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Media influence on attitudes towards appearance
An Essay About Body Image
Media influence on attitudes towards appearance
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Have you ever felt insecure about the way your nose looks or how your face is shaped? Or even your body because you have seen celebrities such as Nicki Minaj with a "perfect body"? You’re a fool, In the real world, looks have made a huge impact on society. Celebrities have brain washed not only today's women, but also men to believe that in order for a person to look beautiful they must look like the images seen on television, movies, or models on the covers of magazines. People who are insecure about their appearances have different ways of improving the way they look, like wasting money on some dumb surgery that can cost around $4,500 – $20,000. Not only does it cost a lot of money but it can cause many health conditions. Plastic
Today in modern society, we are driven by social forces. The media plays such a pivotal role in what we buy, eat, wear, etc. that we are conditioning ourselves to fit the mold for the “perfect” or “ideal” body type. This social construct has been a pressing issue for many years regarding the negative effects it has had on the female physique, but not as much has been said on behalf of men. What negative effects do the media have on male body image? When confronted with appearance based advertisements, men are more likely to experience both physical insecurities and emotional issues related to body image. This paper will address these facets of the media’s negative
Societal constructs of bodily perfection have a massive influence on both genders and on all ages. If you look at any magazine, you will see women constantly being compared to each other, whether it is in the “who wore it better” section or in the “do’s and don’ts” part of the magazine, comparing body images and overall appearances. All parts of the media that encompasses our daily lives are especially dangerous for young and impressionable teens because they see people being torn down for trying to express themselves, and are thus taught to not only don’t look like “don’ts”, but also look like the “do’s”. This is dangerous in that women in the magazine set very high standards that teens want to emulate, no matter the cost to themselves or their health. Celebrities have the benefit of media to make them appear perfect: Photoshop and makeup artists conceal the imperfections that are often too apparent to the naked eye. Viewing celebrities as exhibiting the ideal look or as idols will, in most cases, only damage the confidence of both young teens, and adults, and warp the reality of what true “beauty” really is. It makes teens never feel truly content with themselves because they will be aiming for an ideal that is physically impossible to attain and one that doesn’t exist in the real
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
The biology of beauty is judging people on whether they are either ugly or beautiful, attractive or unattractive. When people are judging by their looks and others by the way you dress. People all over the world look at magazines saying that I wish I was this model or I should try this for my body. I wonder if this product will work for my body or skin. They say that when they are looking in the magazines and other papers that have make up or they just buy a whole bunch of products. If the products don’t work they will just spend amount of money just to be thrown in the trash but some people keep it just in case they need it again. Famous people like actors, artists, and models get injections in their faces or tell the doctors to remove any type of fat from their body just to be in a movie or show they want to look skinny and pretty in.
The media has had an increasingly destructive effect on young people who are becoming worryingly obsessed with their body image. The media is saturated in sexual imagery in which young people have to face every day. The sheer volume of sexual imagery in the media today has resulted in the vast majority of young people to become hooked on looking as near to perfection everyday by using the latest products and buying the latest fashions. This used to be enough but lately the next step to achieving perfection is cosmetic surgery. Everyone wants to look attractive, especially teenagers who are not only put under massive strain to succeed but to look beautiful and climb the ranks of the social ladder, and it seems that the only way to achieve the much desired beauty is to turn to drastic measures.
It happened suddenly, surprisingly and overnight. One day I was a child and the next I was a sex object. Catching everyone from friends to teachers, parents to siblings off guard I had grown into a women and to some, a piece of female specimen that welcomed sexual advances, harassment and jokes. The one thing that has defined my womanhood more then anything else has been my breasts. I was thrown, unarmed into this situation at the tender age of 13, since then my views have changed. At 13 I viewed my buxomest body as a toy, an advantage, but after 5 years of being viewed as a sex object my views have changed. Changing my views ever further was reading Chapter 9 in Julia Woods Gendered Lives, this chapter dealt with the stereotypical roles of both sexes. One female role that applied directly to me was the sex object stereotype. Even after 5 years of continuous harassment I feel empowered and proud of my sexuality, I love my body, including my breasts. Wood described a sex object as something that was wrong, something that shouldn’t be a part of our society. Wood inadvertently made me feel like I was harming other women by embracing my sexuality. Wrong, I say, society has made me a sex object and I will do everything I can to make society deal with what they have created.
