermodels, as seen in millions of advertisements, have been modified, airbrushed, and photoshopped. Women desiring this beauty have turned to various sources of false remedies, spending thousands of dollars, in hope that they too can be beautiful. The media has twisted and warped our ideal definition of beauty into something that does not exist naturally and is simply inaccessible. Our brain naturally is drawn to certain things that are clean, smooth, symmetrical, things it sees as beautiful. This is one way many have tried to define beauty. Mary Carole McCauley, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, in her article "Beauty and the Brain" (2010) asserts that the human brain is "hard wired" to view certain objects as beautiful based on shape, color, and arrangement. McCauley talks to the John Hopkins University and The Walters Art Museum to discuss their research on the brain's responses to beauty. These organizations are setting up an experiment in order to see how the brain defines things as beautiful. "Gallery guests pick up a clipboard and put on a pair of 3-D glasses. They examine a series of 25 small drawings based on abstract sculptures by renow... ... middle of paper ... ... she was enhanced, modified, airbrushed, and computerized, creating a false, unobtainable beauty. The "media truly distorts the truth and instills in women this false hope because, in essence, they will live their lives never truly attaining this ideal physical appearance." Though many women are aware that such beauty is unreal, they will still strive to obtain it because it is the object that their peers judge them with. They feel unaccepted until they can feel beautiful. Because mankind’s perception of beauty is so unobtainable, many women have resorted to cosmetic surgery in order to feel beautiful. Other women, who cannot afford surgery, resort to eating disorders. All of which are extremely unhealthy. Society has twisted our views on what should and shouldn’t be acceptable, beauty no being the only issue. However, beauty is the issue felt most by people today.
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 today society, beauty in a woman seems to be the measured of her size, or the structure of her nose and lips. Plastic surgery has become a popular procedure for people, mostly for women, to fit in social class, race, or beauty. Most women are insecure about their body or face, wondering if they are perfect enough for the society to call the beautiful; this is when cosmetic surgery comes in. To fix what “needed” to be fixed. To begin with, there is no point in cutting your face or your body to add or remove something most people call ugly. “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery” explored the desire of human to become beyond perfection by the undergoing plastic surgery. The author, Camille Pagalia, took a look how now days how Americans are so obsessed
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.
Schiller takes the position that his age is lacking something, meaning that it is missing a certain something that is essential for all human beings. In other words, the "part’’ is missing the "whole’’. Friedrich Schiller on the Sixth Letter of his text "On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters’’ gives an example of a culture, which was not wanting. This culture, the Hellenic Greeks, seemed to manage a perfect balance between art and wisdom, and their connection to nature, for they realized art and wisdom were not something of their own that detached them from nature, but that they were the road itself, which one had to take to find his way towards nature. Schiller states this differently. "For they were wedded [the Greeks] to all the delights of art and all the dignity of wisdom, without however, like us, falling a prey to their seduction’’ (31). Schiller believes that not only do these parts of human nature come together to create a better society but they mesh through art to connect man's soul and mind. Schiller’s philosophical fascination with aesthetics goes beyond a critic of art or even a philosophical discussion of the Beautiful or the Sublime; Schiller seems to be concerned with Man’s realization of freedom and of himself. Schiller fails to provide a clear analysis of the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime. His writings may allow the read to conceive the aesthetic merely as a means to a higher end, the moral state. Meaning that instead of regarding the aesthetic education as an end in itself, he invokes man to use aesthetics to try to reach the ideal. Since his work is an aesthetic object by virtue of its effect on the reader, it invokes feelings and leaves the reader free, it is also a s...
