Beauty And Beauty Standards

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough, our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

“You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine doesn’t even look like the girl in the magazine” Jessimae Peluso. Throughout American history, women have continued to strive for an ideal of beauty. Although the definition of beauty has varied between generations, the pressure and desire to fit the mold of what society deems “beautiful” remains consistent among women from all eras. Unfortunately, this abnormal example seen in magazines, on runways, and in social media platforms is impossible for the majority of the female population to physically reach. Women are always pursuing the perfect look, turning to plastic surgeries transform them into celebrity ideals. People who desire perfect appearance ignore the nature of beauty itself, naturality is a kind of beauty. In recent years, women in America turned to look at models to find the ideal beauty standard and if they don’t meet them they turn to face lifts and plastic surgery to perfect their appearance.

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

Moreover, as Richins (1991) reports, women always make social comparisons between the advertising models and themselves. As a result, advertising images create negative affect and increases women’s dissatisfaction with their own appearance. Since those images are edited through the consistent usage of digital technology, these idealized images do not portray women in a healthy manner. Indeed, these enhanced images would give these young girls the impression that they need to be ‘perfect’, just like these ‘fake’ images. According to Reist in ABC’s Gruen Session (2010), ‘young women get the message that they need to be thin, hot and sexy just to be acceptable’ in this society. Therefore, by generating the wrong perception of real beauty, the responsibility is pushed to the marketers, as they portray women with this stereotypical body type as acceptable. In addition, as the brand, Dove’s tagline in its advertisement - What happened to the ‘real beauty’? (Reist, 2010), marketers need not market their products in manners portraying women as airheads. Consequently, marketers gave most consumers viewing the advertisement, the wrong impression that

Why is the model industry, creating this idea that all females have to look like this ‘doll’ to be beautiful? Society has moulded the ‘ideal’ body image to an unattainable goal fashioned by the criteria established through advertising. Advertisements are enforcing the standards of beauty to encourage our youth to believe and aspire to become this contemporary based view of what beautiful is.

The women in the 17th century were incorrectly accustomed to the necessity of becoming a picture perfect person; which is a bad habit that only a handful of people are able to fathom. Perfect is an expectation that you can’t achieve in life until you realize to accept yourself for who you are. The conjecture of beauty and our bodies is set at a level that is insurmountable. To fathom this we can look at today’s society, if we aren’t what society wants we aren’t accepted. Society’s idealistic view on beauty is something we should not tolerate because we should accept people for who they are within themselves. In the dramatic monologues “Barbie Doll,” “Cinderella,” and “Applicant,” they are expected to either be something they aren’t, or desiring someone who isn’t even real.

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

Advertisements set the standard of beauty because an audience perceives what is being distributed as an “ideal woman.” If she was not the “ideal woman” then why is she on the cover of all the magazines? In Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, David R. Croteau and William D. Hoynes write, “The most visible ad is the cover of the magazine. The standard image of the ideal woman on the cover suggests that purchase of the magazine will provide clues to how and what to buy in order to become the ideal woman.” This woman on this magazine, they claim, is simply being used as a form of covert advertising to sell products (182). The mindset is that if a woman purchases all of the products as the one on the cover then she will then be the “ideal” woman and will be in a comfortable position in that aspect of her life. She will not have to worry further of beauty. However, that is unrealistic as humans cannot reach perfection and even if they were exactly similar to the ideal woman the media would simply move on to the next interpretation of

Women have struggled against stereotypes, stigmas and expectations for generations. In a world where women are surrounded by images of stick figure, perfect models, they often don’t feel they measure up and can’t be as beautiful. That’s why in 2004 the personal care and body wash brand Dove decided to make a change. They started their “Real Beauty” campaign and released a variety of advertisements depicting real, normal women and their real beauty. One of these ads, the 2013 “Real Beauty Sketches,” showed women detailing their appearances to a forensic sketch artist then comparing their sketches to how others had described them. Before long it was “the most-watched video ad of all time”

The Victoria Secret Ad Perfect “body” came under fire by critics for its slogan that promotes a feeling of insecurities and poor self-body image in woman, as the ad showcases skinny models of all the same size and defines those bodies to be termed as “perfect”. We live in a far from perfect world with women of all shapes and sizes and it is very important that we learn to embrace our body type without any shame and that’s exactly what ads like Dove’s Beauty Campaign, promotes a positive body image of women from all walks of live. Ads like VS are constantly bombarding women making them feel insecure about their bodies and encouraging women to buy their products that will supposedly make them more happy and beautiful. This narrow standard of

Advertising uses a lot of different techniques to show the public the perfect female image. Body doubles and computer retouching are two examples of how advertisers are able to “doctor” images. The majority of women we see in magazines, music videos. and movies do not appear in reality, as we perceive them in the media. We may actually believe we are looking at one woman’s body when we are actually looking at sections of three or four women’s bodies, which, when spliced together, shows us the best parts of each women’s body as the final product. Women cannot attain these impossible standards of attractiveness. Young girls learn very quickly that they must spend much time, energy, and money on achieving these standards.

Beauty standards have been a major issue for many years now and women have been willing to change their bodies over and over to please themselves and others. Beauty standards are often defined in terms of hairstyles, skin color, and body size. The measures involved in having to live up to these standards are often risky in nature. For decades, what is seen as beautiful is centered around a women’s weight and size. Today, that standard is often defined as being thin. Women often resort to drastic means to attain that ideal image. However, achieving these standards can be expensive, can lower self-esteem and can be a threat to a woman’s health and life.

With the media being a very popular way of communication and self expression in today’s culture, it influences the way of younger generations to be more involved in today’s technology, and to allow them to influence the world by the press of a button. But one of the topics that is very controversial is that in today’s society is the high expectations of what they think a girl has to look like, from girls not having stretch marks or scars, to magazines and photographers using photoshop to convince readers that the model looks like that. With all of these being factors that there is pressure is high for many girls around the world, this has to resolved.

Too many times to count, I’ve observed it in my sisters and friends—double and triple checks in the mirror, scrutinizing glances at every reflective surface, and guarded smiles for photographs. Society preaches the importance of self-worth, while simultaneously giving us endless, unattainable examples of perfection in the form of TV shows, celebrity Instagram accounts, and photoshopped advertisements. Because of the media, beauty standards are implausible, and this consequently results in plummeting levels of self-confidence in girls of all ages. Due to this skewed view of the importance of looks, it has become impossible for girls to differentiate between their God-given beauty and the reflection that they strive to behold in the mirror.

Too many times to count, I’ve observed the behavior in my sisters and friends—double and triple checks in the mirror, scrutinizing glances at every reflective surface, and guarded smiles for photographs. Society preaches the importance of self-worth, while simultaneously providing us with endless, unattainable examples of perfection in the form of TV broadcasts, celebrity Instagram accounts, and photoshopped advertisements. Because of the media, beauty standards sit implausibly high, and this consequently results in plummeting levels of self-confidence in girls of all ages. Due to this skewed view of the importance of looks, it has become impossible for girls to differentiate between their God-given beauty and the reflection that they strive to behold in the mirror.