The Effects Of Society's Unrealistic Expectations Of Women

Expectations on women to appear a certain way remain evident in society since the beginning of time. The evidence lies in the modern surge of eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and excessive makeup application. All further enforced by stick-thin, photoshopped models and celebrities in media. Now more than ever, societal pressures regarding beauty lead women to take extreme actions.

Society’s high expectations of females guide their everyday actions and decision making whether consciously or subconsciously. In Stephen Hinshaw’s essay “Impossible Expectations” he discusses what he calls the “Triple Bind” where girls are supposed to be good at both typical girl and guy things as well as conform to a specific set of standards created by society. These contradictory expectations shape girls’ lives and drive their decision making from what type of career they will pursue to how they dress. Hinshaw also explained that girls are supposed to fit a cookie cutter image portrayed by the media yet encouraged to break the mold at the same time,

The result of portraying this unrealistic woman lowers one’s self-esteem especially among adolescent and young females. These images make them view themselves as ugly and plain. Consequently, they desire this false perfectness and thus alter their bodies to achieve the so-called perfect figure by starving themselves, taking medication and drugs or doing cosmetic surgeries on their bodies. Unfortunately, the outcome for a woman who takes such drastic measures to achieve the immaculate body is an ill and unhealthy woman with lowered self-esteem. The question then becomes, why do we still believe in such

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.

Beauty is determined by society and their standards. Women are expected to be skinny, pretty and a size two which puts a lot of pressure on women. The pressures of society persuade women to go through extreme measures to fit in with society standards. This is evident in the short story “The Falling girl” and “They’re Not Your Husband” as the main characters are impacted by social expectations, insecurity and peer pressure.

Even though media vaunts an iridescent image of what every girl should look like, the simple fact is just, it is impossible. It is because the pictures in the media are not true—they all have gone through lots of Photoshop. Only 5 percent of women have the body type seen in almost all advertisements. Besides, most of fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women. However, women still continue to do whatever they can in order to fit into that idea of ‘perfection’. Eating disorders have harassed who want to feel like they are ‘beautiful’, for years. Women are willing to do anything even though it can cause harm to their own self due to low self-esteem. Do you want your sister, friends or girl friends always feel depressed and doing harm to themselves, as they feel dissatisfied about their

Today’s generation of women has been hit by an epidemic of expectations and guideline necessary to follow - unless you want to be an outsider. These beliefs are hidden by society, and women fail to notice these views and some even claim to not be victimized by this today. When we got the information on this essay, I was discussing with one of my friends (a female) which to write about, a gender essay based on women or on men. As I asked her, she began to shake her head and say “I think I’m going to do the men’s one because I don’t feel victimized by society and I don’t feel like it limits me at all.” She went on to say she could see the men’s argument in her brother.

We watch society’s view of beauty on our TV’s, read about it in magazines and buy toy make up, dress up outfits, and Barbie dolls for our children. Allowing society’s to define how a woman should look and act. Driving most to failure while trying to reach society’s unrealistic expectations of what makes a woman beautiful and how she perceives herself. The poems “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy

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.

I was inspired to write this poem, as both women and men in today’s society are pressured to follow certain ‘beauty roles’ to feel beautiful. They are made to feel ugly, when trying to be who they want, hence having to be molded into different beauty standards. The message I promoted in my poem, was that we feel like we are not perfect in this world, I tried to keep the poem rhyming at the end of each sentence, but not in the same way every time so I used a Rhyme Scheme to keep it a little bit more interesting. The rhyme scheme was not entirely consistent throughout the poem, but I still attempted to make the words fit together. To introduce what my poem would be about, I used an Epigraph, ‘This world has us tricked.’ as the opening line.

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.

Beauty is determined by society and their standards. Women are expected to be skinny, pretty and to be a thin size which puts pressure on women. The pressures of society persuade women to go through extreme measures to fit in with society standards. This is evident in the short stories “The Falling girl” and “They’re Not Your Husband” as the main characters are impacted by social expectations, insecurity and peer pressure.

-A woman's biggest hindrance in gaining and sustaining some self-confidence is the standard of beauty that the media constantly bombards us with. According to the media, a woman is considered “beautiful” when she’s young, skinny, with clear skin, a perfect white smile, lustrous locks, and an enviable body. Most regular everyday people won't always have

In this day and age, the epidemic of these so called ‘beauty’ standards is only getting worse and worse. Because of photo modification, low self esteem in regular everyday people is starting to become something that is nearly considered normal. Today, 42% of girls from age 5-8 want to be skinnier, 52% of girls aged 9 to 13 feel better when they are dieting and by the age of 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their own bodies. Think about

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.