The Influence Of Beauty In The Media

Through out society many teens and young women have been scrutinized for their bodies and appearance. Media is one of the leading contributor. Media has led to the sexualization and body image issues in teens and women. As the media idealizes women as a miniature size 0 with long blonde hair and blue eyes, it leads to the loss in self esteem. Every girl wants to look like Megan Fox, with her great body and good facial structure. Reality is we can't all look like that and it's what women, call "winning the genetic lottery".

Beauty is the interpretation of one’s physical body and the portrayal of the one’s own body so called body image exists within the mind. It is unbelievable that media world tries to exploit the body image which can affect an individual psychologically and physically whether it is in a good or bad way. In the article, “How the Media Keeps Us Hung Up on Body Image” by Shari Graydon, the author claims that women of all ages are suffering and media is the source to blame for influencing the women and triggering unhealthy, harmful medical problems. As strength, Graydon raises the attention of the readers by giving information on how media is affecting women through the usage of celebrities, professionals

Every day, millions of Americans view the front covers of magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and more. They see them while at grocery stores, on the television, and even in the waiting room at a doctor's office. The media offer advertisements with models that are seemingly slim with perfect skin, hair, and teeth. American propaganda leaves most young, adolescent girls between the ages of 5-18 to consider that the complexity of beauty is strict to be thin and perfect, though it is targeted to young adolescents, it does aim towards older female and male age ranges as well. An article states, “While the media attempt to target every person, the level of exposure is dictated by gender, and the majority of harmful messages is focused more toward women. For instance, in media such as magazines where a person relies on an image to relate a feeling, girls are often made to look inferior” (Chapman). When it comes to the media, specifically in the American culture, the popularity has massively increased over the years, turning to new weekly issues, becoming common to the society and civilization. This causes issues associated with eating disorders, depression and suicide, and self-esteem/confidence young girls.

The modern beauty standard has become an increasingly important issue because people have the freedom to decide, but the media largely influenced these choices on about beauty standard. Our advance of technology helps communicate with each other, but people are not fully aware of the influence of media. That is a major problem. The media broadcast images of beauty to control people consciously. Technological advance helps people to reach the information quickly and cumulatively, but media not always making people feel good about themselves. Most of the people experience powerless when a society values youth and beauty because it is impossible to meet beauty standard. People bombarded by images of men and women who are thin, beautiful, and youthful. This norm is slowly taking away an individual’s freedom of self-expression and consequently lose sense of self-worth. Camille Paglia, an academic and social critic who earned her PhD at Yale University, uses her artistic sensibility to argue that the current trend of plastic surgery leads to ethical issues, such as narcissism, sexism, and racism in “The Pitfall of Plastic Surgery”. Meanwhile, Daniel Akst, New York born journalist, claims that the attitudes of the typical American’s carelessness about their outfit and physical beauty in “What Meets the Eye”. Both authors define the beauty standard that created by the media and claim the issue of how the media set up the wrong beauty standard for audience; it is unattainable for

During adolescence, kids go through significant transformations to achieve maturity. Likewise, body image is discovered at a very young age and many kids can be dissatisfied with their own body. In the past years the media has focused its attention on creating beauty products for the youth. Many believe that this is wrong due to the idea of minors acting too old for their age. Advertisers seek for attention from the youth to suck them in at a young age and for a long time. According to Sutter health, marketers have found success in advertising to kids, children ages 12 and under convince their parents to spend more than $500 million a year. Kids are pressured into buying these beauty products because they want to fit in with society, thats mostly molded by the media. Most kids look up to celebrity peers, often following their footsteps. Often times, these celebrity peers are viewed as the most beautiful in their age group. They think that whatever famous people do, they should do too. Kids change the way they dress, style themselves and sometimes even how they act. These so called “role models” are most of the time presented as sexual. Almost always, these celebrities have their own stylist and are photoshopped. Even the most beautiful of the younger celebrities, are not beautiful enough. The media doesn't limit itself with only reaching out to adults, but now also reaches out to

Although difficult to point fingers at a single source for the reason eating disorders exist, it can be said that media, specifically, does have a negative influence on the amount of confidence in one’s self-image. On the other hand, media is not the only one to blame and therefore, media should not be overlooked, but other sources have proven guilty as well such as genetics, environment, and culture. With altered images being presented in formats of media such as magazines, commercials and social media, many teens find themselves pressured to look the same. Society has placed a standard of what a “beautiful” body looks like giving teens the idea that in order to be beautiful they must look like that too. This however, is a misconception as

Media is everywhere we turn. It’s displayed on billboards, commercials, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. It influences people to purchase certain things or even vote for a certain presidential candidate. Media tells us who we are and who we should be. Although media has its positive effects, like spreading the latest news quickly, it also has many downfalls for teenagers, specifically teenage girls, who are hounded with a stream of media related to body image. Today most women always feel the need to look in a mirror whenever they see one to fix their hair or makeup, or even compare themselves to an advertisement featuring an unblemished, blonde haired, skinny woman with perfect hair and skin. Every single girl has done this, but how can it possibly be her fault? For so long women have been trained to compare themselves to others. Girls see flashing lights on every corner that scream to them “they aren’t good enough” or “skinny enough”. Seeing those ads and their negative message that is sent, girls will go to drastic measures to fit themselves into this image of what society calls “perfection”, but advertisers are not worried about the person who is buying the product, they are just more worried about if they are going to buy it and often look beyond the point that their ads affect the way girls internalize their messages.

