In America, if a woman isn't beautiful, sexy, and thin, then she isn't worth much. Jean Kilbourne explains how popular culture communicates these messages to women every day. There are numerous ways the advertising industry gets this message to women. I agree with Jean Kilbourne when she says that our culture influences women to strive for the "perfect" body and that it reduces women to sex objects. As a teenager I was addicted to seventeen magazine. I always had to see who the new ‘it" girl was and how I could look like her. While I didn't know it at the time, this magazine lowered my self-esteem. I would look at all these beautiful women like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato and try my hardest to achieve their look, but that's impossible. Selena Gomez doesn't even look like the Selena Gomez in seventeen magazine. That's the problem this these magazines. They …show more content…
I would question on how someone could look like that when no one I knew did. It would make me feel self-conscious at the beach; I would not want to go in the water with my friends. When you enter high school, it should be exciting to meet boys. However, for me, I would be too nervous since I could not picture myself or make myself the perfect women. Eventually, I realized how everyone felt the same way as me. This made me realize how idiotic I was. I realized no one could look like that so neither could I. My friends agreed with me and this made me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I was confident since I knew I was the best person I could be. However, there are some young girls whose self-esteem is so low that leads to these young women practicing unhealthy lifestyles. Jean Kilbourne was correct when she says that our culture influences women to strive for the "perfect" body and that it reduces women to sex objects. If I'm not beautiful like Kim Kardashian or have Taylor Swift's amazing legs then I can't possibly be
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
...ce in society. And the effects of the ideals behind these magazines are all the more powerful because of their subtlety." Women walk away from these magazines with an empty feeling and feelings of many inadequacies and they really don't know exactly why. The subtle undermining of women's intelligence and cause strips away their sense of worth ever so slowly and leaves them feeling depressed and in search of something that really can't exist together. Growing old while staying young takes many years of complete and internal happiness not many years of collagen injections and the added stress of having to stay unattainably perfect. While some consider these journalists for women's magazines talented writers, I consider them horrendous displays of talent in which they sell out the naturally beautiful women of the world for a quick buck and a popular magazine.
...odels in magazines usually achieve their body shape in unnatural ways. They either undergo plastic surgery or have an eating disorder like anorexia and bulimia. Most models have the BMI of a person with anorexia. Their weight is 15-20% below what is considered normal for their age ad height. The photos seen in magazines of these models are also airbrushed and photo shopped before being printed. The body shapes of the models are unrealistic, unhealthy, and unobtainable for the average person. In addition to the models, magazines are also filled with advertisements. Most ads in magazines are directed towards beauty in some form. Again, these ads all show photographs of women with the unreachable “perfect body” that can cause multiple victims to feel insecure and unhappy about their body shape and weight. In some cases it will result in developing an eating disorder.
First, Kilbourne’s research should be praised tremendously for bringing to light the unhealthy impression of true beauty in today’s culture. Kilbourne challenges the audience to reconsider their viewpoints on advertising that is sublime with sexual language. The evolution of advertising and product placement has drastically changed the real meaning of being a woman. According to the movie, every American is exposed to hundreds and thousands of advertisements each day. Furthermore, the picture of an “ideal women” in magazines, commercials, and billboards are a product of numerous computer retouching and cosmetics. Media creates a false and unrealistic sense of how women should be viewing themselves. Instead of being praised for their femininity and prowess, women are turned into objects. This can be detrimental to a society filled with girls that are brainwashed to strive to achieve this unrealistic look of beauty.
The ideal image that the media has created is to be exceptionally thin and tall. This is what the media considers to be beautiful. This ideal image can be seen on a daily basis just about everywhere on advertisements, which promote this unattainable image constantly. Research has proven that women tend to feel more insecure about themselves when they look at a magazine or television, which makes them feel self conscious(Mackler 25). The irony in this is that not even the women in the advertisements are as flawless as they appear to be. In order for a woman to appear in the mass media her image must be enhanced in several ways. A women is often airbrushed to conceal their actual skin but it does not end there. Through various computerized programs a woman's actual features are distorted until a false unrealistic image is reached.
Kasey Serdar (2005) argues that only a small number of women can actually fulfill the characteristics of what media defines beautiful. Yet, women are constantly being exposed to the ideal women image. Serdar (2005) illustrates that “models shown on television, advertisement, and in other forms of popular media are approximately 20% below ideal body weight, thus meeting the dia...
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In our society today, people would rather see what celebrities are up to than what is going on with our health plan. Watching the news makes us aware of the latest trend, new gadget, who’s in rehab, or who has an eating disorder. In the eyes of society, women like Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, and Megan Fox are the epitome of perfection. What girl wouldn’t want to look like them? Unfortunately, this includes most of the girls in the US. Through TV shows, commercials, magazines or any form of advertising, the media enforces a certain body type which women emulate. The media has created a puissant social system where everyone must obtain a thin waist and large breasts. As a society, we are so image obsessed with the approval of being thin and disapproval of being overweight, that it is affecting the health of most women. Women much rather try to fit the social acceptance of being thin by focusing on unrealistic body images which causes them to have lower self esteem and are more likely to fall prey to eating disorders, The media has a dangerous influence on the women’s health in the United States.
