Beauty In The Media's Unrealistic Standards For Beauty

Girls are beginning to see a deep gender bias from very young ages. The media perpetuates this bias by editing women to be inhumanly perfect. Advertising is set around people’s insecurities. This is giving girls the idea that the only thing that matters about them is the way they look and how men perceive them. Women are said to spend more money on beauty than they do on their own education (Netflix).

Everyone always want or desire for something in this world. And to get their want they must somehow bargain for it; whether it was begging or persuading, they are still considered rhetorical techniques. In the story “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines talks about how society setted a certain standard of what a woman's body should look like, and it practically destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem. Haines further explains that pictures and advertisement on tv and magazines are teaching young girls that they need to look like the models in the picture. 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.

Nowadays, a glance at a digitally enhanced magazine can brainwash teens of this era into getting cosmetic surgery. Why in the world do magazines put forth altered images as a standard of beauty? The teens who see these images often already battle self-confidence issues and these furthermore sustain the issue. They believe looking like a fake image is the only way to look beautiful, which says adverse things about the messages put out by media. This generation really is “waxed” supported along the lines of Koenigs saying, “It’s not the natural desire to look beautiful, but the unnatural standards of beauty that uniquely affect my generation.”

In general, from 1884 to the 1920s women worked so hard to achieve women 's rights. Women have always been looked down upon by different groups within society. From the early times women have been viewed as weak figures. As recently as the early 1900’s women were unable to work in professional fields such as business and medicine. This resulted in women being unable to advance financially in society and being dependent on their husbands.

Beauty company Dove, performed a study among three thousand two hundred women in ten different countries. They determined that 68% of the women surveyed strongly agreed with the phrase “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.” One of the driving factors of why women cannot achieve what the media portrays as ideal beauty is because of Photoshop. Those that retouch photographs often use Photoshop to erase blemishes and wrinkles, slim thighs to be stick-thin, mold the body into an hourglass shape, and blend skin for a silky, smooth complexion. The majority of models are portrayed as perfect Barbie dolls.

The majority of the problem comes from our images of personal attractiveness that are influenced by T.V. commercials and magazine advertisements. I, myself have been judged by my appearance because I think make- up does not create beauty. There is more to a human being instead of worrying about the minor details of your appearance, focusing too much on acquiring beauty can have negative consequences. In the essay, “The Ugly Truth about Beauty,” Barry talks about when men ask women the dreaded question that no man wants to hear.

The ideal of a women magazine model are full of photos with women who are typically white and very thin. Many women will agree that they may feel pressured to dress or look a certain way because of the way the models look. The media can make women feel insecure about themselves and have low self-esteem. The messages in the media says that women will always need to make an adjustment to fit the “ideal” look. Since, the media portrays such images and make women feel like beauty is important women need to make sure they love themselves.

Starting from a young age, things, such as Disney princess and even the unrealistic shape of Barbie was showing us that, that is what we are supposed to aim to look like. In the end we lose our self-respect, dignity and even jeopardize our health to maintain today’s society beauty standards. We as women stop at no cost to be accepted and branded as beautiful. Throughout history, women has been objectified by the media and put down in order to buy into whatever the companies were

Meaghan Ramsey's TED Talk "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you" is a powerful speech about low body confidence. Ramsey talks about how society's pressure to be perfect is one of the main reason for young girls' (and boys') low body confidence and how these feelings of low esteem can impact their lives and futures. I chose to analyze this speech because I have experienced low body confidence and I have felt those feelings of low self-esteem. In Meaghan Ramsey's speech "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you", she discusses how low body confidence is undermining academic achievement, damaging health, and limiting the economic potential of today's youth who are growing up in a world of social media. Ramsey has a strong start to her speech, using a photo and a story about her niece to gain the attention of the audience.

For many years, women have been expected to meet the unrealistic beauty standards of society, making women face harsh criticism from friends, family, and even themselves. I remember moments when criticism from everyone around me made me very self-conscious about myself. From refusing to wear makeup or girly outfits to obsessing over my overall weight and body shape, I myself am a victim of cruel and heartless judgement just like the girl from Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" was. In the first stanza of "Barbie Doll", one line says, "Then in the magic of puberty".

One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

The majority of modern society’s advertising conveys an oppressive message to American women. In advertisement campaigns, women are typically only considered and marketed as beautiful if they fit a very specific mold that society has created. Women who don’t fit this mold of being feminine, thin, and pretty are shamed and encouraged to change. However, it isn’t just the “ugly” women who are shamed in the media. There is a consistent message that runs throughout advertisements that suggests that women are lesser than men, and that they exist solely for the benefit of men.

Your decisions to comply with society’s view of “beauty” are no longer subconscious, but rather are more conscious-driven decisions. Barbie’s slender figure remains idolized; however, it has evolved from a plastic doll to a self-starving model that is photo-shopped on the pages of glossy magazines. You spend hours in front of a mirror adjusting and perfecting your robotic look while demanding your parents to spend an endless amount of money on cosmetics and harmful skin products to acquire a temporary version of beauty. Consider companies such as Maybelline, which have throughout the ages created problematic and infantilizing campaigns and products for women. More specifically consider the “Baby Lips” product as well as the company slogan, “maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” that reiterates the male notions of beauty to which women are subjected.

Society 's Beauty Standards Hawkins (2017) stated that the definition of beauty has been shaped by society 's standards instead of what people actually look like. It signifies that the society sets up expectations of how we define beauty by manipulating beliefs of people to recognize that body shape, skin color, race, ethnicity, or anglicized features are what makes a person distinguish their beauty instead of what people actually look like in reality. This makes people believe that the beauty that they see, especially in films, is something that they need to attain in order to be considered as attractive. Unrealistic beauty standards affects physical and mental health Vitelli (2013) stated that content analysis of female characters

According to Buegeler (2015), as a matter of fact, makeup can fool a woman because of its bright and attractive colors at the same time every cosmetic’s name like Daydream, Maraschino, and Plum Fairy. The makeup itself can do sales talk because of its appearance while it’s in the store. Women will be conscious about their face and will buy such cosmetics because they think that if they will put makeup on their face they will get more beautiful than the usual and it will boost their self-esteem. It will be easier to for them to express their selves