The Perfect Body

“Never Just Pictures” by Susan Bordo, is about how today’s society is influenced by the mass medias unrealistic ideas of how they are supposed to look. In this essay, the author breaks down the images being showcased by today’s culture concerning the aesthetics of the female body. Bordo also talks about how what was considered ‘beautiful’ or ‘perfect’ before has changed. Lately, the world has been on a craze to look like the air brushed model in the picture. Bordo explains how a lot of people are becoming more obsessed with their physique, and depending on looking thin to make them happy, instead of focusing on being happy and healthy.

Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements lower women’s self-esteem. Women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements put out by companies

There are beauty standards all over the world, but America has one of the most highest and unreachable standard of the all. In the article “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines reflects the issue on how narrow-minded society, magazine and the rest of media is depicting the perfect body. The ideal body in America is established as skinny, tall, perfect skin, tight body are characteristics that destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem (172). As girls get older and into their teen years, they have been brainwashed to need to look like the unrealistic, and photoshopped models in magazines and advertisements. Girls don’t feel comfortable to be in their own skin, because they were not taught to love themselves for who they are right in the beginning.

In the documentary, “Killing Us Softly”, Kilbourne mentioned how in all kinds of advertisements, women’s bodies are turned into “objects and things”. Jean believes the objectification of women creates a form of atmosphere in which there is a widespread of impractical expectations and violence against women. There’s always one part of the body that seems to be focus of a women on an ad, breasts is the go to ‘object’ on the body, which is an attention grabber for the

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.

Today’s world is dominated by the great influence of advertising media, which often depicts the objectification of women. The film Killing Us Softly 3, discusses how influential the negative portrayal and misrepresentation of women is throughout advertising media. The Versace advertisement I have chosen to analyze displays a slim, scantily clothed woman of color guarded by a shirtless, muscular man. Based on concepts from the film and the course’s text, it is clear that this advertisement sets a particular feminine beauty standard and, nonetheless, illustrates women as solely being sexual objects of men, having little to no power. This fashion ad influences the way women view their physical appearance, along with their position and function in society.

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

In the ad, it features ten supermodels with unrealistically thin bodies and long legs in their Victoria’s Secret’s underwear. By putting on the tagline “the perfect body”, it is implying that women who do not look like them, which are most women today, have an “imperfect body.” It put in the “idea or concept of” a perfect body in your head “with which the product was associated.” By lowering the viewer’s self-esteem and making them feel inadequate and unattractive, Victoria’s Secret are offering the solution: buy our underwear, it will make people like you. Some would argue that with the ad, the link between Victoria’s Secret bra and supermodel’s bodies was created, once you look at the products, you think about the so call perfect bodies that are wearing them, giving the viewer the Illusion or myth of “this is what I will look like once I purchase their bra.”

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.

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

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 Perfect ‘Body’” lines the pages of every female magazine on every newsstand, home bathroom, and the waiting room tables. Images of women in lingerie walking the streets of Paris to the sound of seductive music play on the screens in homes across the world. These are the images that Victoria’s Secret has recently displayed, and has been displaying for years to their viewers of all ages. The idea that to be empowered and strong you must look sexy, and to look sexy you must shop at Victoria’s Secret. Yet, when one takes a step back from the overwhelming standards set by Victoria’s Secret, the question arises of whether or not the idea of sex leads to a bolder, more powerful you.

It is the impacts from the outside that influences young people to build a perfect body shape.

As a marketing ad, Victoria’s Secret 's The Perfect “Body” ad is very effective. The beautiful girls in attractive bra and panty sets exude an unique mix of class and sexiness that it isn 't easy to do. Even if you are not the size pictured or you do not have the same “perfect” body type, you may believe that you can look sexy in their bra and panty sets. There is also a subconscious element that may lead some young women to feel good about their body and make them feel free to show their body off, if it matches the body type shown. The reverse of that is that for some women the ad would make them feel fat and want to keep their bodies covered up.

A perfect body is every girl’s dream, or at least that’s what Jennifer Lopez’s BodyLab commercial says. According to the product’s website, BodyLab is another one of the many companies that try to appeal to women who are struggling to lose weight by creating formulas that claim to speed up the process of weight loss (BodyLab). The website also states that Jennifer Lopez decided to join and endorse for the company because of her wish to inspire other women to become the best version of themselves, making them happier and more confident. Although this commercial projects a sense of worry and care towards women, the company’s actual goal is not to look after them, but mainly to make a profit by subtly yet subtly targeting insecurities that a lot of these women share and struggle with.