Perfection Is Not Perfect

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 my satire project, I focused on the topic of Obesity for which to find a humorous solution. Today obesity is an exponential problem in the United States. Americans are evolving into the laziest humans in the world because we don’t want to work towards the goal of being fit; all we want to do is take a pill and wake up skinny in a week’s time. The industry for weight loss and its advertisement has gone way too far, and they are steering us in a bad direction. Likewise, my targeted audience would be the industry of diet planning and those who fall into the trap of “losing thirty pounds a month” with a formulated shake or pills. Given these points, my purpose for this assignment is to expose the ridiculousness of the weight loss plans in today’s

The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds (Chojnacki, 2017). Those models’ digitally enhanced pictures are published in magazines, posted online, and shown on television. Individuals scroll past filtered images of the “thin ideal”, flip through the pages and images of magazines as they stand in check out lines, and are drawn to advertisements of beautiful, happy, and skinny people. All of these encounters happen several times daily without even thinking twice about the message that is being sent. The enormous audience that the media can now reach due to advancing technology is both a blessing and a curse. Technology has allowed the public to connect with people thousands of miles away at the touch of a button and

In “Never Just Pictures,” Susan Bordo discusses the obsession with body image in the media. She begins with an example of Alicia Silverstone; when she appeared at the Academy Awards with a little added weight, the tabloids viciously slammed her. Not only this, but the media regularly attacks women with constant diet pill and plan ads in magazines, in newspapers, on TV, and even in public areas. These advertisements usually have a woman clad in a bikini on the cover. Magazines always have a new miracle diet advertised on their cover. The media affects young minds beyond what one may believe.

Media holds such high standards in today 's society, and media as a whole has gotten so much power throughout the years. There are so many different forms of media in today 's world: newspapers, magazines, televisions, the hundreds of websites on the Internet, social media applications, computers, and novels. Media advertises thousands of different things, but something that has stayed consistent over the years is advertisement on body image. Media advertises a specific body type, pushes different dietary needs to achieve this body type and thus creating the standard of in order to be beautiful, this particular body type must be achieved. However, what advertisers seem to be neglecting is the effect their advertisements are having on its viewers. The constant push to achieve a certain body type has affected the health of thousands of people around the world, and directly affecting the eating disorder epidemic.

Anderson and Domenico found that women’s magazines had 10.5 times more dieting information than men’s magazines, which mainly focus on sex and women’s fashion mistakes. Eating disorders have caused major problems in teens starving themselves just to stay unnaturally

Media is a significant force in modern culture, particularly in America. Sociologist refer to this as a mediated culture where media reflects and created culture. Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources. These messages promote not only products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is and is not important. The messages that the media portray are conflicting and it is impossibly hard to achieve both messages since one is orientated toward fast food consumption and the other it orientated toward an extremely thin ideal. Many researchers have hypothesized that the media may play a central role in creating and intensifying the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction and consequently,

People want to achieve a better looking version of themselves, furthermore the increase of ads for diet foods and products can cause them to feel the need to purchase these products. The article, Eating Disorder and the Role of the media, states that it found a significant increase in advertisements for diet foods and diet products for the years 1973-1996. (Spettigue and Henderson 1) This shows us that the “ideal” body image change over generations also causing products to increase due to newer trends replace older trends. Generations are only momentarily while “ideal” body images change by becoming more skinnier and with higher expectations. This can lead to the increase of diet products. Also in the article, Body Image of Women, it states

In the article, “Fad diets: Slim on good nutrition,” the author, June Daniels, discusses the fad diet scheme plaguing the United States. Over the recent decade, the rate of obesity amongst Americans has increased dramatically. The growing number of obese and overweight individuals has caused fad diets to become a quick and easy cure to a deeper issue. Fad diets are specifically targeted towards obese and/or overweight individuals, promising instant results with minimum effort. More importantly, numerous fad diet weight loss claims have not been backed by extensive research (Daniels 22) . According to Daniels, popular diets, such as Atkins, have been highly emphasized upon because of their high protein, low carb meals (22). The high protein

