Beauty And Beauty's Influence On Young Girls

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. At least, that’s what is taught to believe at an early age. Elline Lipkin, however, holds fast to the understanding that as true as that saying may be, there are outside forces that are intent on readjusting our vision to “true beauty”: the kind that can be bought off the shelves. In her article, “Girls’ Bodies, Girls’ Selves: Body Image, Identity, and Sexuality”, Lipkin employs several different external resources to help demonstrate her belief that young girls’ (“Before they even abandon their teddy bears…“ (Para 2)) definition of their own appearance is polluted and distorted by the vastly massive world that is the American media. Besides pulling from other articles and fact sheets, she also effectively utilizes a clearly logical train of thought, an operative tone, and countless examples of emotional appeal.

Beauty has become stigmatized in our culture. Women are starving themselves and men are abusing steroids in a never ending quest to achieve what is to be believed is the perfect body. This has led to an increase in cases of lower self esteem, body dysmorphia issues, and eating disorders. Popular culture has influenced what is to be perceived as beautiful, especially in women. All of this pressure is coming from magazines, movies, reality television, music, social networking, and peer pressure.

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.

As you’re walking down a street you may notice a young group of girls or women walking and they see a huge billboard of a beautiful model. They might stop and stare at her and then discuss about her perfect her body is. Not knowing in the next five minutes they’ll be comparing their bodies to the model and feeling bad about themselves wishing that they had her body. Not to mention, that the photo may be photoshopped to make it seem as her body is perfect, or she had plastic surgery to fit the idea of having the perfect body. The fact that the media thinks they’re encouraging young girls and women to embrace their beauty, they’re influencing them that they have to have a perfect body in order to get attention. The media has put a lot of pressure on young girls and women to look perfect and second guess their bodies, when plastic surgery is never the answer to build their self-esteem up.

This power has allowed the creation of new standards for women who are expected to be in perfect in every way and do everything to reach the established standards, even if it means putting their life at risk in order to meet the “ideal” body or face. Being exposed to these models flaunting their perfect bodies millions of women suffer from insecurities and low self-esteem. In the article Reconstructing the Ideal Body Image in Teen Fashion Magazines the writers Malachowski and Myers state that “Magazines are particularly influential because they target an audience in which disordered eating is most common, and display models that are thinner than 98% of American women” (2). Studies show that the most affected by these ideals are girls and teenagers, which is sad because they only care about looking like models in orders to be considered beautiful or just to be part of certain group. In the article No model for girls Fiona Bawdon states that “In a study of 3,200 young women carried out in February this year by Girlguiding UK, over half of 16- to 25-year-olds said the media showed in magazines or fashion advertisements made them feel that "being pretty and thin" was the "most important thing". This proves how the media and The Fashion Industry guide and shape the concept that society has about beauty

Today’s society has ingrained in the minds of young men and women unrealistic standards of beauty,

The purpose of this study is to investigate the depiction of beauty in animated Disney Princess movies and consequences the portrayal of beauty has on young girl’s individual self-esteem. This study includes one general hypothesis. The hypothesis states that young girls who idealize the beauty standards of Disney Princesses will have lower self-esteem than young girls who do not idealize their standard of beauty. I expected that young girls who have the desire to mimic Disney Princesses will have lower self-esteem because the beauty standards of Disney Princess are impossible to obtain; therefore, their perception of beauty will become extremely faltered, which will lead to a decrease in their self-esteem levels and a negative perception of their body image compared to Disney Princesses. Young girls with higher expectations regarding beauty standards, self-esteems will be negatively impacted due to the “beauty-goodness” stereotype presented in animated Disney films, for Disney films portray beauty over all human attributes, which skews young girl’s perception of beauty and their overall self-image. This study is similar to an experiment conducted by Bazzini et al.

