Power of the Media on Young Women

604 Words2 Pages

“Our bodies are trained, shaped and impressed with the prevailing historical forms of… masculinity and femininity.”1 The body and a woman’s association to her own body reflect the ways in which culture has casted her; how she looks physically and the way she feels about her shape and body size is a mirror of her cultural norms. Women learn from a very early age that they must spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and riches attempting to achieve the Eurocentric ideal look, that is, tall, thin, and light skinned and feeling ashamed and guilty when they fail yet they are unaware that they are already being set up for failure because the ideals are based on absolute flawlessness, perfection that cannot be achieved. The images are never real, they are artificial, they are constructed, but real women and girls measure themselves against these images every single day. Many times, advertisements attempt to do more than just get women to buy their product—they often suggest standards of normality, of beauty, of success, and of happiness; standards that mold the way in which women view t...

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