The Portrayal Of Beauty In The Media

To begin with, the media industry has the power to decide what reaches the public’s eye; therefore, they present to the public their versions of what “beautiful’ women should appear like. The media has created their version of what the “ideal body” should be. They continuously show the audience photographic images of models that appear extremely thin. Media meticulously chooses women with bodies which media calls “sexy”. Spectators rarely get a glance of women who are overweight. For example, all of the actress that make an appearance on television shows are below what is considered a healthy weight. Yet, this concept is what media has defined as beautiful, influencing many women to obtain a thin figure. As a result, of these messages sent by

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.,

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

Because of the fashion industries portrayal of beauty in advertisements, a value system that focuses on looks and external beauty is built by the men and women that are exposed to them (Sheehan 108). Although the word "fashion" is often used in a positive sense, the Fashion Industry itself may have some significant negative impacts. Many studies connect the exposure to such advertisements and media coverage of thin models to women with a negative self-esteem and issues with body image. The images of women that are presented by the Fashion Industry, especially in magazines, represent an image that is nearly impossible to achieve. As a result, many women and even men turn to eating disorders in hope to become the image of beauty that has been created for them by the Fashion Industry and the media. So, it can be argued that sociologically, the Fashion Industry indeed has a negative impact on the values, self-esteem, and the perception of women and men such as listed below. factor

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.

The general research topic I have in mind is researching the correlation of the media and unrealistic portrayals of beauty. I would like to delve into this topic to expand on how the beauty myth is pressuring women to meet unrealistic expectations. The first research question I have in mind is: What is the correlation between women’s negative body image and the expectations formed from the beauty myth? This research question would focus on how women are affected mentally and physically while trying to uphold standards of beauty that are promoted in the media. This would include self-esteem, eating disorders, and anxiety formed from the pressures to conform. My second possible research question is: How do advertisements’ portrayal of feminine

As stated in lecture, the definition of an agent of socialization is a group or social context within which processes of socialization take place such as family, peer group, school, workplaces, religion, and most importantly the mass media. Media is thrown at us in today’s society more than any other time. Mass media comes through all different platforms such as newspapers, magazines, comic books, radio, video games, movies, television, etc. The convergence of media also makes target marketing even more prominent in today’s society. As Eric Klienberg talks about… The images we see on billboards, magazines, television, etc. influence the way we view the people portrayed in the advertisements. As stated in lecture, American children today spend approximately one hundred school days per year watching television. One can be heavily influenced by what they see with that much exposure. Today in the media, we see airbrushed images of both men and women that set unrealistic beauty standards for all ages and genders. The way that beauty and body images are portrayed in the media today greatly affects what we see as a standard of beauty. These images of beauty that we see are socially constructed and are closely tied to race, class and gender. We see that the two most obvious issues with beauty in the media is that the images we see are based off of white standards of beauty and show unachievable body standards for both men and women.

The Subjectivity of Women to Modern Mass Media’s Construed Views of Beauty and How Their Effects on Body Image

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.

When I watched Slim Hopes I was quickly reminded of the impact media has on the definition of beauty for women. The introduction of the video caught my attention and set the tone for the rest of the video. The introduction was versatile in its showcase of the medias impact on ones perspective. Jean Kilbourne is knowledgeable about the media’s perception of beautiful women, and how through history they have carried out that agenda. The main point of this video Slim Hopes is to educate viewers on the impact media has on the societal image of a beautiful woman and her value.

Media is something every female and male look to for guidance when it comes to fashion, beauty, and information. “Magazines and advertisements are used to help women better themselves by giving information and products to make them look and feel better” (Serdar 1). Without magazines and advertisements there wouldn 't be an exact focus on beauty standards.. People would have the freedom to choose what they like and what they consider beautiful instead of following the crowd. “Sociocultural standards of female beauty are in every aspect of popular media. Mass media 's use of unrealistic models sends the message that in order for a woman to be beautiful, she must be unhealthy. Women are negatively affected by the constant exposure to unrealistic media ideas of beauty”(Serdar 1). Because women of the American culture constantly compare themselves to models and actors, they push themselves to diet and exercise in an unhealthy manner to achieve a goal that is both bad for them physically and mentally. “The ideal of beauty is a form of self-oppression. Women see themselves in pieces” (Sontag 1). Because females are so self observant of themselves they tend to put more attention on things that don’t actually need attention. Therefore, they feel as if their not as beautiful as a person they see on television. “Very small percent of women in western countries meet the criteria the media uses to define beauty. So many women repeatedly exposed the media images that send a message that

There is a young girl, right now, staring in a mirror in a New York shopping mall observing her expanding waist. There is a girl, right now, forcing herself to run an extra mile so she can eat her favourite cheesecake tonight. There is a girl, right now, lying helplessly on an operating table about to go under the knife. There is a girl, at this very moment, wishing she was the beautiful Heidi Klum prancing down the runway of a Hollywood fashion show.

Female teenagers often get caught up in the word beauty, piling their faces with lipstick and foundation, attempting to squeeze into clothes that are too small for their bodies, while wearing pounds of jewelry that will later turn their skin green. The reason being is, this is the image the media displays. According to Beth Bell and Dittmar, the media sets unrealistic expectations of beauty using female insecurities, simply for accumulation (2). The media has an effect on today’s teens because teens get caught up in what the media portrays to them, bringing about eating disorders, as well as leading them into changing their appearance to fit in with what the media feel is beautiful. Teens then lose thought of how they truly feel deep within which results in lowering their self-esteem.

For many years, society has been told by the media that there a certain way that people should look. We are shown that true beauty in what we see in the media and advertisements. They celebrities and models in the media are beautiful, symmetric, flawless and perfect in all the right places. There is something that society needs to realize. Society is being fooled. The beauty shown in media is not realistic and it is not obtainable. For our public advocacy project, we want to dispel media’s beauty standards and shine a light on the truth. The truth is that the media creates beauty standards with the use of Photoshop. Photoshop involves altering body features to be more appealing and beautiful. This is done by the use of lighting, angles, computer techniques and props.

Beauty is noticed through physical features such as, having a slim and pleasant body, having clear skin, or being skilled in make-up. Today the media’s portrayal of beauty is causing individuals to feel insecure in a society focused on unrealistic perfection. With the pursuit of a perfect body, other people may become victims of body-shaming which further lowers a sense of insecurity.