Body image, according to Webster’s dictionary is a subjective picture of one’s own physical appearance established both by self-observation and by noting the reactions of others. Body image refers to people’s judgment about their own bodies and it is molded as people compare themselves to others. Since people are exposed to numerous media images, these media images become the foundation for some of these comparisons. When people’s judgment tell them that their bodies are subpar, they can suffer from low self-esteem, can become depressed or develop mental or eating disorders.
American’s body image expectations are unrealistic. People in America grow up seeing magazines like Sports Illustrated, People, and Cosmopolitan. Seeing these magazines of famous people with perfect bodies, skin, hair, etc. makes people believe they have to look like that. These magazines are very edited, so not even that “perfect star” looks like that. Media comes into American heads and tells them unrealistic images of how they should look, when nobody can actually looks like that. The people who fit “perfectly” into American’s body image standards are people who have had plastic surgery to look the way they do. “The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported an increase of 446% in cosmetic procedures since 1997 and an overall increase of 8% in 2007, with a 17% increase in men undertaking cosmetic surgery.” says
While many people think that cosmetic surgery can help them to reach the flawless beauty, it may be true that their actual inner illnesses or lack of confidence in themselves is still not
Flipping through the pages of Vogue's latest edition, 23 year-old Susan seems quite upset. She struggles with the thought of lacking the perfect body and delicate features in order to be considered attractive. Surprisingly, Susan is not alone in this kind of an internal struggle. In contemporary society, every other woman aspires to have the lips of Angelina Jolie and the perfect jaw line of Keira Knightley. Society today looks down upon individuals that do not fit in, whether in terms of body shape or facial attractiveness. This forces them to consider the option of 'ordering beauty.' Since cosmetic surgery is no longer a social taboo in America given its widespread popularity, more people are promoting it which ultimately affects the rest of the world due to the unwavering influence of American culture. Cosmetic surgery should be deterred in the US because it promotes the idea of valuing appearance over ability, gives rise to unrealistic expectations, and brings with it high cost to society.
Men experience ideal body standards and beauty myths similar to women. Male models are photo shopped and edited to achieve the impression of perfection. Often the male beauty standard is hyper-masculine and heterosexual. Famous male movie and television characters are often strong and aggressive such as super heroes. It is estimated that 10 million men will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder in the United states. Body image dissatisfaction is often thought to be a women’s problem, but in reality it is prevalent among all genders. (Bodell, Forney, & Keel, 2014). Compared to the ample research pertaining to women and body image, there has been diminutive exploration done on men and body dissatisfaction. Peat, Peyerl,
In our day to day life marketing we are bombarded with images of what should and shouldn’t look like every day putting pressure on young people to live up these expectations. This expectations have of what they should look like are becoming harder to achieve if not impossible .This is because the images we see are have been edited photo shopped and enhanced to make the person in the picture look out of this world .When young see these images they believe this is how they should look even if it is impossible to look an over photo shopped from Russia. A result of this media image of the perfect person is extremely high increase in the amount of people getting plastic surgery in order to look like the ideal image they to see all the time. According to many blogs news feeds and different websites on the internet there is outrage over how im...
Like or not we live in a society that judge people based on their appearance. Thus people spend millions and millions on beauty parlors and plastic surgeries to improve their physical appearance.
In the world we live in, society somehow always admired beauty. Today women insecurities are focused mainly on impossible high standards of beauty, which causes self-esteem and confidence problems. We see beautiful people everywhere in public, television, and magazines. The flawless appearance of people drive humans insane. The beauty standards manipulates people self-esteem causing them to oversee the natural beauty of themselves. According to some people, Sandra expresses “Nicole Casto was unhappy with the way she looked and determined to do something about it” (2004). Low self-esteem can cause a stressful life. People will consider anything to feel good about themselves. People have now found their support in science called Plastic Surgery.