While women have made significant strides in gaining more freedom and rights in the past decade, society and culture at large continue to place a great emphasis on how women look. Certain standards of feminine beauty are presented in many different forms of popular media, bombarding women with images that portray what is considered to be the "ideal body”. Consequently, the importance of physical appearance is emphasized early on which leads to concern over appearance related issues. Such issues often surface in the early stages of a female’s development, and continues on throughout her life. While trying to live up to the specific beauty standards that are proliferated through the media by society and culture, a woman’s life is often impacted drastically both physically and psychologically.
“According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, about 70 percent of girls grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body, a fact that’s plain to see in the online world of teenage ‘thinspiration’” (Krupnick 1). This quote explains that girls in grades five to 12 are more likely to have a lower self esteem because of the idea of a perfect body beinging spread through social media. Models enjoy sharing their work with their fans their instagram and twitter accounts, which isn’t wrong. However, sometimes the pictures they post are exposed subtly, this causes for the pictures to get under someone's skin before they notice. These models, like Kylie and Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, are idealized but billions of people and have millions of followers on social media but all they do is post pictures of them living the luxury life that everyone watches. These posts could either help influence teens to work harder or cause them to try to achieve what they want in a harmful way. Having weight and height limits will lower the self esteem of others because they put out an image that most people think they must look
The standard way of thinking while looking through magazines is to compare ourselves to the people we see in them. Innumerable teenage girls assume that the media’s ideal beauty is unrealistically thin women. Looking up to adults as role models, we are constantly influenced to be on a diet, to not eat as much, and to feel poorly about yourself if you aren't thin. Growing up with this expectation to be skinny, some women develop bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating. Americans today tend to believe that we can be as skinny as models if we just eat less, work out more, and get plastic surgery. Consequently, with technology growing, you can now alter a photo using an application called photoshop. Photoshop is a tool commonly used in magazines to enhance a photo to it more appealing to the consumers. The problem is, that many teenage girls don't notice the subtle changes the photo has gone through. Therefore unrealistic beauty standards women have been given are what makes us have negative body images.
Every branch of advertising is based on this idea, directly or indirectly. For example, magazines only use pictures of skinny people in the front page to catch reader’s attention. As well as the TV does with the commercials of different products, and most of the time are diet products, presented by celebrities that are really skinny, and good-looking, inviting women to use them to look in the same way. In Julie Mehta’s article “Pretty Unreal,” the author Jessica Weiner states, “If you feel good about yourself, how many products will you buy? So [Advertisers] have to make you feel like you need what they’re selling by using unrealistic images” (2). Unfortunately women still doesn’t notice this fact.
Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media, bombarding women with images that depict what is considered to be the "ideal body." Images of thin, attractive and
The media has promoted a dominant view of how people should perceive beauty, and what consists of perfection in beauty. According to Dr. Karin Jasper, the media have women encouraging them to be concerned with their outward appearance and how others perceive them by surrounding everyone with the ideal female beauty. (Jasper, 2000) Body image has become a particular concern for young girls and women, often females work diligently to attain the perfect body image advertised in mass media. (Gibbs, 2010) When women are not able to obtain their ideal body goal, many develop negative feelings and become self-conscious about their bodies. Conversely, it is not possible for someone to look like a model in ads, someone without blemishes, scars, or pours. Another study conducted in 2012 showed contemporary media and culture has defined a women’s social desirability in terms of their bodies. For females, this has often resulted in comparing themselves to bodies shown in advertisements, commercials, magazines, etc. however not all body
...y standards, further resulting in negative impacts on their self-esteem and confidence. Furthermore, this limited perspective of beauty causes women to be blinded and not realize that there is not one specific look of beautiful, but many. In a sense, women are taught to think that beautiful is being thin, having silky hair, toned legs, big breast, blemish and acne-free skin, and so on. However, in order to reach these beauty standards set by society, a woman can overwork her body in order to lose weight by dieting, or not eating to be “thin”, which also puts her health at risk and acts as an additional issue. Women who fail to reach these beauty standards set by society, may feel as though it is their fault and end up feeling even more insecure and bad about their body image, when in fact, the beauty standards were unrealistic and unattainable from the beginning.
Thus, the mass media promotes an ideal image of what a beautiful and desirable woman should look like, influencing women around the world to model after. An example is the Glamour magazine survey: 75% of women aged 18-35 were reported to feel that they were too fat; 45% of underweight women felt they were too fat; almost 50% o... ... middle of paper ... ... ay’s context is pursuing the best of everything. Desperate times that make image no longer important do not prevail in the modern day.