Society's Puppet Essay

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.

Women try to erase any unwanted features from themselves that appear as unacceptable in men’s modern society today. For example ; moles, body hair, acne and blemishes, body fat, and any other visible ‘flaws’ we contain. As far the fashion industry goes we have chosen to think that as long as what we are wearing can be considered ‘sexy’ and ‘feminine’ that it is acceptable despite if it makes us uncomfortable. We choose to wear tight clothing and shoes that constrain our movement. Our beauty desires that we constantly try to feed consumes our lives, health, well-being and finances. The dedication and alterations women have made to eating less, living, moving, and speaking differently is to satisfy the stereotypes and sexual desires that live

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.

Raina Kelley covers society's issues and cultural controversies for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.’s. In her article “Beauty Is Defined, and Not By You” aims to convince her readers that women success or not is not depends on beauty. “When I’m on m deathbed, I hope to be smiling in satisfaction about all I accomplished, not that I made it to 102 without any cellulite.” One of her goals is to remain all girls do not get influence by this society, just be brave and continue to reject that beauty is the only way to get ahead. Kelley used personal experiences, facts and examples, also counter argument to create a convincing argument.

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.

Human Beings as the Puppets of Society Sociologists have long argued about whether or not we are controlled by the structure of the society in which we live, in other words, are we or are we not ‘puppets of society’. Social structure theorists such as Functionalists and conflict theorists like Marxists, believe that we are ‘puppets’ and that our behaviour is controlled by the structure of the society in which we live. Both theories suggest that people are controlled by society but this argument is opposed by social action theorists such as Symbolic Interactionists who believe that society is created by the individuals themselves. To show far it can be argued that human beings are ‘puppets of

Females have been constantly shamed for generations if one does not act, dress or look a certain way. The media has been a major influence on women from a young age on how one is perceived in society. The media has created an impossible goal for women to achieve. The media will take multiple different parts of women that are seen as perfect and Photoshop them and put them on billboards (Kilbourne, 2010). This makes young girls lead a life where one will inevitably fail to what she has always been shown as the ideal women. This causes eating disorders, depression and low self-esteem in women, which leads to mass amounts of unnecessary cosmetic reconstruction surgeries (Kilbourne, 2010). This is just one negative issue with the way societal norms degrades women. Women are constantly portrayed as objects and to be viewed as lesser than a male. The way men are shown of needing a masculine side and cannot show femininity

This beauty culture have not only affected a women’s self-esteem, but also their position in politics. A women are less likely to vote or run for office when they know that can rely on their looks to be successful. There are powerful women roles in movies with a minor issue that these roles are still being sexualizes. Women are also being sexualize in advertisement, television shows and music video. As a child watching these music videos of females displaying their bodies.

Through out history many would say that women have finally been liberated from the cruel injustice of the patriarchal society. Through Women’s suffrage to what seems to be an equal paying jobs now in society. Yet time and time again, society had fail to comply with the freedom that females deserve. Women’s population as a whole in a global aspect still to this modernized society are being looked down upon for their gender, believing that women are weak beings and are incapable of making logical decisions without the waiver of emotions. (Even after hundreds of years for society to become equal, on a global ideal, misogyny is still extremely alive integrated with our everyday lives.

It is no problem to glance at someone on the street and notice how they have altered their bodies in order to look more presentable. Nowadays this is “normal” to most people. Many women perform a daily routine in the morning in order to be their finest selves, but why are they doing this? Their answer may be to create a positive picture of themselves, but deep down the source of their daily routines is to be portrayed as normal in the eyes of others within their culture. This is an example of disciplinary body practices, which are “routines, rules, and practices” which help to maintain the body (Women’s Voices Feminist Visions, p. 193). They come at a cost, which may include time, money, and effort and these practices are influenced by various sources, such as television shows and commercials, magazines, social media, and many more. Both culture and globalization are directly connected to the influence of these practices and many people believe that if they do not conform to these practices, they will be seen as “odd.” I have experienced this myself because of my daily practices. Some examples of these disciplinary practices include shaving legs, styling hair, putting on make-up, surgeries, piercing body parts, tanning, and many more, which all come at a cost.

Without even realizing it people are pear pressured to maintain a certain image for acceptance in their everyday lives. The two readings that I found particularly interesting were, “Does an employer have the right to control body art of its employees?” by Alan Shanof and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorn. They both can relate in the sense of how the world perceives body image and especially in women. A lot of people are turned down for a job since they have body art or appear in a certain way, even if that person possibly could have been the perfect person for the job. This stops people from being able to express themselves and do what they want with their own bodies. Girls are expected to service this presentation from the media on ‘how we are supposed to look’. Judgement has been a problem from the beginning and still till this day.

We like to believe that we live in a world of equality, but how equal is a world where a woman gets paid 80 cents for every dollar made by a man? This twenty percent gender wage gap in current society refutes the idea of an equality. Women have significantly progressed since the 1960’s and 70’s feminist movement, yet there is still that twenty percent left to go. Even in today’s society, women feel compelled to “act like a man” to take on this male dominated society. Women have to sacrifice their womanhood in order to be offered equal opportunities. This means that they have to be an exception to the stereotypes applied to women. The stereotype of a women being dainty,fragile and in need of a man’s protection. They have to let go of these “womanly” characteristics that support the stereotype and instead, to be more “like a man”. Ariel Levy’s article “Female Chauvinist Pigs” and Amanda Filipacchi’s article “How to Pose like a Man”, discuss why women want to be seen as a man and their motivations to act like a man. Levy and Filipacchi admit that we live in a male dominated society. Both Filipacchi and women mentioned in Levy’s article want to break out of the stereotypes applied to women. Filipacchi wants to break out of this stereotype by using her author photo to make a statement about women empowerment, While Levy talks about women in her article who believe that associating with masculine qualities will help them break out these stereotypes.

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.

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.

Everyone loves to feel beautiful, but what is the price? Everyday there is a woman painting painting her nails, a man running gel through his hair, and a mother rubbing lotion on her childs skin. These are looked over like normal activities but they contain a dark secret. This secret can lead to death, pain, and injuries. In fact, it has been in the dark so long, that many people choose to ignore it. What is this secret? Well, the beauty industry hides an ugly truth: It has flaws in the system that lead to mislabeling of products, unregulated chemicals in formulas, and dangerous diseases in cosmetologists.