The Ideal Body Images We See Lead Us Women

As a wise man once said, “To love yourself is to understand you don't need to be perfect to be good.” However young girls have so much pressure put on them to look in a way that is not only unrealistic but also unhealthy. As a result of this, young girls have a very negative body image and self-confidence.The problem is the unrealistic body standards that media and society have set for girls. According to SSCC, the average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds. There is a clear problem when the media is only advertising women that are 5’11 and 117 pounds, which is the average American model. Even though the body of a model is very rare and uncommon,girls are expected to look like they do. However, by promoting a positive body campaign, stopping the portrayal of fake and photoshopped models in the media, and expanding the diversity of models, we could lift unrealistic body standards and start accepting everybody as beautiful.

The way a person views body image is greatly influenced by the individuals that surround you. Different cultures have different expectations of how someone should look, act, and dress. Girls are especially targeted by this stereotype of having to look a certain way or else they feel as if they don’t belong, which cause them to be ashamed of their body and feel ugly. Mexican-American girls in the United States are struggling to balance morals of two completely different cultures, concerning not only body image but a way of life.

As presented in the movie Miss Representation, media and technology are important because they work as powerful messengers that build many people’s way of thinking. As we live in a technologically advanced generation, being exposed to media is so easy. Both media and technology works as delivering any ideas that shapes our society. They shape our minds about politics, our emotions, and our importance. Then, it means that media can also manipulate our perception of gender role. Among all the ideas that media tries to indoctrinate, it can also portrait the importance of a woman to being all about physical beauty. Media presents a perfect woman’s image focusing on their bodily figure making their value, worth, or mind would depend on their physical appearances. Thus, it influences the way men think what is important about women is their bodily attractiveness. In any kinds of media such as advertisement, films, or video games, women are generally appreciated by their looks, not by their intellectuals or achievements. As media depicts an unrealistic body image of women’s beauty, many young girls’ value is set as to become someone else with attractive appearance, nothing like smart, powerful, or leader-like.

Mental health is a big part of obesity many children are suffering from disorders like depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and even suicide attempts. With the way media portrays body image today it is hard for a child to not get discouraged. Women in magizes are photo shopped and air brushed to look as skinny as possible, men are photo shopped and air brushed to look toned and fit. Young men, women and children look at these photos and see an unrealistic person. With that they set unrealistic goals and end up harming themselves in the end. By forming eating disorders and mental disorders, eating disorders by trying to archive a body type that is not real and mental disorders by looking at the results of not having that body type. Children

Entertainment is the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment. People seek out many forms of entertainment to seek pleasure and enjoyment in their life such as watching movies and television, reading books and magazines, and listening to music. As much as these things should provide enjoyment to people's lives, sometimes media can have a negative impact on people. A major way the media exudes a negative connotation is though the unrealistic body images it promotes. The media's unrealistic body images is a huge catalyst for eating disorders and can lead to having a very detrimental mind set.

The essay titled “The Body of the Beholder” by Michele Ingressia from the textbook To the Point is about how black girls and white girls view their bodies. If you were to make a comparison Michele Ingressia says that they view their body images in very different ways. She writes about how black girls don’t mind gaining some weight while white girls do. They are always dieting to have the perfect body but never satisfied with what they have. This essay seems to be a very persuasive because it provides facts and statistics to back up what she has to say.

I agree with how the media depicts the body image because it is just a tool that was created by humans. It is always improving every day, every hour to convey to users with the desire as real as possible. It only does follows the idea or purpose of an individual or group of people, such as it describes in detail outside and inside the body image to serve the medical or entertainment industries. On the user side, we only select, track what is considered to be a good and match for us.

The Dream ideally allows individuals to succeed with little help from others. The person trying to succeed should not have to sacrifice their body to get what they want. Unfortunately, some bodies are valued less than others through out history and even in present day. Ta-Nehisi Coates really highlights the issues with “the body” in “Between the World and Me.” Many of the references to the body that he makes deal with individualism vs. stereotype of a whole race and oppression.