Every 62 minutes, someone dies from an eating disorder. Every minute, someone attempts suicide. These are the horrifying results of society's constant pressure on everyone to look and act perfectly. Without action, these statistics might only increase over generations. The world would be a much better place if no one felt poorly about themselves enough to change their looks. When people are applauded when they alter their appearance in an extreme way, it teaches everyone that it is normal to maul and change themselves. As a result, both mental and physical disorders occur. If plastic surgery, eating disorders, and other attempts to change appearance no longer become standard in the world today, the little girl looking at herself in the mirror would no longer see herself as ugly or fat, instead pretty as the way she is. The teen crying herself to bed each night thinking of her complexion instead smiles to herself thinking of all the accomplishments she's made. The young women no longer feels the need to starve herself or tear her face apart in order to feel beautiful. Instead, society encourages her to be herself, and be proud of the spectacular looks with which she was
Wolf, Naomi, Ed. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. Random House, 1991.Web. 28 March. 2014.
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...
It also pressures women to constantly try and strive towards this ‘beauty myth’ the media have constructed and make men’s expectations of women’s beauty unattainable, however this is how the media has represented women as for years, Bodyshockers and 10 Years Younger, are just two examples of this. To this extent cosmetic surgery could be considered to be an obligation rather than a choice due to how the media has represented this now normalized technology of science.
In today’s society it seems as though women are forced into being something that they are not. Women see pictures in magazines and they believe to be accepted by everyone else they need to look like an air-brushed image. I believe that some of the feelings from “The Beauty Myth” are still true in today’s society, but on the other hand I believe that it should not have to be this way. I believe that women’s feeling that they have to look like something they are not are brought on by advertisements like this one and many other things.
As stated by ‘The Duchess’, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford’s famous quote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” As a result, beauty can describe as an inspiring view present in everything that can be seen. To begin, beauty can be viewed in a building as large and extravagant as the white house to the small hometown market or even in the sight of a single flower to a field filled with a million flowers. Also, beauty can be seen in the sunrise over the peaks of the mountains and also in the sunset glowing across a calm lake surrounded by the bright colors of the fall trees. Furthermore, people have physical beauty, which can be found in a person’s features, figure, or complexion. In the poem “Beauty & Dress” by Robert Herrick he explains the beauty he sees in his wife. Herrick states,
Everybody is born to be different. Therefore shouldn’t we all have a different perspective on what is “beautiful”? Our body is what makes us who we are and a person different from everyone else. At one point or another, we have all looked in the mirror and wish to change the way we look. Why can’t we be happy with the way we look? Many believe that the media is to blame. Unattainable ideals of beauty presented in the media are creating problems in society. The messages that media sends out to viewers are setting unrealistic standards for both men and women; this is causing emotional and physical problems for people. To help end this problem, advertisers and the fashion industry should make an effort to present models, a healthy weight, but parents should teach their children to criticize the media. These insecurities are creating serious problems for millions of people across the nation struggle with an unhealthy body image. each day.
...ibillion dollar industry of beauty. She argues that “Scientific studies have proven that human beings are hard-wired to respond more positively to beautiful people”. She also cites a recent report published by the University of Bristol which states Neanderthals wore “makeup” as long as 50,000 years ago, all in hopes of attracting a mate with the chance for successful breeding (Zilhao 2009).
Beauty can be used to describe a vast array of things—a baby’s first laugh, a trek through the Grand Canyon, Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. At first glance, these so-called “beautiful” items seem disconnected. Yet oddly enough, they are all considered beautiful. So what exactly classifies an object as beautiful? To even some of the world’s greatest philosophers, the idea of beauty remains an enigma. Is beauty a universal concept able to be defined or is it strictly perceived in the mind of the individual? While ideas of beauty are to some degree a matter of personal preference, they are also influenced by the social norms surrounding us; thus, beauty exists in the culturally-conditioned eye of the beholder.
Beauty is a huge thing in the world today. Looks are the first thing someone notices about you and it is what they judge you on. It is just how our society is today. Unfortunately, it is what the world has come to. The biggest extreme that someone can go to to enhance their natural beauty is to have plastic surgery. People are choosing to have plastic surgery due to the influence of celebrities, selfies, bullying, how important beauty is in society and the health benefits of it as well.