Social Media 's Influence On Women

The Beauty Myth’s central argument is the growing standards of physical beauty of women as they grow stronger. This standard has affected women in many ways, such as in the workplace, culture, and religion. The standard has taken over the work of social harassment. The beauty myth expands the belief an unbiased measurement of beauty exists and that women want to express it and men would want that women. The author, Naomi Wolf, states that the beauty myth is not about women themselves, it is about the power of men and their society. The myth supplies power to multibillion dollar cosmetics industries and it keeps women from rising too high in the workplace. Within this book, Wolf shows how the beauty myth functions and affects women in the workplace, media, sex, religion, culture, violence against women by men, and by women themselves in the configuration of cosmetic surgery and eating disorders.

Throughout their lives, women of all ages are constantly being bombarded with advertisements convincing them they must meet an ideal of the perfect body image. This is all thanks to companies that share a common goal to influence the mainstream population into believing they need to purchase certain products in order to compare to the impossible standards set by the beauty industry. In Dave Barry’s “Beauty and the Beast” he displays that it is planted in young girls minds that they need to look, dress, feel, and even act a certain way. However, men aren’t as affected by these capitalistic marketing schemes. In short, the media has affected the way women think of themselves.

The beauty standard is a culturally constructed notion of physical attractiveness that has become increasingly imperative for women and men. However, this standard has become extremely perilous to men and women’s self-image. Camille Paglia, a highly educated individual who earned her PhD at Yale University and became a highly acclaimed author, explicates this conception in her essay “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery”. Paglia suggests that the beauty standard idealizes women to look like “sex symbols with an unattainable grandeur” (776). She continues to claim that it forces her audience of higher class women to pay large sums of money in order to alter their features ultimately conforming to a very “parochial” definition of beauty (776). Although Paglia is a highly credible source, she illogically appeals to the reader’s fears in order to persuade them. Paglia fails to give any credible outside sources which affirms her preposterous beliefs. Contrary to her inconsistencies, Daniel Akst, a social journalist and graduate from New York University provides his audience with reputable sources in order to persuade his audience. Daniel Akst believes that there needs to be a “democratization of physical beauty” in which instead of attempting to alter the beauty standard, we must first change how we view ourselves. Akst provides credible sources to establish his credibility where he observes cases studies and cultural experiments from scientists and organizations including:

Writing for the Huffington Post, Temimah Zucker presents her opinion on society’s expectation for women in America through different forms of communication and advertisement. Zucker’s article is based off of what you as a woman, think of yourself, versus what society thinks of you. Zucker believes that society’s opinions and beliefs will constantly change through the generations, but your thoughts about your own beauty will not become gray to you; “Beauty is molded by society -- by the advertising, fashion, and cosmetic industries. We live in a society of billboards and ads, Photoshop, and Botox. We are trained to believe that size two is perfect, while most healthy women in America fit into a size 12.” (1)

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

For centuries mankind has unsuccessfully attempted to define beauty. Greek philosophers, including Plato, tried to define beauty as if it were as simple as any other law in nature. However this cannot be so because the idea of what is beautiful has varied throughout cultures and the ages. In the 1800s women who were pale and rather plump were considered objects of desire; but in today’s society, desirable women are slender and tan, among other things. The fact is that today, beauty is as unobtainable as it is indefinable. All of today’s supermodels, as seen in millions of advertisements, have been modified, airbrushed, and photoshopped. Women desiring this beauty have turned to various

Social media is a big part in today’s society. Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others. People follow the biggest stars and models, but what are these celebrities really doing? Where girls are required to be slim and short, the ideal for boys and men is a well-muscled and ripped look. Today, women everywhere want to get that fit body, the flat stomach, and the thigh gap or perfectly muscled body because most women are never satisfied; whereas the men are living at the gym and getting ripped: they are both looking for approval from their peers, the opposite sex, and the approval of society. Males may start an

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

"I woke up like this, I woke up like this, flawless, Ladies tell them" (Beyonce Verse 3)! Females may look like a million bucks on Facebook (a social media website), but do they feel like a million bucks? There are many females who pretend to be untroubled on social media so others will not view them as emotionally weak and unstable. "Specifically, [women] are misusing the social media tools given to them and creating false impressions of themselves that are fueling their own insecurities..." (Negroni Screen 2). Women pretend to be someone there not on social media, so no-one will know how they really feel. The artwork successfully shows how the woman feels by using color, contrast between light and dark, as well as juxtapostion .

There has been increasing controversy surrounding the idea of how women should be portrayed in the media. Although the perception of beauty tends to change throughout the decades, the issue we are currently facing is that women are not equally represented in the media. Since the 2000’s, women featured in the magazines, ads, etc. have continually gotten skinnier and it has become common to see their photos edited to the point where the models, themselves, are unrecognizable. Promoting these women sends the message to young girls and women everywhere, that in order to be considered beautiful in the public-eye, it is obligatory to have flawless skin and a perfect body.

Every page turned in a magazine or a glance at social media gradually reveals the archetype that society puts on a pedestal. Trends and the perception of beauty are dynamic and inconsistent features of society that conform to responses of social change. Social changes such as the reforms in gender roles and the view of sexuality contribute to the perception of body image idealized by society. For an individual, body image is the “picture of our own body which we form in our mind; that is to say, the way in which the body appears to ourselves” (Phillips, 2005. For society, on the other hand, body image is on a much larger scale, and the push for people to worship and mimic what the majority deems as perfect

Having such a great influence on the society, media idealize the perfect unrealistic portrait of beauty and people seem to think they are obligated to follow that style. Men and women tend to follow up primary sources for shaping the society’s trends in the media. In the article, “The Body Image Presented by the Media Promotes Disordered Eating” the author states “However, with [the] increased availability of plastic surgery, today's women are faced with similarly unrealistic expectations every time they open a fashion magazine.” Which shows how women are so focused on their physical appearance to look like famous models and

Society creates a standard of beauty for women that often changes along with society due to a new perspective on what it means to be beautiful in our culture. These standards for beauty create what our society believes makes a woman desirable, attractive, perfect, and overall beautiful.  Which then enforces unhealthy and unrealistic beauty ideals that negatively affect women's self-image and their body image because society has attributed beauty to self worth. The result is with the ever changing standards of beauty means women use various ways to alter their bodies and appearance by clothing, makeup, hair, dieting, exercising, and even taking extreme measures to perfect their looks through surgery.

Society follows a norm that requires a general agreement between groups in order to function as a whole. Human beings are social “group animals” (Lessing 1) and need each other to survive with the intention to get along or fit in. These desires to conform “influence our idea about ourselves” (Lessing 1) and people lose a sense of their inner self based on these insecurities. The false concept of ideal beauty of body image is displayed in the media and it pressures young women and men to accept this particular notion of beauty. The role of the media comes into play because it pressures individuals to give in, since they appeal to our need, which is to be accepted. Although, people oppose to media pressuring individuals to conform, it is clear