Since I was very young my family has always encouraged a typical thin body as the “healthy” body. I remember we had a very traditional family dinner with a meat, carb, and many vegetables, we were not allowed to leave the table until our vegetables and salads were finished. After dinner, we typically took walks around the golf course, played soccer or basketball, or swam. Nothing about this appeared to me at the time as anything different or encouraging to be fit and thin or that it was even becoming internalized that this was being instilled to us as that desired way to be. I can remember two specific events that happened when I was very little that began to encourage me to be conscious of my weight and by association look at others’ weight. The first memory was visiting my grandfather. This is when I noticed how much of my families eating and exercise routine

Body image has become a primary focus for individuals and in some instances is resulting into an obsession, especially in women. Media instills in men and women an ideal body standard causing unrealistic expectations, some resulting to the extremes to obtain the perfect body that is being perceived in order to conform. More and more people are aspiring to become media’s “ideal body image” to be considered attractive. The American media is becoming detrimental to individuals as it is negatively influencing the perception people have of themselves and their bodies.

Hip-Hop today is genre of music that many, mostly a younger demographic are drawn to it. Hip-Hop culture is now commonly recognized by it’s fundamental elements; such as, rapping, dancing, lyrics, beat, urban and apparently relevance which are viewed as an art. Hip-hop is constantly evolving and incorporating different and new aspects to it and it’s just going to continue to grow within the next decades. Hip-hop focuses on urban youth therefore, many young people actually turn to hip-hop as an outlet to express themselves with various emotions and sentiments and sometimes devote themselves as aspirating hip-hop artists and pursue the hip-hop industry. Hip-Hop was was initially an underground urban movement and created in the 1970’s by an African man, Kool Herc influenced and introduced it which has now become universal in not only English, but in many languages. In the 1980s symbolized the diversification of hip hop as the genre eve loved into more complex styles. One of the positive aspects of the hip hop culture is that it encourages producers to recruit a diverse group of individuals. At first, Hip- Hop was predominantly performed by men and eventually evolved into being performed by both men and women. Some examples of successful women in the Hip-hop culture are Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Missy Elliot, Salt-N- Pepa,Trina Beyonce, and ‘Lil Kim. Although hip-hop

Depression is another problem that those who use social networks often may experience when they worry too much about themselves and the ways they present themselves. Time Magazine once said that “girl have more body image and [eating disorder] than boy have.” For example, my sister is younger than me and she is so thin, because she not eating much in an effort to grow stronger. Through what I see with my sister, the body image of girls is the important to them especially during their adolescent years. A Researcher of the Brown University School of Public Health said that “the more user of the social network the more increase in depression.” Teenage girls who are often on the social networks and have experiences that include bullying and

In the world we live in millions of young girls and boys are bullied for the color of their skin and the size and shape of their bodies. When children are put down their self esteem is often put on the line which can cause many issues within one 's childhood (KidsHealth.org). It has become a cultural norm for adolescents to feel some sort of hate toward themselves and their own bodies because of what someone has said to them or something they read in a tabloid magazine about how a “beautiful” person should look like. Young people have lost their sense of confidence due to other people 's opinions and it is causing immense amounts of mental and physical damage to them. The direct relation to bullying and body image have been studied many times and every time you can find some sort of connection.

I have a question for you. Is there too much pressure on girls now days to have the perfect body? Are the media, celebrities, society, and dolls putting pressure on the young girls to want to change themselves? You might wonder why there is girls as young as 10 years old getting diagnosed with eating disorders. The media and models are representing women as underweight and it is causing pressure on these younger girls and women to achieve the unachievable body. The definition of the word perfect according to Merriam-Webster dictionary is being entirely without fault or defect. People have taken this definition and turned it into reality. Now we must be without fault within our appearances to be considered perfect.

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.