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beauty standards in todays media
how the media influences a womans self image
how the media influences a womans self image
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The stereotypes of the perfect body cause immense stress on many females in today’s society. Women feel that they should look like the ideal lady and not be overweight. However, the perfect body may not always be a healthy obsession with many females. It can cause serious health concerns that in some cases can lead to death. Women sometimes also feel as if they must make themselves attractive through ways of plastic surgery. Due to pressure created by the media, modeling agencies, clothing stores, and peers, females experience emotional distress and feel compelled to have the perfect body. Society has many views of different body types. The term overweight is often portrayed as being ugly and lazy. In today’s world, many view the term as …show more content…
Females who view themselves as obese and overweight suffer from depression. Women who feel they do not fit the ideal body stereotype feel self-concise and tend to feel uncomfortable in public areas. Participating in everyday activities such as shopping or eating out at a restaurant becomes a challenge for females who suffer from emotional distress. These individuals are focused on their body image instead of enjoying themselves with friends and family. These feelings result in conflict for females no matter where they go. Society has fueled the brain into thinking the women must look and be represented a specific way which has ultimately created mental mindsets that focus on female’s looks. …show more content…
Some females take this to the extreme by having plastic surgery performed on their bodies. These operations could be anything from implants to face-lifts. Procedures likewise are not the best alternative for a person’s body. Some surgeons have refused to perform surgery on individuals under the age of 18 due to the effects that it can cause. The operation can cause damage to the body before it is fully developed and therefore causes distortion in one’s appearance. Side effects or issues that can occur with plastic surgery are skin discoloration, and infection. Procedures such as liposuction can cause issues as well. During the procedure the fat cells are demolished. This makes it difficult for the patient in later years when fat is again added to their body. This fat would appear in undesired locations such as the back. The financial stress the operations provide is also a burden on the individual undergoing the procedure. Surgeries such as the operations described above cost the person an extensive amount of money that could have been used to pay for something else such as the house mortgage.
In conclusion it is possible to see how the media promotes a physical and psychological disease among women through the usage of unrealistic body images as it urges them to change their bodies, buy “enhancing” products, and redefine their opinions. Such statements may appear to be ridiculous, but for young women who are seeking to perfect their body according to how the media portrays “good looks” it is the basis for corruption. Confidence, contentment and healthy living are the keys to a perfect and unique body image and no amount of money can advertise or sell as genuine a treatment as this.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
In this Golden age of humanity with technology at the fingertips of mankind and world wide global awareness, it's hard to imagine from the comfort of well lit homes, a large population of the human race lives without fresh water and a nourishing daily meal. In the United States of America it has been said of an over abundance of food, though many of the citizens are forced to consume highly processed ready made meals in order to survive due to poverty. These meals are high in fat, sodium and of course, calorie, leaving the consumer with extra weight. This leads to the image of "'merica" with over weight men and women on scooters. While some of this is actually a result of poor self control or a medical issue, many can attribute it to having a very low income and the substance affordable is akin to garage. "Big" a book by some author, chronicles a young women who is very overweight by the design of her home environment. Her mother is disabled, obese and living off the government. She gets a job, goes to fat camp and learns why she can never loose weight. With all of this in mind, not to mention the idolization of stick thin models and actors, its not hard to figure out what the mind of an adolescent will conclude. Weight equals prosperity; being heavy is unsuccessful and ugly, whist-while bones and tight skin stretched over cranium is attractive and desirable. This of course calls Eating disorders to mind; Anorexia nervosa, Blumina, and EDNOS (eating disorder not diagnosed).
In today society, women are obsess with having a specific body type to make others find them attractive. They want to feed the society’s body type expectations. But what is a perfect body? Does it even exist? However, advertising, boyfriends, and family members often make women feel that skinny bodies are perfect bodies.
As a result of the wide variety of media that is in the world, it plays as one of the main factors to most of the body distortion and low self-esteems that is put on men and women. According to Lau, beauty or body perfection, “...is a social/cultural construct, and that advertising, lifestyle/entertainment magazines, movies, scripted and reality television, documentaries and even public service campaigns all play a role in normalising the unrealistic pursuit of body perfection” (Lau, Harris-Moore…). Because of the broad variety of media there is, each has a different perspective on what the ideal ‘real beauty’ is, this causes a lot of pressure to be put upon people on how they should truly appear. In addition, media is also setting the standards that people should start looking like celebrities. As stated by a plastic surgeon, Z. Paul Lorenc in The Culture of Beauty, is that “...one of several concerns is the more and more Americans are seeking plastic surgery because of the very high beauty bar set by celebrities” (Gerdes, The Culture of Beauty). Due to the media constantly flaunting how attractive celebrities are, it makes men and women feel as if they are not good enough and that they need to modify themselves to become socially acceptable in the eye of
In a society similar to the one of the United States, individual’s body images are placed on a pedestal. Society is extremely powerful in the sense that it has the capability of creating or breaking a person’s own views of his or her self worth. The pressure can take over and make people conduct in unhealthy behavior till reaching the unrealistic views of “perfection.” In an article by Caroline Heldman, titled Out-of-Body Image, the author explains the significance of self-objectification and woman’s body image. Jennifer L. Derenne made a similar argument in her article titled, Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders. Multiple articles and books have been published on the issue in regards to getting people to have more positive views on themselves. Typically female have had a more difficult time when relating to body image and self worth. Society tends to put more pressure on women to live to achieve this high ideal. Body image will always be a concern as long as society puts the pressure on people; there are multiple pressures placed and theses pressures tend to leave an impact on people’s images of themselves.