We live in a world where youth and beauty are coveted and anything else is often times ignored or forgotten; this is a world that has such advance technological thinking and innovative inventions, but a misconstrued and utterly wrong view of the human body and its appearance in reality. Media is a pervasive object in our society; we are exposed to 3000 advertisements every day and will have watched more than 2 years worth of television hours by the end of our lifetime (Hodgson, n.d.). This is a problem for a variety of reasons, but the first is that media has a large influence on its viewer’s and it is using this influence negatively. The media understands what is aesthetically pleasing; they show us toned bodies, flawless skin, and completely

Today’s world attention is towards models, athletes, and music videos to see what perfection is defined as for men and women. Though with these people who are doing these things have additional help to be the perfect models for men and women. This idea of perfection is having bad outcomes to everyday people by way of them seeing themselves as not great or needing to go to extreme ideas to get their bodies to look like these photoshopped heroes. This idea in the world now has many impacts when we look at these people as perfection instead of growing up naturally and accepting what we look like and who we are. These outside outliers of the population that are defined as perfection has a negative impact on everyday normal people looking at them as the ideal look.

The beauty industry promotes unrealistic standards, instead of promoting body positivity and encouraging girls and boys to embrace their flaws and imperfections. Teenagers in this generation are given false impressions through media of what the “ perfect body” looks like and is putting a tremendous strain on today’s society. “ Although this has always been the case, the modern media is relentless in advertising ideal figures, represented by male and female supermodels and action heroes. The barrage of images of ultrathin women and extremely muscular men has led to a general dissatisfaction among consumers, and might be the cause of depression, low self esteem, and eating disorders”. ( Derenne, Beresin) “ in fact the media’s ideal women often

Being enormously influential to young girls is the media, and what is viewed by many girls on a daily basis. By having a female on the front cover of any magazine which has been drastically edited and manipulated to fit the role of ‘perfect’. Clearly shown on most popular magazines, the females on the cover have been edited so they do not have stretch marks or unwanted fat over their hips or wrinkles around their eyes. By constantly seeing this ‘perfect’ body image, people being to obsess over it and aspire to be the same, without knowing the amount of effort gone into the picture and the stick rules to be able to have the photo taken. These strict rules for the ideal body image focus on the women and how showing more sun-kissed, toned up skin, it will promote a more monotone body structure for many women around the world, as girls are forcing themselves to eat less, to practically starve themselves to maintain the ‘perfect’ body image. It is believed it will gain them respect from others if they look like the models, or give them attention to aspire in life, while they are not happy at

In this day and age, the epidemic of these so called ‘beauty’ standards is only getting worse and worse. Because of photo modification, low self esteem in regular everyday people is starting to become something that is nearly considered normal. Today, 42% of girls from age 5-8 want to be skinnier, 52% of girls aged 9 to 13 feel better when they are dieting and by the age of 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their own bodies. Think about

Did you know that it takes someone about three seconds to make an assumption about you? When you meet someone for the very first time, you'll round up your first impression based on their appearance. Now a day’s young girls are easily influenced by everything they see around them, which influences how they want to appear. One major influence is social media and television shows such as “Keeping up with the Kardashians” or “Love and Hip-Hop.” Some teenage girls, and a small percentage of teenage boys, assume that to be beautiful they need to look exactly like these famous actors and singers they see all over social media and television. Unfortunately, teenagers around the world are undergoing unnecessary cosmetic surgeries that lead to a lower self-esteem, unpleasing results, bully.

In today's society the picture of beauty is taking over everybody brain, its brain washing everyone. New models, style look and haircuts are up there every day making everyone go insane to try them out. Some people would look nice in them and the others will look bad which going to cause a disaster. Some teenagers these days are always trying to seek out the beauty inside them and the disaster is if it didn’t work, it would make the person paranoid. Even the little kids have some special toys called Barbie or baby doll. Children can dress up the doll and wear it makeup and change the way the doll looks. Also, the dolls come with body measurements like 20, 30, and 38. Because of all the new inventions and advertisement on the streets all

The media is constantly presenting beautiful, perfectly shaped super models and celebrities to public viewers. This unrealistic image gives children and teens, specifically girls, an illustration of what they should be, according to the media.