The Oppression Of Women

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.

The beauty standard is a culturally constructed notion of physical attractiveness that has become increasingly imperative for women and men. However, this standard has become extremely perilous to men and women’s self-image. Camille Paglia, a highly educated individual who earned her PhD at Yale University and became a highly acclaimed author, explicates this conception in her essay “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery”. Paglia suggests that the beauty standard idealizes women to look like “sex symbols with an unattainable grandeur” (776). She continues to claim that it forces her audience of higher class women to pay large sums of money in order to alter their features ultimately conforming to a very “parochial” definition of beauty (776). Although Paglia is a highly credible source, she illogically appeals to the reader’s fears in order to persuade them. Paglia fails to give any credible outside sources which affirms her preposterous beliefs. Contrary to her inconsistencies, Daniel Akst, a social journalist and graduate from New York University provides his audience with reputable sources in order to persuade his audience. Daniel Akst believes that there needs to be a “democratization of physical beauty” in which instead of attempting to alter the beauty standard, we must first change how we view ourselves. Akst provides credible sources to establish his credibility where he observes cases studies and cultural experiments from scientists and organizations including:

What does being beautiful really mean? It is the possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, or think about. It goes way beyond the looks but what is within. The media seems to have a different view on beauty. The concept to tell someone what they are or what they should be, is what the media exhibits to society with ideal females known as “models.” In Curtis Sittenfeld, “Your Life as a Girl,” she describes the life as a female and the way they are being viewed. Although all females are beautiful, they feel like they need to appear a certain way to be categorized as such. Living in a world where others opinions are more powerful than one’s own, makes it harder for women to actually consider themselves as being beautiful.

Through the media society puts out high standards and expectation on women to adhere to what they say is beautiful. Making women judge mental and self consciousness about themselves and even judging other woman in a split second. In the book Mrs. Breedlove speaks on the affect the movies had on her,”She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it with some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen” (122). This explains how the media can cause society to be judgmental among their peer and categorize them as either beautiful or ugly. Giving society room to isolate and antagonize the ugly and adore and idolize the beautiful.

Realistic representations of women in the media will teach women to strive to achieve attainable goals that have positive outcomes. Furthermore, the media’s definition of “beautiful” is not healthy.

The oppression of women has been brought into light in the recent years but it was the norm in many societies in early history especially in premodern east Asia. During that time, the roles of men and women in society were determined by great scholars that had the power to get their voice to be heard and set general rules in society. In China, scholars like Confucius, Mencius, and Mozi had great impact on the way people divided the roles between men and women. The overall oppression of women in premodern east Asia can be seen through quotes from great scholars about how women should be obedient to men, should not make important decisions in their families, and are not spoken of equally to men in society.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Temimah Zucker presents her opinion on society’s expectation for women in America through different forms of communication and advertisement. Zucker’s article is based off of what you as a woman, think of yourself, versus what society thinks of you. Zucker believes that society’s opinions and beliefs will constantly change through the generations, but your thoughts about your own beauty will not become gray to you; “Beauty is molded by society -- by the advertising, fashion, and cosmetic industries. We live in a society of billboards and ads, Photoshop, and Botox. We are trained to believe that size two is perfect, while most healthy women in America fit into a size 12.” (1)

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

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.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

Today, we are always surrounded by a variety of media and we identify ourselves in parts of those images we see. Media believes women should look like Victoria Secret models: tall, lean, and tanned women, but lately there has been issue from women all over the world who are tired of having to be set at impossible types of female figures. Revolving around a certain type of body figure is horrible because bodies come in different shapes and sizes. The media has influenced the female body perception by showing that women need to have a “perfect body” to pass in society. These magnificence gauges, multiplied through the media, impacts affect women and their self-perceptions. The medias influence on female body image has led to eating disorders, dissatisfaction in women, depression, and substance abuse in women.

Chapter 19 Fighting Beauty Sickness, quick write September 19th I talked about media literacy and how it “is very important because it teaches people that not everything you see is real. All the models are mostly photoshopped, maybe have eating disorders and have a shame of eating. It is a great awareness to know the types of messages women’s beauty are exposed to and what the explicit and implicit arguments in these messages are… being critical of media images of women is a great start, but it is no guarantee that a person will not find themselves stuck in a social comparison downward spiral”. My experience after learning media literacy is how I am very grateful to educate myself with this information and how there is videos, documentaries

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.

We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.

The unrealistic standards of beauty is hurting this generation of what the media and society thinks a girl has to look like, for many years the media has been trying to construct the ideal image of what a “perfect woman” should look like. They believe there only beautiful if they have long legs, great hair, and curves in the right places (HuffingtonPost2017). Which is not the influence that we want to carry down to future generations of girls who feel like they must live up to the expectations of girls who have the “perfect body”. With media apps being popular in the 21st century, there was a survey done on some of the top media apps, their study #statusofmind surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain media apps impact health ( CableNewsNetwork 2017). Body images statistics say 80% of woman say images,