Every culture has a “perfect body image” that everyone compares their own bodies to. Girls especially have the mental thinking that they have to live up to the models on TV and magazines. In the United States the skinnier the girls, the more perfect their image is perceived. The “perfect body image” has an intriguing background, health and psychological problems, and currently few solutions.
Most people believe that having cosmetic and weight loss surgery will help solve all their problems in life. Unfortunately, that does not always happen. These surgeries come with more negatives then positives and can cause numerous long term problems for a patient. The first negative for cosmetic surgery is the pain. Most surgeries are aggressive and involve having to take several pain medications. The recovery time can be between a few weeks all the way up to at least 6 months. Depending on the procedure and how well the patient is able to tolerate pain. There have been many scenarios where the cosmetic procedure “has gone wrong”. This can leave the patient with permanent damage. These surgeries can also be extremely expensive. Other than minor procedures, most cosmetic surgeries start at four thousand dollars and only go up from there. Most insurance does not cover “surgery for cosmetic purposes”, so the patient has to come up with the entire payment, which usually leaves them in debt. There is always the negative effect of havi...
In the early 1990’s, it was reported that eleven million women in the United States suffer from various eating disorders. At the same time, at least ninety percent of people struggling with eating disorders are female (Stephens). Many researchers tried to figure out why so many women today were suffering from these terrible conditions that destroy people from the inside out. After thorough amounts of research were done, it was concluded that today’s society generates intense amounts of pressure on women to fit an “ideal image” of the models they see in various ways. Thanks to false advertising, false images of women, and the changing “desires” of society, the Beauty Myth gives women an image of themselves that is physically impossible to achieve.
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.
...ion where we relate pretty with unrealistic and unattainable images of a ¨perfect body.¨ As I had already mention before, Hayes and Ross said that there’s nothing wrong with being overweight yet is the social stigma or prototype where being overweight is considered unattractive in our society. (387) In society thin people, are seen as attractive, strong, successful and even desirable. In the other hand overweight people are seen as lazy, socially inept, and lonely. We also have to look into what kind of activities people do, for example ballet, cheerleading, modeling, gymnastics, swimming, running, etc. they concentrate in thinness and body shape. People involved in these kinds of activities might be more exposed to developing eating disorders and becoming compulsive exercisers in order to fall in the category or social figure that represents those activities.
According to Maggie Shiffrar, Ph.D., body dissatisfaction is defined as “a negative subjective evaluation of the weight and shape of one's own body.” Body dissatisfaction develops in both men and women. In an article written by Christopher J Ferguson, women experience more dissatisfaction with their bodies than men. Men suffer from muscular dissatisfaction, whereas women suffer from weight dissatisfaction. This article deems the media as one of the explanations for why this occurs. Women who already suffer from body dissatisfaction are more likely to experience negative outcomes when exposed to the models in fashion
People feel increasingly pressured by the media about their bodies. Each day we are bombarded by the media with all sorts of image related messages about the “perfect
In modern society, the media has a very big influence on our lives. Whether it be a film, a cartoon, or a television series, it is going to impact our daily life in some way. A nasty habit that the media has started is casting overweight characters as gluttonous eaters, aggressive, overtly funny, bullies, reassuring best friends, or sloppy dressers. This makes society as a whole look negatively at overweight people because of their presumptions. Sadly, those stereotypes have been around for over fifty years and still exist today.
Today plastic surgery has been considered to be relatively simple and easy. Due to these advances in these types of procedures, there has been a decrease in risk factors when undergoing elective surgery and augmentation. Today’s medical techniques in the cosmetic world have allowed for better outcomes in cosmetic surgeries and success rates easier to achieve. Things such as, recovery time have usually inhibit ones daily function and activity, have been reduce and become more efficient. In our generation finding a plastic, it has become easy to find plastic surgeons that are reputable and have obtained years of experience, with a click of a button. These surgeries have become relatively convenient and successful, but due to medical advances there rise in variety of the type of surgeries available. The most common surgeries include liposuction, breast implants, Brazilian butt lift and Botox. Today medical advances have allowed for surgeries such as alterations to genitalia, stomach fat, eyelids, and more. These new surgical options have become convenient and proficient in helping to improve almost any physical feature an individual chooses to change or fix on their body. According to Northwestern University Medical School, “advances in technology will accomplish another transformation of the specialty, notably the recent advances in tissue engineering, the