Adolescents are bombarded with many media messages every day. These media messages may take the form of advertisements, newspapers, magazines, broadcast media such as television, and more. Such media can have a detrimental affect on how adolescents perceive their body image. Adolescents may feel pressured to diet, to spend copious amounts of money on the latest trends, and they may even feel inadequate compared to the models they see on television. Adolescence is a time of change that is difficult for many already. The messages conveyed to these adolescents often do more harm than good.

When the word “beauty” comes to one’s mind, society immediately comes to mind also. Society plays a big role on what the definition of beauty really is. Society has it drilled into people’s minds that someone has to look a certain way to be beautiful. If a person doesn’t look like Kim Kardashian, Carrie Underwood, Miley Cyrus, or any other celebrity then they are deemed “not beautiful”. Society seemed to have forgotten that beautiful people come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and looks ("How Media Affects the Way Beauty Is Perceived"). What society is doing to all different kinds of people is what leads to self-esteem problems, depression, anxiety, etc. Many teenage girls are targeted and attacked for not being pretty enough or small enough.

When thinking of your “ role model” or your “body goals” who do you usually look at? The answer is usually models and famous people who are portrayed in the media as beautiful because of the media's advertisements and the adjustments that they make on the person. The images of these models and famous people can be described as “Unrealistic Beauty” because the beauty presented is a type of beauty that is hard to get and you have to go through a lot of procedures in order to achieve the look. These images affect many people's self esteem and prevent them from loving their body just the way that it is. Beauty is an important topic that affects many people and their opinions of themselves. Beauty standards are a topic that are not as acknowledged

This article discusses how media shapes standards of beauty. In modern society, beauty standards are seen as close to perfection which makes it impossible for women and young girls to meet them. This can result in mental and physical problems. The article includes the assessment of several brands. However, it is very descriptive as it focuses in on the Dove campaign. This article made me realize that Dove is taking the right steps to prevent women and young girls from getting physical and mental illnesses. Dove truly does focus on real and natural beauty. Also, the article reveals ethos as the author includes many facts and statistics throughout her article which makes it very difficult to be considered as biased. Pathos is also included as

The philosopher Edmund Burke said, “Beauty is, for the greater part, some qualities in bodies, acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses.” (Burke, On Taste. The Harvard Classics. pg. 96). Just like no two people will perceive the color red as the same shade, no two minds will solely recognize the magnitude of beauty as the same. The impact of ones’ culture and media influence combined with the brain’s neuroscientific perspective, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. There is plenty to be explored to what people find beautiful and to the extent they find beauty in themselves and others.

In the beginning of this essay I talked about how media’s depiction of beauty impacted teenagers, but what can society do to change this situation. There are three ways that society can help avoid the outcomes that media causes. The first is that communities can start programs that empower teens about the way they look. The second is that parents can get more involved, talk to their kids about beauty, how everyone is beautiful and that no matter what anyone tells you everyone is beautiful. The last is to have schools support body acceptance, have school-wide assemblies about beauty and speakers about how the image of being perfect affected them.

The article from The Guardian; Models in France must provide doctor's note to work, alleges that models portray and unnatural and unhealthy image of beauty. This unhealthy image in turn correlates with the rising amount of eating disorders in young adolescents and models themselves. Exposure to this media then leads to unrealistic expectations of beauty for females and leads to unhealthy habits or even the manifestation of predisposed mental illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, as a means to achieving “beauty”. Because of this the government of France is stepping in and taking measures to inform the public about what is really happening behind the scenes in hopes to inform the general public that this is a standard not attainable for a normal person. This raises the question, is media truly the culprit behind the rising rates of eating disorders in the United Kingdom? Certainly not, otherwise everyone exposed to media would suffer from an eating disorder. It’s biology that fills the pot, but media is the reason it boils over. Media impacts the values and esthetic standards of society as a whole.

Jennifer Strickland, a motivational speaker who speaks about media’s influence on self-image, explains that “Studies prove that media can have a negative impact on self image. TV, movies, magazines, and the internet all bombard teens with images and pressures about what their bodies should look like. The problem is, their version isn’t realistic... Nevertheless, millions of teens believe the lies and resort to unhealthy measures to try to fit themselves into that impossible mold.” Media tries to persuade people, especially teens, that beauty is only skin deep and that the only standard a person cannot accomplish is their standard, secular perfection. While the pretty face covered images stake their claim on people’s insecurity, the inability to have a relaxed conversation with peoplehas reached an all time high. Honor Whiteman, a writer for Medical News Today and a student in a variety of different science aspects, explains how during many experiments, research