Dying America's Body Image Analysis

By taking a different approach and using comedy and entertainment, Tina Fey has brought people together to understand the important topic of body image in a way people will listen. Body image for women has been a major issue in our world and there has been little change to stop it. “‘Why can’t we accept the human form as it is?’ screams no one. I don’t know why, but we never have. That’s why people wore corsets and neck stretchers and powdered wigs” (142). Everyone wants perfection. Everyone wants what they don’t have. No one is perfect. Everyone has flaws. If the world cannot accept this, people will continue resorting to modified images to produce this “ideal beauty.” One of Fey’s more interesting stories is when she talks about photoshop. Photoshop is a tool which contaminates how people see the human body. But this “perfect body” is intangible. Fey states that everyone is beautiful, and it takes a strong society to believe it. “Photoshop is just like makeup” Fey states, “when it’s done well it looks great, and when it’s overdone you look like a crazy asshole” (142). She relays on the idea that we are taking away the reality of our bodies when using photoshop. Fey’s attachment of a joke with the large and complex idea that photoshop dehumanizes a person is what keeps the reader captivated with the story and wanting to know more. Fey is able to reveal that a picture is an alteration of the true beauty of a person when put through photoshop. The reader is therefore able to assume, beyond all of her funny jokes, Fey

This brings me to the controversy surrounding enhanced photos and image editing software that erases flaws and allows for skin whitening. Therefore, the audience is cultivated from a young age to an unrealistic view of society.

Susan Sontag discusses the reality of the modern person’s addiction with “needing to have reality confirmed” by photos. Sontag says “we accept it as the camera records it” then goes to say “this is the opposite of understanding.” I agree with her wholeheartedly, as accepting photos as they are limits ones understanding of the world. The trust in photography led to the rise of pictures hoaxes, in which people take pictures out of context and assign it a new background; as well as Photoshop, which becomes increasingly popular as the years go by. Photoshop allows one to manipulate a photo to portray what they desire it to.

Critics of digital photo alteration base their vocal disapproval in arguments derived from medical evidence, social global standards, and professional ethical guidelines, and thereby profess that use of Photoshop for entertaining an impossibly unrealistic cultural standard for beauty can pose a psychological risk for consumers at large, misguides the scope of socially acceptable preconceptions about beauty, and is decisively unethical on a professional level.

In 2005 more than 10 million cosmetic procedures were done in America. People can not stand how they look, they want to look better. Almost as if there is a competition going on about who can look the best. A large majority of people do not have a good view of their body image. Body image in America has changed for the worse due to the media, a lack of self confidence, and a growing obsession with beauty.

The false looks created by photoshop are a daily occurrence in the common peoples’ lives through multiple media outlets such as magazines, entertainment tv, and advertisements with headlines that center around the idea of “shedding weight quickly” or “the ideal beauty of the year.” Photoshop is not just a celebrity problem it as an epidemic in all photography, newly engaged couples, or seniors about to graduate all take pictures that usually have some sort photoshop. If they are out in public, photo editors will still distort their bodies into something completely unrealistic whether they look better, or worse it is all about money. Photo editors will make a girl from a size seven to a size zero, or give them a whole new skin tone we have never seen before. The crazy amounts of photoshop drive people to extreme diets, or in more dire situation severe depression, or even death. Many celebrities have taken to their

Perfect, thin, flawless, tall, big eyes, and perfect teeth. That is the type of unrealistic model you will see on the cover of a magazine, a photoshopped human being. Photoshop is a program that allows the user to edit any photo. They can give the model a smaller waist, clear their skin, make them tanner, they can even change their bone structure. This is the hard reality children these days have to live with. Young, impressionable children have the idea of perfect lingering in their heads, and it’s time to stop it, it will start with getting rid of photoshop.

The manipulation of photographs creates an unrealistic beauty standard that no one can achieve, not even those in the images. 98.3 percent of images we regularly see in magazines and in advertisements, are digitally altered to make the subject more desirable. Too often the subject is a woman objectified in order to promote a product. In turn, teenage girls see the pictures and compare themselves to them. They want to be the ‘ideal’ woman seen so frequently in the media, but because the image has been manipulated this results in an ideal that can not be naturally achieved. Consequentially, 53 percent of thirteen year old girls feel unhappy with their body. This increases to 78 percent by the age of seventeen. It is unfair that people are forced to see these pictures and learn to associate them with beauty. As a result, women are

Tonight, Captain America: The First Avenger was airing on public television, so I decided to re-watch this fantastic Marvel movie. The main character, Steve Rogers, is a big-hearted, anemic-bodied American in the middle of World War 2. His grocery list of health issues and lacking physique resulted in several rejections from the enlistment officers. However thanks to his friendly German doctor, he eventually found himself injected with a serum that made him the perfect specimen of an American soldier (“Captain America: The First Avenger). Rogers went on to become one of the most iconic superheros ever to grace the comic book and media outlets, in his world and ours. There is no question as to why: Rogers is tall, blonde with an incredible

Unlike what people see in commercials and magazines, the girls aren’t what they seem. Computers and lighting can change what the naked eye sees. So no one gets to see the natural beauty of women behind the photoshop. Girls constantly having to stare at photoshopped images can lead to eating disorders, depression, and other mental illnesses.

There is a growing concern with the number of teenagers undergo types of plastic surgery or change their bodies drastically with the expectation that it will improve their body image and self-confidence. (Citation). Media uses photoshop to make models look thinner and clearer, making models look unattainably

Media plays a huge role in today’s society. Technology associated with media such as the internet has connected the world together, started revolutions, and has achieved many things that have benefitted us for years now. Although all of this rings true for media, some portrayals in media have had devastating effects that continue to increase. Photoshop has become increasingly popular to magazine and brand editors, celebrities, and models. This affects the way teens see themselves resulting in drastic measures such as eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and bullying one another for being different.

Many people across the world are negatively affected by the media each day. Being exposed to the media, specifically body image, causes very damaging thoughts and actions to occur in a person’s life. Scientists and researchers tend to conclude that body images in the media and the exposure to those images causes a person’s mental and physical health to decline. To dig deeper into the conflict, people often question if mass media is the actual problem. Ultimately, scientists and researchers blame the media for the negative affects it has on people and the disaster it has created throughout time, while other people blame themselves for the negativity it has caused in their life. This controversial situation allows people to evaluate both sides of this argument and come to the realization that this specific situation is very crucial to know about in our lives.

The world of magazines, media,tv and more know exactly what they are trying to persuade as a whole. This allows them to have an increase of products that doesn’t even have a good affect on their body or help with what they brought it for. We as women should embrace what we are blessed with even if it’s not what we won’t many people wish they could have what you have. So this photoshop making teens think they aren’t perfect can cause depression and stressing. It shows a message that's who they are isn’t good enough for the world and they mean nothing. They are just there just to be there. 64% of teens have been bullied because of their weight ,that percent shouldn’t be so

The use of photoshop has a major impact on the plastic surgery industry. Min Kim Park an assistant professor of photography in the department of art and design states, “The search for perfection drives us to create these unrealistic