(The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015) points to many sectors of society including families, communities, schools, medical care providers, and the media as sources of influence on dietary and physical activity behaviors. In today 's society, we are seeing a trend of major influence coming from many different types of media. An example of this is social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Where people will post photos, usually with a filter to show their target audience that they are happy with their life, and not showing their real heartache. Another example of influence coming from media is from the Hollywood industry, in which to be successful in that type of business a person is to be thin,

To analyze how the media help to shape the values of our culture, I chose advertisements and articles on weight reduction which appeared in the magazines People Weekly, Working Woman, and Prevention. The ad in Working Woman entitled "Now, I Believe in Miracles!" focuses on the diet pill called Xenadrine. The ad features a young woman who lost 84 pounds in 12 weeks using Xenadrine. She is pictured both before and after using the drug. The ad claims that Xenadrine, the #1 diet supplement in America, is clinically proven to increase fat loss an extraordinary 38.6 times more than will diet and exercise alone; it also claims that one can feel the results immediately.[6] The second work I examined is People Magazine's article on a surgical treatment performed on Carnie Wilson, a musician, who lost 150 pounds after having surgery to remove excess skin and shrink an enlarged stomach. In the article, the authors applaud her ability to make such a brave decision.[7] The third work is Prevention ad; it is about weight-loss herbs that help people overcome obstacles to diet and exercise. It is an

Today 's society is constantly presented with misrepresentations of the ideal body image through the advertising of diet plans and supplements. Companies in the fitness industry scam people into buying useless products or services by advertising with individuals that have, what the mass media sees as, the 'perfect ' body composition. In addition to getting consumers to buy into a product or service, these companies also aid society with the spreading of this fake idea of what classifies as the perfect body. They portray a body image that is unattainable for most individuals in society, despite how many of those supplements being advertised they buy. The models used in these advertisements, are in most cases, starving themselves, enhanced via illegal substances, or are photo-shopped to the point where even they do not look like the model displayed in the ad. All this has led to many people wanting to strive for that perfect body, that in reality, is impossible to achieve. In order to show the affect these advertisements play in our society, I will be deconstructing multiple ads in the fitness industry, as well as multiple peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles centered around the impact media has on an individual 's self-image.

Such campaigns promote “healthy eating”, and specific amounts of exercise that are not good for all people. Unknowingly, these campaigns are triggering eating disorders in mass amounts (Kirkey). Studies proven that media and society are the main factors in the cause of eating disorders most often when the victim has a predisposition.

Those who watch any amount of television have probably noticed the numerous ads for diet programs that include diet mail-order food shipped directly to the home. Results advertised as not typical are plastered across the screen in print almost too small to read, and scantily clad people proudly exclaim they've achieved success with their diet plan of choice. One commercial in particular shows a less than perfect woman who doesn't appear to be extremely overweight walking through the grocery store in her silky lavender underwear. Others show people in tight bathing suits with tummies hanging over their waistbands while exposing themselves to the world. When wearing clothes, most of these people really wouldn't look that bad, but they claim

Everybody sees it everywhere. “Lose 60 pounds in 6 weeks!” “Skinny is what’s in!” “Detox diet plan!” It’s a fair assumption to assume that the world, especially the United States, is obsessed with being healthy. From celebrity workout programs to expensive diet systems that make people lose weight, being fit is always what’s mainly focused on in the media, daily life, and nationwide. But with obsessions, come unhealthy actions and interests. Most people that anyone knows is most likely upset with some aspect of themselves. Whether it be the way they look, how they eat, or their lifestyle, obsession happens because of the nearly-impossible body types and lifestyles found on social media. On top of this, there are also restrictions and challenges that come with eating a healthy diet that seem simply irradical to address, and unhealthier foods are more available than ever. With these slowly arising issues, anyone would think the nation is making it hard for themselves to be healthy. The society the nation lives in is making it progressively harder and harder to be healthy because of the lifestyles that are easier to achieve.