How Does Beauty Pageants Affect Women?

Anorexia and bulimia are one of the main causes along with the media as to why adolescent girls are always slightly underweight and devastating skinny. If the media didn’t interfere with adolescent perceptions, maybe one half of fourth grade girls wouldn’t be on a diet. Intense fear of becoming fat and distorted body images aren’t the kinds of thing we want our adolescents girls to become. To think about their appearance and weight 24/7 isn’t right. The media should stop publicizing young female bodies and telling them what beauty is perceived to them.

Children female beauty pageants such as the televised show “Toddlers and Tiaras,” have a bad influence on young girls. The show more or over is a reality show of young girls in between the ages of as young as 3 months and older. Truly, this is poisoning their brains. Not only are they poisoning the young childs brains, but teaching them that face and body image is everything. It does not help the young girls self-esteem; it is damaging them morally in the real sense that they are real people that are being taught looks are important.

Media has a negative impact on females’ body image by promoting artificial beauty. Women often become dissatisfied with their bodies, which cause them to develop eating disorders. Body image affects a woman’s perceptions and feelings about their physical appearance when looking in the mirror. The media portrays unrealistic beauty of women who are thin with perfect hair and make-up. Many women who expose themselves to the unrealistic standards of the media often idealize, covet, and become very insecure.

This nearly impossible beauty standard is reflected and enforced by advertisements showing emaciated models selling products to smooth out bumps, reduce wrinkles, or tone the body. The media’s depiction of female bodies has a detrimental influence on women’s perception of themselves and has come under fire in recent years. Girls growing up in our media soaked culture internalize society’s ever-thinning standard of beauty, believing that they can never be slender enough. The negative effect of the media has been linked to the spread of eating disorders (“Never Just Pictures”, Thompson). This has led to a public outcry against impossibly thin, airbrushed models and a demand for more honest advertising.

Media’s images of a woman with an almost unrealistic body type don’t help with the issue of eating disorders. Media’s influence also causes women to develop self-esteem issues. Many women lose confidence in the way they look which leads them to think that they aren’t good enough or pretty enough like the women in the pictures in magazines and advertisements. These type of issues from media inhibit women from living a healthy, happy life because they’re always worried about their appearance, body, and style because they don’t look like that girl featured in Teen Vogue, People Magazine, or Cosmopolitan.

In today’s society mass media creates unrealistic body images of women not ever being thin or flawless enough. Advertisements of this “ideal” body image affects how many women view themselves and how they think they should look. Advertising companies overly edit and photoshop images of women to create the so-called perfection that is the norm for the advertising world. These images of the “perfect” body send negative messages and create insecurities amongst many women. As the mass media uses unrealistic models to advertise its products and services, this sets the idea that the “ideal” woman must been unhealthily thin and blemish free.

Most think that those that lose the pageant just take it as a learning experience. But in fact the losing can cause the lowering in self-esteem, might cause unhealthy losing weight methods for the contest and hinder their thought on the long term meaning on true beauty (wordpress). The judges decides the winner by who is the prettiest from the rest of them. Claire Lindsey writes, “This literal judgment can destroy the girls’ sense of self-worth and beauty, causing long-term damage.” By being judge on the outer looks that someone has can take a toll on anyone one. The pressure of winning can cause the young girls and grown women to have self-image and self-esteem issues.

Psychologist and eating disorder experts agree the fashion industry has gone too far in showing dangerously thin images that women and young girls may try to emulate. The use of super slim models and stars, is sending the wrong message to young impressionable girls. These harsh influences lead us to think that thin is ideal body size. Seeing super thin models in the media plays a role in anorexia. Society’s promotion of a thin female body contributes to eating disorders for females striving to achieve this ideal bod... ... middle of paper ... ... creation is just a doll” says the article “Beyond Thin”.

The weight loss advertising has definitely caused adverse effects on the youngsters and women. The adverse effects are in threefold. They are giving an illusion to women, coercing them into losing weight and providing a wrong means to lose weight. The first adverse effect of weight loss advertising is that it gives an illusion to women that being thin means beauty. The slimming companies recruit many beautiful celebrities to be the spokespersons.

Beauty pageants are harmful not only to ordinary women but also to the entire society because they give women the feeling that they are inadequate and ugly, leading to dieting and eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and has a larger effect on men's attitude towards women. A major effect of beauty pageants on women is that they encourage feelings of inadequacy and present an unrealistic ideal that is often unattainable. The skinny models on such platforms, that are their main focus, come across to millions of female viewers as a set standard that should be maintained in order to look beautiful and achieve success in life. Having idealistic features such as a body size 0, flawless skin, a certain height, and shiny long brown hair becomes the most important objective in the lives of women. If unable to fulfill these desires, it leads to lower self-esteem and self-perception.