Unrealistic Beauty Standards Research Paper

Anorexia is an eating disorder and a mental health condition which can be life-threatening. Anorexia is an irrational fear of gaining weight, it typically involves excessive weight loss and usually occurs more in females than in males.

I’ve observed it in my sisters and friends too many times to count—double and triple checks in the mirror, glances at every reflective surface, and guarded smiles for photographs. We live in a society that preaches the importance of self-worth, while simultaneously giving us endless, unattainable examples of perfection in the form of TV shows, celebrity Instagram accounts, and photoshopped advertisements. Beauty standards are set far too high by the media, and this results in plummeting levels of self-confidence in girls of all ages. Due to this skewed view on the importance of looks, it has become impossible for girls to differentiate between their God-given beauty and the reflection that they strive to see in the mirror.

Society has set certain stereotypes to girls and women about what it is considered to be beautiful that girl’s focus more in their appearances than in their internal selves. Every girl deserves to feel beautiful because they all are, but how can girls think that they are beautiful if there is always that constant reminder of what being considered beautiful is. It is often seen on TV various shows where little girls are being judged by the way they walk, turn, how their makeup and hair is done and what they are wearing, and obviously their beauty. Society has set such high standards of what is considered beautiful and girls are being the victims of those standards. Girls now feel that they are not beautiful enough because they do not meet

As a child, young girls saw Disney princesses with unrealistic body proportions, which in turn led them to thinking that to be a princess one would have to be as thin as them. These standards worsened as time went on, and it has had extremely negative effects on developing young girls. Things such as eating disorders have exponentially increased due to the "need" to be skinny. Thousands of girls look into mirrors and only see "flaws" created by the media's definition of beauty. Women should not define their beauty by how their bodies looks, especially when those standards are set at such unrealistic levels. The fact that even today these unreasonable beauty standards still thrive is sad, and their must be change. The only way for change to happen is to change the beauty standards, and show women that they are all beautiful. With the increased access and use of technology over the past decade, the media's representation of beauty through the use of photoshopped images, underweight models, and unrealistic beauty standards, have had an increasingly negative impact on young girls and how they

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.

As a little girl I had much confidence about myself and felt I looked the best from my school as well as many other girls from my school. Nowadays, many girls are pressured into being perfect in a way they feel they will never accomplish. Little girls such as ten year olds have started to show low self-esteem and hate to their body image because of the models that are being constantly promoted. As 10TV stated, “When you were 10 or 11, you probably didn’t give much thought to body image. Today, kids that age are worried more about looking like Barbie than playing Barbie.” Girls are punishing themselves with cutting, going on extreme diets, and often kill themselves because they hate themselves. Girls are also seen wearing makeup at a young age to improve their facial features and think they will now finally be accepted in society as being perfect. A recent Mintel survey showed that six out of ten seven-year-olds wear lipstick, and two in five use eyeshadows. (“Pretty-Pressure: Girls-it pays to be pretty, but not too pretty.”) So even though social media is showing off beautiful women to give good advertisement, girls are being affected by constantly feeling down and wanting to fit into society and be accepted and seen as perfect, they hate themselves for not being pretty enough as celebrities that have gone through many surgeries to get that "perfect" image, and some cases have led to issues such as depression, cutting, eating problem, and

Beauty isn’t about having a pretty face. It’s about having a pretty mind, a pretty heart and a pretty soul. We hear these sayings every day, and yet we live in a world that seems to deny this very idea. If looks don’t matter, why does the media use airbrushing to hide any flaws a person has? If looks don’t matter, why are so many young people harming themselves because they’re unhappy with the way they look?

Anorexia Nervosa is a type of eating disorder where people torment themselves by constantly being worried about their weight and what they eat. People with this disease have a distorted view of themselves. They think that they are fat and have a great fear of gaining weight. With that being said, they restrict their intake of food and eat extremely small amounts of food if any at all. Starving themselves and eating small amounts of food can do more harm than good. Each person has different types of issues with Anorexia. There are some that will eat food but very little. Then there are those who withhold food in almost all its entirety. The ideal image of the female body has drastically changed over time. Around the 1950’s,

The term anorexia nervosa means lack of appetite. Anorexia is a serious eating disorder, where people starve themselves because they think they are fat. People with anorexia look into the mirror but do not see themselves to same as we may see them. They see themselves as fat or overweight but that does not mean they are overweight. Not all people with anorexia are underweight, but they may still feel as if they are fat and need to lose weight. Anorexia is not the only eating disorder there is also bulimia. When people eat and then puke. Another eating disorder is binge eating disorder. When people overeat but do not puke. Anorexia though, is caused by serous limit is someone's diet and restrictions on what they chose to eat

The standards of beauty never stay the same and have changed over time from one end of the spectrum to the other. With the dramatic changes in what is considered physically attractive, it understandable how it is impossible to reach the goals presented by the media. Now, females are influenced by the growing disparities in the actual body weight compared to the portrayed weight of models, celebrities, and actors to be rail-thin. Girls are raised to focus on their appearance as an indication of their worthiness and the media feeds on this vulnerability. With all the focus on appearance instead of other abilities, girls develop low self-esteem and have an increased of psychiatric disorders, including eating disorders. “[W]e have a lot to learn

We live in a technological world and a society that is ruled by social media because anywhere and anytime that we are, we have our laptops, iphones, or ipads. We are constanly chasing and running from all different directions in order to catch up on what’s going on in social media such to find out how many “likes” and how many “followers does Kim Kardashian has?.” With that being said, our society have redefined beauty based on how much “likes” a person received on their Instagram pictures, a number on a scale, a premanufactured clothing size, an hourglass shape, slender thighs, or victoria’s secrect models. The society’s standards of beauty are unrealistic and impossible to achieve. As a result, unrealistic beauty standards affect girls

The types of media that are out there today are advancing and becoming more readily available for kids to see, specifically adolescence girls. Today, kids have access to social media, TV programs, movies, and magazines, with a touch of a button. Girls, especially, are using these outlets the most and are being subjected to the judgment that comes along with it. With social media, girls are seeing models, movie stars, and even people they might even know, uploading pictures of themselves in all sorts of ways. This is making them compare own bodies to these models and stars, which get paid to look this way on social media. They are looking at their own bodies and questioning maybe why they don’t look like that or even if we don’t eventually

Beauty /ˈbyo͞odē/ noun- a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Everyone is born in different shapes and sizes; some are small, tall, fat, or thin; some are brown-skinned, white-skinned, or black-skinned; some have frizzy, curly, or straight hair. But it doesn’t make them any less beautiful. Yet, most of us spend time looking at ourselves in a mirror, pointing out our insecurities, and comparing ourselves to other people. Our society has created an unrealistic beauty standard that caused many problems.

In this day and age, the epidemic of these so called ‘beauty’ standards is only getting worse and worse. Because of photo modification, low self esteem in regular everyday people is starting to become something that is nearly considered normal. Today, 42% of girls from age 5-8 want to be skinnier, 52% of girls aged 9 to 13 feel better when they are dieting and by the age of 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their own bodies. Think about

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,