Beauty's Illusion

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Recommended: Effects of media on perceptions of body image

What is beauty? Beauty, as defined by Google dictionary, is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight. In society today, beauty is perceived as an exterior appearance of one rather the interior characteristics of a person. Society is bombarded by these spurious ideas which the people have failed to realize that what TV, billboards, or magazines portray are not fact, but instead a pre-conceived notion of what “beauty” is. Beauty is, for example, being thin or caking on makeup on your face. Also, in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the creature was seen as a grotesque phenomenon in which the people were greatly frightened by. Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the “hideous” creature, had been concocting a plan to bring a body to life. At the end of his experiment, the creature had risen to life, which frightened the creator by the appearance, causing him to stow away. In turn, society had judged the creature by his appalling exterior instead of his interior. Society is essentially creating an illusion of what the people infer beauty as.
Firstly, many women and men today are categorizing what beauty quintessentially is. Fostering a positive image of ones’ self can be a nerve wracking thing to do in the twenty-first century because of the amount of media editing an image is going through. Thousands and thousands of pictures of men and women are being photo-shopped in order to be in magazines, billboards or any advertisements so it can be appealing to the public eye.“ The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American female model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds.” (Depleting Body Image 2) As well as, many men go to the extremes ...

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...le believe being skinny can give an appearance of beauty. Another attribute can be the caking of makeup on your skin. Society fails to realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Advertisements are the many consequences of people wanting to alter themselves in wanting to be beautiful. If society looked deeper in one’s interior than exterior, the alterations of one’s self would not be persistent. So what is beauty?

Works Cited

Elizabeth, Heubeck. "Girls and Body Image: Media's Effect, How Parents Can Help." WebMD. WebMD. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
Maguire, Kathryn. "Influence of Magazines on College-Age Females’ BodyImage." Depleting Body Image:. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
"Statistics." -Women. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
“Jessica sparks a body image revolution.” Newcastle Herald, The (includes the Central Coast Herald) 06 Sept. 2013: 53. Newspaper Source Plus. Web 13 Jan. 2014

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