Pretty Hurts

Beyoncé is a singer known for her fantastic voice, rejuvenating dance moves, and most importantly her empowering throughout her songs. These skills are no different in her song “Pretty Hurts.” Released on June 10, 2014, from her self-titled album Beyoncé, the song written by Sia, Joshua “Ammo” Coleman, and Beyoncé herself resonates its empowering message with people of all different genders, body types, and races. This song, in particular, is targeted towards women, especially young women who are still developing. Beyoncé gained popularity when she started off in an all-female group named Destiny’s Child back in 1997, and once she broke off from the group, she only continued to grow as an artist and person. In all six of Beyoncé’s solo studio albums, there are songs with galvanizing messages of female power and all of them reached number 1 on the charts. In Beyoncé’s song “Pretty Hurts,” she uses social issues, rhetorical appeals such as pathos, literary devices, metaphors, and vivid imagery to further the theme of female empowerment.

There are beauty standards all over the world, but America has one of the most highest and unreachable standard of the all. In the article “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines reflects the issue on how narrow-minded society, magazine and the rest of media is depicting the perfect body. The ideal body in America is established as skinny, tall, perfect skin, tight body are characteristics that destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem (172). As girls get older and into their teen years, they have been brainwashed to need to look like the unrealistic, and photoshopped models in magazines and advertisements. Girls don’t feel comfortable to be in their own skin, because they were not taught to love themselves for who they are right in the beginning.

“You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine doesn’t even look like the girl in the magazine” Jessimae Peluso. Throughout American history, women have continued to strive for an ideal of beauty. Although the definition of beauty has varied between generations, the pressure and desire to fit the mold of what society deems “beautiful” remains consistent among women from all eras. Unfortunately, this abnormal example seen in magazines, on runways, and in social media platforms is impossible for the majority of the female population to physically reach. Women are always pursuing the perfect look, turning to plastic surgeries transform them into celebrity ideals. People who desire perfect appearance ignore the nature of beauty itself, naturality is a kind of beauty. In recent years, women in America turned to look at models to find the ideal beauty standard and if they don’t meet them they turn to face lifts and plastic surgery to perfect their appearance.

Society and the media have an enormous influence on an individual’s concept of beauty and bodily perfection. Even the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” many people allow the media’s influence into their lives, which is a dangerous thing to allow (Vogel, 2015). According to David Newman, author of Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, society is defined as the “population of people living in the same geographic area who share a culture and a common identity and whose members fall under the same political authority” (Newman, 2010, 18). The people within a society constantly create and add to the pressure already placed on individuals which can severely alter and harm one’s self-esteem. Self-esteem is

Instead of empowering girls, society would rather drag them down. Girls are most susceptible to the target of beauty standards that can lead to detrimental self-harm. This op-ed from USA Today by Natalie DiBlasio denounces such occurrences. Gold’s Gym, a franchise from Egypt, recently posted an image of a pear with the caption: “This is no shape for a girl” (Par 2). This sparked controversy and anger as it was a cruel judgement on the physiques of many girls in the world. It questioned the credibility of the gym as the image attacked girls rather than inspiring them. In expressing her own distaste as well as of others, DiBlasio uses several rhetorical techniques to combat the harmful message of the image. Through the compilation of emotional stories with statistical data and powerful diction, DiBlasio establishes strong advocacy for the liberation of girls from beauty standards that successfully influences the reader to do the same.

The argument of The Beauty Myth is that as women have received more eminence, the standard of their personal appearance has also grown. Wolf’s position on the issue is that this type of social control is potentially just as restrictive as the traditional roles of women. The Beauty Myth discusses how society’s viewpoint of beauty is detrimental to women because it causes many emotional and psychological problems to women who strive to become “perfect”. This book is important due to the fact it raises awareness to the issues that many young women are currently facing.

Through the media society puts out high standards and expectation on women to adhere to what they say is beautiful. Making women judge mental and self consciousness about themselves and even judging other woman in a split second. In the book Mrs. Breedlove speaks on the affect the movies had on her,”She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it with some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen” (122). This explains how the media can cause society to be judgmental among their peer and categorize them as either beautiful or ugly. Giving society room to isolate and antagonize the ugly and adore and idolize the beautiful.

Do you take a great deal of pride in your appearance? Do you work 24/7 for the perfect cheekbones, lips, eyes, and body? Would you do anything for that perfect appearance? Well, in Scott Westerfield’s dystopian story, “Uglies”, this world revolves around everything pretty. Tally, a teenage girl who is currently “ugly” gets caught up in a the dream of being all things pretty.

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.

Throughout her career, Beyoncé has been no stranger to controversy. From covertly sexual lyrics to blatantly sexual music videos, she always seems to make headlines; perhaps none bigger than those surrounding the recent release of the music video for her song “Formation.” The themes presented in “Formation” were similar to those displayed in another music video, “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. Despite the similarities, the videos were received differently by their audiences. “Alright” received widely positive reviews from media outlets such as MTV and The Verge while “Formation” was perceived more negatively . The outrage surrounding Beyoncé’s “Formation” video, and lack thereof for “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar, exhibits the prevalence of sexism in the media today.

Women around the world are continuously striving to reach the beauty ideal set forth by media, literature, and music and although the beauty ideal differs from culture to culture the pressure to achieve this look is enforced just the same throughout each. In many cases, young women will go to any means to achieve this look, completely disregarding a healthy lifestyle. When looking at female American culture, an unachievable body image has become idolized and women are ridiculed if they do not have all the criteria. It would not be wrong to assume that nearly all women would like to feel beautiful, or attractive, however, today’s perception of beauty limits many woman from feeling so. Lilka Areton writes, “[We] have come to believe that as soon

Cultural Analysis Essay In today’s society, people are pressured into looking their best all the time. Advertisements, news articles and magazines set the standards for how people should appear to be considered beautiful. Even in Disney stories, the protagonist is perceived as a beautiful princess while the antagonist is a wretched witch. Corporations have made billions of dollars off of making people feel better about their bodies through plastic surgery.

Post a picture which shows what the word "pretty" means to you connecting this picture to the point of the Beyonce' video.

This excerpt shows how more emphasis is put on women’s appearance and its keep up, and also shows the negative connotation of this prettiness; it is associated with shallowness. Not only is there an assumption that women spend much of their time on their appearance, but also there is the connected fact that others pay more attention to their appearance than their other character traits. This is still a reality of today as can be seen on the red carpet. Female celebrities have a whole industry devoted to making them look fashionable and pretty for events. The focus of these events becomes what they’re wearing rather than their work as actresses and singers.

Beauty can be defined as a combination of qualities of a person or object that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction and that are aesthetically pleasing to the senses. While we are told as young children that beauty lies within, in today’s world for many people, that is regretfully untrue. We live in a very superficial society where most everyone is judged by their physical appearance. We are forced to change our values and purely focus on our appearance in order to be accepted and feel wanted. In recent years, the desire to be “beautiful” has become an obsession for many, leading sometimes to devastating consequences. The pressure to be beautiful relates to women’s studies and feminism because as