Popular Media's False Image On Women

The stereotypes of women in social media are constantly being thrown our way. Have you noticed that the only ones being shown on TV or in magazines look almost identical? You know what i'm talking about; it is usually caucasian hererosexual men or women with a very skinny and toned body who has straight hair. These people are shot picture after picture, but have editors ever thought about how the people who don't look like may this feel? When I look in the mirror it is obvious that is not what I see, being an average black woman with kinky hair. The standards of beauty today is very hard to live up to which causes a lot of burdens on everyday women and even young girls. When I younger it was hard for me to be secure with who I was due to

Every day, millions of Americans view the front covers of magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and more. They see them while at grocery stores, on the television, and even in the waiting room at a doctor's office. The media offer advertisements with models that are seemingly slim with perfect skin, hair, and teeth. American propaganda leaves most young, adolescent girls between the ages of 5-18 to consider that the complexity of beauty is strict to be thin and perfect, though it is targeted to young adolescents, it does aim towards older female and male age ranges as well. An article states, “While the media attempt to target every person, the level of exposure is dictated by gender, and the majority of harmful messages is focused more toward women. For instance, in media such as magazines where a person relies on an image to relate a feeling, girls are often made to look inferior” (Chapman). When it comes to the media, specifically in the American culture, the popularity has massively increased over the years, turning to new weekly issues, becoming common to the society and civilization. This causes issues associated with eating disorders, depression and suicide, and self-esteem/confidence young girls.

Every individual has their own ideas on what is considered beautiful. Beauty can be on the inside or on the outside because it varies to each individual’s preference. However, pressure from society causes people to believe that they must adapt and conform to society’s apocryphal image of beauty. Today, society’s image of beauty has been manufactured on a distorted perception of unrealistic perfection that has been asserted by the media and implemented through its advertisements to proclaim that women need to appease this standard in order to be considered beautiful in society. Media’s pessimistic views of beauty influence the way women portray themselves in daily life. Media has a negative impact on women and the way they

Media such as televisions, radio, internet, and magazines represent slim women as the model and ideal to follow. Media portray thin women as happy and successful. Therefore, women who follow that ideal are more tented to put their selves in intense diet, to apply plastic surgery, and to have a low self-esteem if that ideal isn’t reach. Many women ignore that, the media portrays of female is a sort of advertisement that many companies do in order to sell their products. In addition, women ignore that those women portray as top model have stylist to make their clothes, hair, and make up. Therefore, in a real word, women have to face many obstacles, they have to work, to take care of their children, to study, to pay their bills and all of that require money and time.

What does the media tell us about women? It tells us what is “most important” and that’s how we look. They surround us with images of ideal female beauty. We have been learning from such an early age, that we must spend our time to strive to be like the women in these images and to feel ashamed and guilty if we cant live up to these incredibly unrealistic expectations. But failure is inevitable, when the women we are being shown are photo shopped and airbrushed to seem thinner, with faces so flawless that there is not a wrinkle or a line to be seen. This idea of beauty that society is showing us is so edited that it can’t be achieved. Not even the women in these images we are being shown look like this. The media is beginning to dictate our lives, influencing our thoughts, opinions, and actions. Through this use of magazines, advertisements, and social media, we are being shown by society what we need to look like in order to be beautiful. Society challenges women to be strong and independent, by showing us that in order to be seen as the ideal female we have to look like a woman that has been altered with on a computer for hours until she doesn’t even look like

In addition to the unbelievably high beauty standards women are expected to achieve as a result of the media’s portrayal of women, they are also expected to create and maintain a perfect household. Interior design is often perceived by contemporary society as a feminine interest. As a result, a majority of publications dedicated to home decoration are targeted towards women. Whether or not it is directly stated, a magazine’s attempt to target a particular sex can be identified through both the subject matter and visual content. Livingetc magazine is one of six home and style magazines produced by the British company House to Home. Livingetc is described on its website as “the homes magazine for modern living,” “perfect for design conscious homeowners with inspiring ideas.” Although the magazine does not claim to be gendered, its appearance and contents, which not only discuss interior design, but also include segments on women’s fashion, cooking and travelling, are undeniably geared towards female readers.

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?”

