Motivations Behind Altered Images: Feigned Realities
In an increasingly visual society, wherein mediated information and reality are weaved together, making it nearly impossible to distinguish what is real from what is represented, beauty may only seem skin deep.
Each day we are constantly bombarded by images and messages from society and the media telling us who, what, and how we should be. Nearly every magazine published boasts various headlines promising fat blasting secrets or how to get flawless skin or how to get the man of your dreams. There are infomercials on nearly every channel that try to convince women to take weight loss pills. News feeds from social media sites are full of daily exercise routines. Magazine tabloids and
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It is those unrealistic images that we see in the media that contribute to women’s desire to be skinny and perfectly toned, so, like the conditioned robots we are, we: perform, please, and perfect – to eventually develop a self-destructive sense of self. Altered images and the generalizations of those images in the media are, without doubt, becoming great contributors to lowering self-esteem in people
Why are these impossible standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majority of whom look nothing like the models that are being presented to them? Research indicates that the causes are solely economic: by presenting a physical ideal that is difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet industries are assured continual growth and profits. Since women are depicted as extremely thin in the media, self-comparison to the images they are exposed to can lead to negative consequences. “The Photoshopped woman isn’t going away,” writes Bekah Ticen, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, in an op-ed for the Purdue Exponent, the university’s student newspaper. “She graces the covers of magazines. You can find her in over-sexualized advertising, her waist whittled away by the click of a mouse. We’ve all seen her, and we’ve all come to the realization of the impossibility of her existence. The Photoshopped woman is not real. So why do we insist on giving her power?”
In The New York Times’ Debating the Rules & Ethics of Digital
In society, women relate to friends, models and actresses which are actually people who are in the industry portraying the ‘ideal body.’ Women think too much about what others think of them instead of just caring about themselves. They also choose to take the unhealthy approach and gain all these bad habits to obtain the ‘ultimate’ body image of this ‘ideal woman’ society has created.
To begin with, the media industry has the power to decide what reaches the public’s eye; therefore, they present to the public their versions of what “beautiful’ women should appear like. The media has created their version of what the “ideal body” should be. They continuously show the audience photographic images of models that appear extremely thin. Media meticulously chooses women with bodies which media calls “sexy”. Spectators rarely get a glance of women who are overweight. For example, all of the actress that make an appearance on television shows are below what is considered a healthy weight. Yet, this concept is what media has defined as beautiful, influencing many women to obtain a thin figure. As a result, of these messages sent by
Mass media is effective in teaching us what we “should” look like. Women should be thin. Men should be muscular. The skinny and muscular ideals portrayed in advertising encourage men and women to look a certain way. The depiction of the female ideal has helped shaped society’s perspectives about beauty. The media pushes you to “improve your body” by buying their products but soon the road to a skinny and toned body leads to a self destructive path of self hatred. The powerful ideas that the media transmits through words, images, and movement can have lasting impacts on the human brain, affecting how we think and
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).
The increasing and widespread use of media, as well as it tremendous ability to influence its audience, has raised various concerns over the effects the media has on its viewers. One of the fields of increasing concerns is the idea that the media portrays unrealistic body images and that these portrayals have negative consequences on their viewers, especially so for women. Women have always been associated with ideals of beauty and a particular body image. The question arises as to how far the media further perpetuate these models and body images, and what are the consequences of these effects? When the media works to perpetuate such ideals of beauty and body image, the majority of the female population, who do not conform to such ideals and body type, fall prey to psychological issues resulting from body dissatisfaction such as depression, self-hate, negative moods, and emotions, particularly for the younger women. Such negative emotions, when evoked, can lead to negative consequences and actions for the affected female population, which include drastic, harmful steps such as crash diets, self-harm, or cosmetic surgery.
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
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.,
The largest forms of media we encounter in our daily lives are the advertisements and commercials we see on TV, the Internet and in magazines. One of the key strategies used to reinforce the feminine image is to depict every woman to be “thin.” This strategy is used all over the media and this depiction of “women should be thin” is negative. For example, “Seventeen” magazine, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario is featured on the cover captioning, “Get an insane body – It’s hard, but you’ll look hot.” This idea that the media is portraying to all women and girls is publicized wrongly. Everyone thinks that being thin is hot and if you are not thin, you don’t belong to society. However, this happens because women and girls are too taken away by getting slim,
Accompanying unrealistic images of women, the media spends billions of dollars yearly to advertise the various techniques that eliminate body discontents such as dieting pills and exercising machines, and exploits female magazine reader’s insecurities. Whether magazine advertisements aid in the gradual depletion of body image or fail to impact it at all will be the purpose of this investigation, supplemented by a literature review and organized by a theoretical framework, to support a firm analysis.
The media is our source of constant information, and is presented in many forms such as, daily newscasts, social media like Facebook, and the magazines strategically placed in our doctor’s office. There is no surprise that it is also the dominant influence when it comes to society’s beauty standard either. Unfortunately media isn’t a positive influence all the time, and is the main force behind negative body image epidemic that plagues women, especially the 18-25 age group. In order to fully understand the severity of what some call a “Vanity” issue we must look into the facts of how exactly the media damages women’s perception of their own bodies, and then observe the extent of the damage done to the physical and mental states of these women
Nutritionists wondered “whether a slow metabolism may be to blame”(Reinagel). The media illustrates runway models and famous celebrities that have a “perfect body” image. All women have different ideals of their body. Let’s make this certain that everybody has insecurities, whether it's being fat, skinny or chunky there will always be at least one thing people do not like about their image. A poll was lead “80% of them said they walk around feeling somewhat dissatisfied with their bodies half of the time”(Eden).
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.
Often, people of all ages, race, and gender catch themselves gazing into mirrors for hours, blaming themselves for the way they look, not realizing that the media is actually the one to blame for many people’s body image. Body image is the way people see themselves, or how they assume other people see them. It is not likely to see a plus sized model in a magazine or a model on the runway with blemishes on her face. A person’s negative perception of their own body is not because they think it is wrong to look and be healthy; it is because the media is telling them that being a size 2 with flawless skin is healthy and beautiful.
Women have let the idea of looking beautiful take over their self-confidence and life. Healthy Place, an online magazine teaching women about living a healthy life, says that, “today's fashion models weigh twenty-three percent less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a seven percent chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a one percent chance of being as thin as a supermodel.” So why do women push themselves to be excessively thin when these models are anomalies? They do it because the media tells them that this look is the only look that can attract men. Even if a woman is “beautiful” according to the media’s standards, she will always find something about her body that she hates, whether it is her hair or her belly button, no women is completely satisfied. Our society is very accepting of different religions and lifestyles, so why can we not accept different types of beauty as well?
In today’s society we let the media decide everything in our lives from what clothes we should wear, music we should listen to, and how we should look. One of the biggest problems that both men and women face is body shaming, because the media sets standards for young kids and young adults., they often times try and fit the description of “perfect” which leads these people to either be depressed because they do not look like people want them to look or harm themselves in order to achieve the desired look. The most common ways the media shames both men and women are by celebrities and how they are the “perfect” body, publishing magazines of what is the ideal man and woman, and by the people who believe being “too” fat is bad and being “too” skinny is bad.