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. The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ... ... middle of paper ... ... working out lifted off their shoulders if they know there is other women out there like them. The average size of women in the United States is a size 14; which is the considered to be a plus size model. In conclusion, women should be comfortable in their own skin and shouldn’t feel compelled to be as thin as a model. Women need to feel appropriate and content in their own skin, and to not feel inferior to the model on TV or pasted in a magazine advertisement. We are all different and no woman is exactly the same and even the ones that seem to be picture perfect have flaws and love handles, and women need to realize that is the truth. So, by accepting one’s self for who they truly are and what they have accomplished in life is what is going to boost our self-esteem. Once the world understands this, then the media won’t have such a monumental affect on society.
The media can impact people’s lives in many ways, whether it’s fashion, movies, literature, or hobbies. One of the impacts is how women view their bodies. Movie stars and models feel pressured to catch attention and to look good in order to have a good career in their respective field. People tend to judge how someone looks based on their body composition. The result of this “judgment” is that Hollywood is getting skinny. Since models and actresses serve as role models for people, people tend to want to look like them. The result of this seemingly harmless model of behavior is in an increase in eating disorders.
We live in a society where women are under pressure to be “perfect”, but the fact is, it’s not healthy to be the way society wants us to be. My research has showed me that models starve themselves and abuse controlled substances to be skinny.
Rather than feature and promote unnatural body weights, society can benefit from the promotion of a healthy physical appearance. This would increase self acceptance for young girls of their body. After all, women and girls come in all sizes and shapes. If society cares about the future of our young girls, steps should be taken to minimize eating disorders. With the knowledge that young girls can be very impressionable, society and the media have a responsibility to stop promoting unrealistic body images. The need to have clothing look better on the runway is not more important than the health concerns of young women.
Advertisers use women that are abnormally thin, and even airbrush them to make them appear thinner. These advertisers promote a body image that is completely unrealistic and impossible to achieve (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006b). It has been instilled in these advertisers’ minds that a thinner model will sell more (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). Media has a direc...
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.
The way a woman was perceived as beautiful has changed so much even over the last 50 years as I have discussed previously. If we look at Marilyn Monroe and compare her to Tyra Banks, who has made it her passion in life to stretch the definition of beauty (Pozner, 2013) the difference is uncanny. Marilyn Monroe is the most acclaimed sex icon of the 1950’s and she was not astonishingly slender. Meanwhile Tyra banks up until a couple years ago had always been immeasurably skinny. Women nowadays are required to be excessively skinny, toned, tall, and have flawless skin if they want to fit into the “most beautiful” column. Although Tyra Banks presumably believes that she is an exceptional advocate for young girls in the media, she is also delivering a skewed image of self-love through her show, America’s Next Top Model (Pozner, 2013). Every woman on that show either fits the media’s standard of an ideal woman, or they are ridiculed/questioned. The media is making it impossible to achieve such high standards. Even for black women, there is the stereotype that they have to have huge behinds and appear to be super ghetto like Nicki Minaj; even she received cosmetic surgery to enhance her bust and rear, as well as slimming her waist. She did all these things to appease her viewers. It is impossible for women to achieve these different standards
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.
The media is a fascinating tool; it can deliver entertainment, self-help, intellectual knowledge, information, and a variety of other positive influences; however, despite its advances for the good of our society is has a particular blemish in its physique that targets young women. This blemish is seen in the unrealistic body images that it presents, and the inconsiderate method of delivery that forces its audience into interest and attendance. Women are bombarded with messages from every media source to change their bodies, buy specific products and redefine their opinion of beauty to the point where it becomes not only a psychological disease, but a physical one as well.
Throughout time, the most controversial subject among female’s health has been body image. Society and our culture molds females’s brains into believing that being thin is what will fulfill complete happiness. Being thin means you are more successful, loved, attractive, and overall truly beautiful. Thin women are seen as having an altogether perfect life. However, there is another female figure that is seen as undesirable, hopeless, mainly disliked by most. This type of woman is the curvy or larger female. If one were to go out on the street and gather a group of men and women and show them the thin vs. large female and which one is more attractive, most would say the thinner is. Thus, we deny the larger women because they do not fit societies norms. Thin women are timid to turn into this other that is not widely accepted. To this extent, society and our culture have constructed a monster.
In modern society there is more and more digital editing without the knowledge of consumers. Currently there are various reasons for why women develop negative body image, low-self-esteem and eating disorders. According to Naomi Wolf in her novel “Beauty Myth”, one of the many reasons women obtain concerns with their bodies is due to the universal images of young female bodies presented through advertisements in fashion magazines. Advertisements in magazines are altering and shaping the desires of men and women. Magazines sell viewers images of beautiful, skinny, flawless confident young women. When people are constantly antagonized with the magazine industry’s ideal of “perfect beauty” the viewer’s then, subconsciously believe these images to be true and begin to form biases about what they themselves should look like and what other people must also look like. People who view magazines get mislead by advertisers because they are unaware that all the images displayed are digitally altered through Photoshop and airbrushing. Today’s magazines are formed completely on false ideals of flawless beauty and unattainable body images, to prevent women and men from falling victim to the magazine’s deceitful images we as a society need to become aware and educate ourselves.
Women therefore become familiar with the fact that they are not perfect and end up going to great lengths to make changes to their faces and bodies in order to conform to the beauty standards that people are being lead to believe are “perfect”. The mass media helps women to discover problems within themselves that need to be fixed and adjusted. Women have therefore been taught to internalize an observer’s perspective of their bodies. The objectification of ones self stems from what we see in advertisements and media.
Social pressures have a heavy influence on how a person perceives their body. Magazines and advertising portray skinny women promoting diet plans and exercise routines that magically drop the pounds. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign supports America’s strive to change the social norm of body image back towards a more normal perception. Women with regular body weights and measurements, according to doctors, need to be accepted despite the media’s push for thinness. Similarly, the fashion industry uses skinnier models in order to promote their clothing because it looks “more flattering on them,” but designers, like Mark Fast and Eden Miller, use plus-size model in order to capture the real women figure.
However, such a sexualized culture is contributing to young men and women growing up with a poor self-body image because they may not appear as skinny or handsome as the models in these advertisements. Even celebrities are falling victims to these sexual beauty standards as Kourtney Kardashian found out after being photoshopped for the cover of OK! magazine. Movements such as Dove’s “Real Beauty”
The optimal beauty has been revealed through an assortment of body types; however, Fiona MacCallum notes in her article, “Altered Images: Understanding the Influence of Unrealistic images and Beauty Aspirations”, that the thin ideal has been a “sign of femininity,” stressing women to display a specific body figure (MacCallum 6). This ideal has ended up influencing women to lose weight since the 1800’s, and today, models are much thinner. In 1980, “a fashion model was 8% thinner than the average woman. In 2015, that percentage has risen to 23%” (MacCallum 7). In the current society, agencies are actively seeking out thin
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.