Beauty And Imperialism

Even though media vaunts an iridescent image of what every girl should look like, the simple fact is just, it is impossible. It is because the pictures in the media are not true—they all have gone through lots of Photoshop. Only 5 percent of women have the body type seen in almost all advertisements. Besides, most of fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women. However, women still continue to do whatever they can in order to fit into that idea of ‘perfection’. Eating disorders have harassed who want to feel like they are ‘beautiful’, for years. Women are willing to do anything even though it can cause harm to their own self due to low self-esteem. Do you want your sister, friends or girl friends always feel depressed and doing harm to themselves, as they feel dissatisfied about their

As a wise man once said, “To love yourself is to understand you don't need to be perfect to be good.” However young girls have so much pressure put on them to look in a way that is not only unrealistic but also unhealthy. As a result of this, young girls have a very negative body image and self-confidence.The problem is the unrealistic body standards that media and society have set for girls. According to SSCC, the average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds. There is a clear problem when the media is only advertising women that are 5’11 and 117 pounds, which is the average American model. Even though the body of a model is very rare and uncommon,girls are expected to look like they do. However, by promoting a positive body campaign, stopping the portrayal of fake and photoshopped models in the media, and expanding the diversity of models, we could lift unrealistic body standards and start accepting everybody as beautiful.

Although the media generates the idea that women have no self control, the media also provokes the misleading idea that women have no self confidence in themselves. Through the various messages and ideas that advertisement, television shows, cartoons and even books sell- women tend to lose self confidence in themselves, but the media tends to send the message that women already have no self confidence. In “Love My Neighbors, Hate Myself: The Vicissitudes of Affect in Cosmetic Surgery,” Virginia Blum opens up her articles with an observation about the sudden rise in the number of popular television shows about plastic surgery and the shift of increasing numbers of women that receive plastic surgery. In her article regarding the reasons women desire plastic surgery, Blum states, “...certain conventional cultural values had to be recruited on behalf of representing these surgeries not as vain and superficial but as a route toward glowing self improvement, not as acts of self-

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.

Under society’s norms for decades, young women have been put under the pressure and anticipation to have perfect bodies. That is, thin and curved, beautified by applying pounds of the makeup to their face but not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these standards imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model along the cover of Vogue being called flawless, it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the photocopy. 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 pressing issue for young women. Advertisements and posters of skinny female models are all over. Young girls not only could be better but need to be more upright and feel driven to throw the perfect figure. Moreover, girls are evaluated and oppressed by their physical appearances. With supplements and apparel designed to enhance a facial expression; social media, magazines, and marketing campaigns and advertisements add to the burden of perfection. The fashion industry is a prime object of body image issues, as they believe clothes look better on tall and svelte women. Established on a survey participated by 13 to 17-year-old in the U.S., 90% “felt pressured by fashion and media industries to be skinny”, with more than 60% routinely compares themselves to models, while 46%

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

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.

Magazines advertisements portray beauty using models that are usually abnormally thin. This makes most woman, especially those who are young, feel inferior and insecure about their own bodies. They believe they will only be beautiful if they look like the women in the magazines. Most women will try going on a crazy diets like the tapeworm diet, or the baby food diet, just to try to look like the models on the cover of magazines. Even young girls see the magazines as a reflection of what they should look like when they get older. Woman will stare at themselves in the mirror and find all kinds of things wrong with their body, face, and clothing. They will compare anything and everything from their weight to their hair to the models on

Images produced by the media will make people do almost anything to fit American standards of the perfect body. Plastic surgery offers a quick fix to help achieve this goal but no matter how much surgery nothing is perfect. Images produced by media, quick fixes and the outcome of the fixes are problems that women of all ages deal with.

Over the years a debate over who is to blame over the decline in how girls perceive themselves has arisen. With Photoshop being the societal norm concerning the media, it has become difficult for many to understand where the line between real and near impossible standards lies. Youths see an image edited to “perfection” and strive to reach the standards that they imagine due to the images displayed on magazines, television and social media. From Disney to magazines like Vogue the mass media bombards audiences with fake beauty that they, as normal people, will never be able to achieve. The mass media is responsible for causing the rise in the number of people with a poor body image, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgeries.

We live in a technological world and a society that is ruled by social media because anywhere and anytime that we are, we have our laptops, iphones, or ipads. We are constanly chasing and running from all different directions in order to catch up on what’s going on in social media such to find out how many “likes” and how many “followers does Kim Kardashian has?.” With that being said, our society have redefined beauty based on how much “likes” a person received on their Instagram pictures, a number on a scale, a premanufactured clothing size, an hourglass shape, slender thighs, or victoria’s secrect models. The society’s standards of beauty are unrealistic and impossible to achieve. As a result, unrealistic beauty standards affect girls

Photoshop has altered the way women see the “perfect” body. Too many women and girls wish to look like models that they see on television, magazines, or other media, rather than being happily content with the way they look themselves. The false and altered images often seen affect how females see beauty unrealistically. The more photoshopped images published, the more women and girls become insecure about their own appearances. Women’s insecurities have led to the spending of millions of dollars each year on the unnecessary plastic surgeries to achieve the “perfect” look. Many insecurities have also led to anorexic and bulimic bodies. When describing the look they wish to achieve, it is common for someone to show a plastic surgeon a photo of

In a society so consumed by the ideology of beauty, it makes sense as to why so many women these days undergo cosmetic surgery. The definition of beauty has long been obstructed and changed. In the past, if you look at the woman, you will see they are curvy, during this era being thin meant you were poor where as a beautiful and wealthy woman would be plump because she could afford fine dining. As society has changed, being slender has become the new trend, creating the idea that in order to be truly beautiful one must be thin. The movie stars in Hollywood, although most people realize the beautifying changes that are made to the pictures, this idea of 'beauty ' and 'desire ' still lingers in the mind of whoever comes across it. Our society is bombarded with several different ideologies of beauty but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The beauty standards that have been set should not be what are shaping people around the world and influencing them to go through with plastic surgery. The use of plastic surgery has changed from a medical procedure used to reconstruct the wounded or people with birth defects to reconstructing something people do not like about themselves. Plastic surgery was used during WWI in 1910 and after the war, skin grafting grew. The first training program in the United States was in 1924 thanks to Dr. John Davis. In 1950-1959, plastic surgery was used broadly to repair cleft pallet. It wasn’t until about

Media has an impact on many of the population’s everyday life. It comes to no surprise that the media is closely related with body imaging. There are thousands of advertisements out in the media that depict images of beauty and physical attractiveness which are unrealistic. The masses see these images and think that they are achievable thus lowering the self-esteem of many. Many of these commercials and advertisements fall under the category of the following: weight loss, clothing, cosmetics and physical fitness. The way beauty is portrayed in the media causes low self-esteem and dissatisfaction in peoples’ outward appearance and sets unachievable goals for many. This is not just a recent issue at hand, “throughout history, the standard of female beauty often has been unrealistic and difficult to attain. People with money and higher socioeconomic status were far more likely to be able to conform to these standards. Women typically were willing to sacrifice comfort and even endure pain to achieve them” (Derenne, Jennifer). Such high standards for beauty, especially in women, are unattainable for most. Many models presented in the media are well below what is considered a healthy body weight, and often photoshopped to fit the “ideal body.” This makes it extremely difficult for anyone to achieve contentment within themselves.