American Beauty Standards

Society has created guidelines for how women are supposed to live their lives, such as beauty standards and relationship expectations. These expectations are pushed on to women through mediums, for instance movies, television, and magazines. The expectations create a negative image for women that do not live up to these unrealistic standards. Society assumes that the romances should hold a very high role in a woman’s life. In the movie Clueless Cher sets up her teachers because she thinks it is what will make them happy. Cher also tries to set up her new friend Tai with a popular boy because she thinks that is “helping”. In “Teen Mags: How to Get a Guy, Drop 20 Pounds, and Lose Your self-Esteem” Higginbotham explains how teen magazines perpetuate societal standards. At

When Cher and Dionne met Tai the first thing they did was give her a makeover so that she could be popular. Teen magazines are one of the mediums that define beauty to young girls. There are articles about how to look prettier, how to lose weight, and most importantly the models used in the magazines set beauty standards. The models used in these magazines are “white, usually blond, and invariably skinny” (Higginbotham 89.) The standards set by these magazines make girls that don’t fit the bill feel less than girls that do as well as teach girls that do meet the standard that anyone who doesn’t isn’t worth their time. Women are also expected to be friends as long as it doesn’t come between their relationship with a man. Tai lashes out at Cher when Cher suggests that Tai and Josh do not make a good match. Tai was friends with Cher until it interfered with her love life which is what society expects of women today. These Standards are a negative because they teach women to be mean to other women which is terrible because women should always be lifting each other up instead of tearing each other