Gibson Girl Research Paper

Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the Barbie Doll, and the positive and negative impacts she has on society. Central Purpose: I will discuss how Barbie has effected women and the pedestal she has set upon us career wise since our youth. Introduction Quote; Once a wise female said “The first 10 years of a girls life is spent playing with Barbie, and the next 10 years are spent trying to look like one”

Starting young, adolescent girls around the world are becoming self-conscious due to society’s influence upon what they should and shouldn’t look like. Many argue that The Barbie Doll plays a key influence in what young girls assume their bodies should look like. However, some will argue that the Barbie Doll toy is a good role model for young children, especially girls, because of her career choices, how she’s depicted in her movies, and her overall personality.

On top of this, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures and runway models influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (only 5% of the female population naturally has the body type portrayed as ideal in advertisement). This is obviously a problem because, growing up, girls everywhere are told that they’re pretty and that being pretty is the most important thing about them and they start basing their worth on their looks. But then, every single woman they see on TV, in movies, in magazines, any woman considered “hot” and “beautiful” doesn’t look like them anymore, which brings on deadly disorders like anorexia and bulumia that wreck the lives of young girls. Since 90% of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25, we should be asking ourselves “what is causing my child to develop destructive habits at such a young age?” The answer is that they’ve been told that the type of body

Over time, the perfect body image has changed in many ways. This is very evident in the female sex, especially through media. “Americans spend about 68 hours per week exposed to various forms of media” (US Census Bureau 2009). This media exposure through outlets such as t.v., radio, music videos, movies, and the internet, all influence the way people think about gender. The media influence is very evident in the way people view women and think about women in different cultures. Media influence on women creates negative viewpoints with how women view themselves and even how men view themselves, in turn making it hard to break certain beliefs and stereotypes instilled on society.

For young girls and women in America, an unattainable standard of beauty is set. This ideal image of beauty even comes equipped with a specific ratio of female anatomical measurements. A 36-inch bust, 24-inch waist, and 36-inch hips. Women go to great lengths to achieve this thin yet curvaceous physique, from eating disorders, to diet pills to plastic surgery. Despite human efforts, for most, these goals are unattainable because we cannot change the physical ratios of our bodies on the skeletal level. This is something that does not come along with the “thin is in” message, so instead our country has nearly half of its females from ages 6-8 stating in studies that they would like to be slimmer. We are programming our children to believe that beauty is outward and is achieved through being aesthetically pleasing instead of educationally enriched and of sound

For example, the images and celebrities in the media set the standard for what we find attractive. As a result of, leading people to go to dangerous extremes to have the biggest biceps or fit into size 2 jeans. Today, more than 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. In the American body, the media idealizes images of the male and female bodies. But, at the same time the media in the form of television, the internet, movies, and print publications is more powerful than before. “We live in a day and age where people make it IMPOSSIBLE for women, men, anyone to embrace themselves exactly how they are. Diversity is sexy! Loving yourself is sexy!” (Strecker, 2015, para. 2).

Zoe Lawrie, Elizabeth Sullivan, Peter Davies & Rebecca Hill (2006) hold the view that many factors affect the body image that women create for themselves, however, they do emphasise in their work that the media is a significant contributor to the image of the percieved ideal female body in

Today’s culture has placed women across the globe in a position where they are constantly flooded with idealistic images that depict what the media perceives as the “perfect body.” Quite often, young university-attending females, those who are involved in social identity formation, are exposed to numerous forms of media that fabricate various experiences relative to body image. In the past, researchers have surveyed women who are exposed to body-related standards using multiple forms of mass media as a unified entity, which has caused for limitations since each means -such as magazine advertisements- differs in relation to how a thin idealistic image is portrayed. In light of prior research, Harper and Tiggman established that

On March 1959 during the American International Toy Fair, Barbie with a demure sidelong glance entered the world stage for the first time. Unlike the earlier traditional toys, Barbie in her high heels and black and white striped swimsuit seemed ready for an upscale pool party, and in the end, she revolutionized both the toy industry and society’s culture by representing the changing society as more women joined the workforce after World War II. As a result, today when any typical American woman reflects back at her childhood besides perhaps crayons, the Barbie Dolls have to be in the top list since it became an integral childhood partner. For most innocent American female children, the Barbie doll is more

A diseased representation of women, advocated by the media, is detrimental to the American culture (Chittom, N. Page). The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), asserts an upsurge in eating disorders, inadequate self-esteem, and depression cases are attributed to this illustration (Chittom, N. Page). The portrait of American beauty has transformed greatly over the years (Chittom, N. Page). At the dawn of the twentieth century, beauty centered around abundant chests and minuscule waists, accentuated with tight corsets, but in the 1920’s, this image changed to glorify flat chested “flappers” (Chittom, N. Page). By the 1950’s, the shapely figures were once again popular, but in the 1960’s, with models like Lesley “Twiggy” Hornby, thin was

Elline Lipkin, a Research Scholar at the center for the Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles, describes in her article ‘From girls’ Bodies, Girls’ Selves: Body Image, Identity, and Sexuality, the effects of media body image have on females. Many females may not be aware of the effects that the media has on women. In fact, according to Lipkin women are taught a lesson about what a female should look like just by the advertisement. Advertising what the ideal female body should look like may seem like a good idea, but really it effects woman more in the negative side then on the positive. In fact, most of the ideal female body is false, in which it could become harmful emotionally and physically. To improve the confidents in female very own body, false advertisement can stop in which negative effects will also stop, and changing the way women see their body in a different view.

The illustration had appeared in popular magazines, it not only had showed physical ideas, and it also had represented the behavior and the social status of the perfect American women in that time. Gibson girls had portrayed the “new woman” a women who was educated, taking advantage from the access that women obtained to have secondary and college education; a woman who had more independence. The Gibson girl was illustrated like a Caucasian woman, tall and slim with a body in “S” shape helped by the corset. The facial features were big eyes and a tiny mouth and nose.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

The media have constructed attractiveness for a long time many sociocultural standards of beauty and. Especially women’s body images have been a primary concern because the value of women has been measured how they look like. How women have similar body traits with the modern female body images has been a significant and essential issue, historically. The sociocultural standards of beauty which have been created by the greed of the media have dire impacts on young females. The current beauty level of the female body image in the media is thinness. In fact, the preferred female body images have been changed through the media. Throughout history, sometimes skinny women’s body images were loved, and sometimes over weighted women’s body images were preferred. Whenever the media have dictated the ideal female

The Gibson Girls were known for their big effortless bouffant hairstyles as well as their big chest, tiny waist, and big hip silhouette (Edwardian Fashion – The Gibson Girl). However, they weren’t just known for their beauty. Charles drew them doing many things; playing the violin, keeping fit riding a bike, enjoying the outdoors, sketching, being part of a jury, and more (The Gibson Girl’s America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson The Gibson Girl as the “New Woman”). To him the Gibson Girl’s weren’t just about beauty, although they were effortlessly beautiful. They were also talents, smart, and active in their society. The Gibson Girls represented the “ideal women,” and was even