The way the media depicts women also categorizes which sports are female friendly and which are not. The more the media portrays women as delicate and skinny the more people will associate them with certain sports. Likewise for men, the more physical contact and tough a sport is then it is more associated with men. The way these sports are covered in the media, the language used when reporting it and the visual aspects of how it is displayed subconsciously causes people to assign genders to the sport.

Mass media falsely claims to be an advocate for self-acceptance and the idea that every woman is naturally beautiful, while it simultaneously uses Photoshop to erase all trace of that natural beauty—imagine how much they would Photoshop women if they did not extol real, non-enhanced, beauty! The women in these digitally improved photos look, quite frankly, as real as Barbie and her friends, and few women actually believe that the women in the pictures look that flawless in person. However, these pictures have the power to make any woman, including those in the pictures, feel inadequate because she is not as “attractive” as a Photoshopped image, the power to make a woman detest herself

While the vast majority of images of females are being digitally enhanced, so is our appreciation for normal, healthy, beautiful, and attainable. Photoshop has gone over the top with how they make pictures look, so much that it’s negatively affecting vulnerable children, and teens with low self-esteem issues. One important justification for why people go through serious issues with their bodies like self-esteem, and eating disorders is because of the media. The media plays a huge role in our everyday life, and when a person sees an image they are automatically influenced by what that image portrays.

Ostensibly, I agree with Cassandra’s implication that media misrepresentations of women, and the mistreatment of female journalists, are matters of fundamental inequality and unfairness. However, I also believe issues are more extensive. North (2012, p.60) argues this viewpoint risks distracting from broader, more sinister concerns, asserting, “…women’s role as fully participating and informed citizens is at stake.” Thus, dishearteningly, media representations of women primarily conform to male-dominated hegemonic structures, which marginalise female opinions, effectively excluding women from significant public sphere debate (North 2012, p.60).

some type of media platform throughout the day. Among these forms of media are photos and videos of woman idealized as the perfect woman. Magazines release photos of women whose looks are highly unachievable and thought as as the ideal woman. An average woman exposed to these photos may feel depresssed and may want to look like the model through unsafe dieting and other eating disorders. The media has affected girls as young as six years old into changing their appearance to look similar to those idealized in television and magazines. The mass media’s portrayal of women today sets standards of beauty that are highly unattainable and unrealistic,

Throughout the years women have been portrayed in media in many different ways. Women are often represented in movies, television shows, music videos, and pornographic films. They are seen taking on many roles, such as: mothers, wives, business professionals, and background roles. Many people have set stereotypes of women and they are often seen in media. These stereotypes may be negative or positive stereotypes, depending on the way women are being depicted within the specified source. Stereotypes may influence the way people view themselves and can affect them throughout their lives. They can also affect the way other people see a certain group. Some people believe the way women are portrayed in media affect the self body image of young girls and cause them to become promiscuous at a young age. Others believe this creates expectations of women should be like for men. When advertisements first became common, they often targeted this demographic to sell items making housework like cleaning more time efficient. This is still often seen in today’s society, home good advertisements seem to be aimed at women. There are several opinions on the effect the portrayal of women in media has on society.

Fashion magazines, general women?s magazine and advertisements for beauty products use Photoshop regularly and emphatically to make woman look thin, blemish free, and generally aligned with the familiar American standard of female beauty. By featuring digitally altered woman on their covers and within throughout their pages, these media outlets are promoting this unattainable standard of beauty to woman all over the country on mass. By using Photoshop to erase any fat that might exist on a woman?s arms or thighs and any wrinkle under a woman?s eyes, they create a landscape in which woman rarely see images of other woman who look like them or anyone they know in the media. This use of digital manipulation creates a lack of real images of real women associated with beauty. According the video lecture What Is Culture, a major role of popular culture is to ?give you identity what it needs when it needs it? and the fashion media is failing is failing to do this for American women (J., 2009).

With the media being a very popular way of communication and self expression in today’s culture, it influences the way of younger generations to be more involved in today’s technology, and to allow them to influence the world by the press of a button. But one of the topics that is very controversial is that in today’s society is the high expectations of what they think a girl has to look like, from girls not having stretch marks or scars, to magazines and photographers using photoshop to convince readers that the model looks like that. With all of these being factors that there is pressure is high for many girls around the world, this has to resolved.