The Perfect Body Image

Body image and beauty standards have changed drastically over the years. By establishing impossible standards of beauty and bodily perfection, the media drives people tobe dissatisfied with their bodies. This dissatisfaction can result in disorders of behavior as people try to achieve unreachable goals with unhealthy

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.

Film, television, and the media are a huge part of our culture. Especially in the modern age of technology, it is impossible for us to avoid being exposed it. It is on our phones, computers, and TV. It is our entertainment, a part of our education, and it serves as a reflection of our society. The problem with media, however, is that has the power in manipulating us to feel certain ways. The most problem of which is the way we perceive our own bodies. Leading media industries such as Hollywood sets. An example of the ideal body that we are expected to have in order to look good and be perceived as handsome or beautiful by society, but, behind the scenes, actors and actresses of Hollywood go to extreme lengths in order to attain that ideal look.

Take a moment and think of the perfect woman. Does she have scars and stretch marks? Are her teeth brilliantly white or tinted yellow? Is she a size 00 or size 12? The perfect woman probably doesn’t exist. She is, however, the ideal of media producers to make women believe that they are imperfect. In today’s society, the media has been allowed to corrupt the minds of young and old alike. This problem persists throughout all age groups including fit adults and hefty adolescents. Though it may be impossible to find an exact number, one could confidently propose that negative body image affects thousands, if not millions, of individuals across the globe. The problem is that one’s body image often suffers due to outside forces; to combat this, he or she needs to be able to be self-aware and self-confident when opposed.

“We are constantly surrounded by all sorts of media and we construct our identities in part through media images we see.” Social media plays a huge role in constructing our idea of the perfect body. But it hasn’t always been the same idea. Over the years, the perfect body image has changes. The ideal body image has changed so much over time because media never stays the same, fashion trends are always changing, there’s such a diversity of bodies in this world to choose from, and different cultures consider different bodies beautiful.

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

Media institutions should begin combatting unrealistic body image by discontinuing the practice of photoshopping and airbrushing models. Over the course of the past decade in particular, as the influence of the media has increased at a steady rate, the epidemic of photoshopping and airbrushing models, often past the point of recognition, has proven to be harmful in its lack of attainability. Many institutions have relied so heavily on these methods of obscuring natural beauty that they have corrupted their own models into viewing themselves negatively. A former Sports Illustrated model, Ann Simonton, recalls the moment that she realized the

A female should not feel insecure with her body when she is comfortable in her own skin, whether or not she weights 130 pounds or 150 pounds at 5’5”. According to Rehab’s study of the evolution of the female figure over one hundred years, “the body shapes of the most admired models have remained consistently slimmer than that of the average American woman.” Due to the significant increase in mass media throughout the twentieth century of the United States, there has been a noteworthy impact on the popular image of women. A woman being dissatisfied with their body is a everyday trend around the world where as

America’s fascination and exposure with celebrities’ lives have caused an obsession with body image (10). Bodies have become the latest and biggest pop cultural obsessions (10). People tune in on the internet or turn on the television and are subjected to the newest photo or videos of celebrities. This is a constant that is unlikely to change. Media shows impractical role models which lead to dissatisfaction with body image

Preview of Main Points: I will begin by explaining how the perfect body image shown in the media is unrealistic, then, I will talk about how the unrealistic images lead to both men and women to have a low self-esteem and eating disorders that develop due to people wanting to look like the images shown in the media. Lastly, I’ll talk about a solution we can do to stop the portrayal of an unrealistic body image.

I often find myself criticizing my physical appearance, especially after looking at some online pictures, which I see through Instagram or Facebook. I find myself adoring the pictures of perfectly thin women that are depicted in the media and asking myself the reason of media’s depictions and presentations of those women as “better” compared to women who are regarded as average-weighted. This “perfect body image” has been created by the media and has been affected many women in regards of their perspectives about their physical appearances and relatedly their worth to themselves and to the society. It is extremely crucial to understand the importance of the manipulation of the media instruments on women and realize the relationship between those perfect body images and women’s self-esteem and self-worth to themselves.

The ideal body image changes over time: “Every period of history established its own standards of what beautiful means, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive idea of the ideal body. But with

This article is similar to a small, yet concise essay on the topic of negative body image. The author first states how common place body image concerns are, and then address how society’s opinion on the term fat, and what that term means to a person individually. The author then speaks on how fat is not a feeling, but a way for individuals to express or displace the uncomfortable/ painful feelings that come from not feeling of not meeting society’s beauty standard. Symptoms of negative body image, and ways the reader could “check” if their body image currently positive or negative, and then the definition of a positive body image is then addressed. The article also lists results from multiple studies of body image, the study group of each study

Mass media shapes the world and the ‘perfect’ female is depicted through magazines, TV, music, internet, billboards, toys, movies, commercials etc. on a daily basis, impacting women and girls on how to perceive their own bodies, how to look and how to behave. Beauty standards have changed throughout the decades, even centuries, and has always placed immense pressure on females. From 1400s-1700s, an overweight body was considered attractive and the ‘perfect’ shape. Through the 19th Century, the curvaceous body was the ‘ideal’ body shape – large hips, large breasts and slender waist. The thinner ideal was eventually fashionable in the 1920s but was replaced again to the curvaceous shape in both the 1940s and 1950s. By the mid 1960s, successful model icon Lesley Lawson ‘Twiggy’, influenced the new ‘perfect’ body image with a slender shape, short cropped hair, long eyelashes, overstated makeup and wore daring, skimpy clothing. The super thin ‘ideal’ was once more the beauty standard and still remains to be the fashionable body image today - the image is of an unrealistic appearance – a slender figure, tall, a large bust, caucasian and light coloured hair.

Society has an ongoing obsession with body image ideals, especially as it relates to what is considered healthy and fit. Being toned, a certain weight, and having perfect curves and proportions in areas of your body has become as important, if not more important, than strength, speed, and functionality as an athlete. These outside opinions directly affect athletes’ confidence level, and the more society pushes images of what is considered perfect, the more difficult it becomes to maintain self-confidence when we don’t see society’s definition in ourselves.