Stereotypes Of The Modeling Industry

The August 2011 issue of French Vogue sparked outrage for its photos of a ten-year old little girl wearing gold dress with a see-through bodice, stilettos and heavy makeup. This picture propped cries of “how young is too young” to model? (Cartwright)

In today’s society, women are held to a higher standard of beauty than men. Women in the media shape society’s mainstream idea of beauty. Beauty standards surround us worldwide, from magazines, television, to films. The media depicts unrealistic expectations for women to look a certain way. One of the great offenders of this issue is Victoria’s Secret, because they only use models that look a particular way

But others feel like the modelling industry has done no wrong, and the problem is ‘created’ by others who are not the same as models and are envious of their looks. The modelling industry is all about dreams and illusions, and while the dreams and fantasies of perfection have changed over the years of human existence, the fantasy right now is to be thin. But does that have to change? Is the modelling industry due for change anytime soon?

As stated before, due to the loss of confidence in society's younger generation, people try and change themselves to various extents to fit the mold photo-shopping has created for them. What was omitted from the previous paragraph was the horrendous extent of it. Unfortunately, society's expectations has led people to shun and even bully those who do not fit into the mold. This causes eating disorders and depression. Indeed, it is no wonder that this might become a “reflection of the events and spirit of our times for the future” (Grundberg 35). How far will people go to achieve the expectations photo-shopping has raised? Plastic surgery, dieting, self-harm, perhaps even going so far as suicide; all of them are caused by how these altered pictures make people view the world and the people in it. Such false advertising should be condemned. It is like false advertising for medication. Instead of overdosing on pills, society's overdosing on appearances. Having been photo-shopped, images of models drastically change the population's views on what beauty entails, resulting in health problems beyond measure, some even going as far as to result in

In the “Just Say Yes” article, I was appalled to see the statistics of how many children are being shaped by these unobtainable ideas of what beauty is. I always knew that people were being negatively affected by these false images, but I never really considered the generations that are being raised with this idea of beauty constantly swirling in the heads. It’s hard to even think that nine and ten year old girls know to be self-conscious about their bodies and want to diet. The comparison between the average U.S. woman’s dimensions and the models sets the authors point in stone and really drew me back for a moment. You never see models in real life and compare yourself based on height. The pictures only highlight their “beauty”, so that is what girls compare themselves to. This article makes me hope that young girls and women would realize that models are really the abnormal ones that should be criticized for sticking out from the normally beautiful crowd.

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough, our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

The fashion industry plays a huge role in portraying bad images of ideal beauty, which in turn affects today’s society perception of their own body image. Not only are women affected by what is seen and heard about how the perfect body should appear, children of young ages are now feeling insecure and obsessed with their bodies before they reach teenage years. This ‘ideal image’ the fashion industry continues to enforce only focuses on very thin models who seem to be in shape and are very healthy. Furthermore, many people think of the influence from the fashion industry as being human representations (models). Because of the rising problem with the image of beauty within the fashion industry, it is shown that even mannequins and non-human representations (mannequins, dolls, photoshopping) of bodies play a significant role in women’s body image; which causes problems to the individual. (Anshutz & Engels, 2010). Body image and self-satisfaction, eating disorders and non-human representations all can cause harm to the individual, if prolonged.

Victoria 's Secret Model, Cameron Russell, delivered one of the most profound TED Talks delivered on the Mid Atlantic stage, according to TED writer Cameron Gallo. The model explains that though the modeling industry considered her a perfect, she does not believe her appearance defines her. Thus she came up with the title for her speech, “Looks Aren 't Everything… Believe Me, I 'm a Model.”. She specifically addresses that children need to understand that modeling does not constitute a glamorous career. The industry drowns out personal values, views, and appearances to warp these characteristics into a general image accepted by the masses, according to Russell. She describes her view on modeling, and how it essentially made her feel like a hard shell of a person with no inner value. She ended by encouraging people to find a balance between outward appearance and inner beauty.

There are some direct messages associating body weight in media with people often seen as role model, especially by women trying to demonstrate what is to be popular and successful in life and to reach that image you have to be wealthy and thin.

Despite the claim that everyone is beautiful, barely 20% of the models in New York, London, Paris, and Milan for fashion week are people of color (Wilson, 2014). Eurocentric beauty standards have a negative impact on countless people around the world who do not fit into these set values. These standards are often times valued over non-European features, and this impacts children at a younger age than some may believe.

For decades people all over the world dream to become models. The Fashion industry has been around for decades and it continues to flourish today. Modeling has become an influential sport which creates false expectations for men and women around the world. The fashion industry has turned a blind eye to modeling by taking photos of models to make them look glamorous without showing the dangers it can have on the health of models. T.V. shows, movies, magazines, and other media influence society’s perspective of what they should look like according to Hollywood and the fashion industry. Fashion companies anticipate bizarre thinness within their models that results in eating disorders and irregular dieting leading to starvation. Models turn to alternatives like anorexia and other disorders to meet company expectations. Anorexia is the most common disorders among various models in the fashion industry. Companies exhort models to indulge in dangerous health alternations and malnutrition models should be a concern for companies across the nation. Fashion companies should require medical examinations to increase the health of models and demolish false expectations that Hollywood and media present to society.

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.

When girls are exposed at a young age to the stereotypes of media, they begins to believe differences and flaws are bad. This exposure causes them to morph into what they are told is “ideal”. According to nationally uses research from the university of Texas “the average american woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall and 166 pounds...most female models are 5 feet 11 inches and usually wear a size double zero to zero at 107 pounds” (2016). That means that the average model is very underweight based off of their BMI (body mass index). Girls see these model and believe that is what they must look like. They will label anyone including themselves who does not have the body of a model fat, ugly, gross and unhealthy. In reality as those girls strive for a “perfect” body they become unhealthy and grotesquely thin. Social media’s stereotypes send a bad message to young

Every single day when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look at myself in the mirror. Am I skinny enough? Is my skin clear enough? Do I look like the girl from the magazine I was reading yesterday? No. I don’t. But I’ll keep asking these questions each and everyday because that is what the media tells me I need to look like. Because if my waist isn’t small enough I’m not pretty. Because if I have cellulite on my legs there’s something wrong with me. Because if I don’t slot into this unattainable standard. I'm not beautiful. Airbrushing and photoshopping models in pictures to display through media is something that frankly speaking is appalling. We are alienating beautiful human beings because of the media’s dictations on what we should look like. I am sick of being brainwashed to the point where all I can ever seem to do is single out the ‘flaws’ in myself. If we display, real, beautiful, raw pictures of people in media then so many problems caused by this would no longer exist.

In the commercial “Fotoshop by Adobe” Rosten effectively convinces his audience of the absurdity of society’s obsession with physical appearance and the beauty trick to appear more attractive by purchasing Photoshop. Rosten achieves this by applying emotional appeal, satire and hyperbole. Beauty is something that is largely considered a physical attribute. Beauty has and will always be desirable. Today society believes that beauty is the way to get attention and acceptance. Movies, magazines, music and other Arts of entertainment portray beauty as the epitome of getting love, comfort, acceptance, and riches.