Media Influence on the Female Form

The American definition of beauty is visible in any one of our forms

of popular culture, whether it’s TV, movies, music videos, magazines,

and advertisements, even billboards. “Women’s bodies sell products

that have nothing to do with women, like tires, cars, liquor, and

guns” (Pipher, Reviving Ophelia 42). As if using women’s bodies to

sell completely unrelated products weren’t harmful enough, the women

used to sell these products are a far cry from what most women in

America look like. The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140

pounds, whereas the average professional model in this country is

5’9’’ and weighs roughly 110 pounds (Barnhill 49). Consistently, women

are diminished by advertisers to pretty body parts used to sell

products, a practice that perpetuates the glorification of this

unreasonable ideal of beauty.

Women’s bodies have not only become a huge money-maker for

advertisers, businesses have picked up on women’s insecurities about

their bodies and have capilatized on these insecurities. On one hand,

advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present young

anorexic models as the paradigm of ideal beauty; on the other hand,

the media floods the airwaves and magazine pages with ads for junk

food. In 1996, the diet industry (as in diet foods, diet programs,

diet drugs) took in over $40 billion dollars, and that number is still

climbing (Facts and Figures 1).

Young women seem to be especially affected by our culture’s obsession

with weight and beauty. America today is a girl-destroying place where

young women are encouraged to sacrifice their true selves in exchange

for false selves that are more culturally acceptable. “More than any

other group in the population, girls and their bodies have borne the

brunt of twentieth-century social change and we ignore that fact at

our peril.” (Brumberg 21).

There is no doubt that the media, mainly TV, movies, magazines, and

advertising, is an extremely powerful force in shaping who we are as a

culture, and as individuals.