Waxed Generation Analysis

In the year 1998 women would strive to be perceived as the “perfect” woman with flawless skin and a skinny body. In the 1990’s technology changed how we would perceive women forever. With this new technology we now have access to digital editing and other online editing tools that women can use to eliminate all of their imperfections. With these tools our society put a huge pressure on girls to look like the people in the magazines. The problem with this, the girls in the magazines were not real.

African American rapper “Lil’Kim” publicly admitted to getting surgery and bleaching her skin, saying “really beautiful women that left me thinking, how I can I compete with that? Being a regular black girl wasn 't good enough.” This trend of women being unhappy with their bodies is not uncommon. 53% of 13-year-old American girls are unhappy with their bodies, this grows to 78% by the time they are 17 (Maine, 2011). Due to this, more women result to practices making themselves more “attractive”.

What social media is doing to teens Social media is a very dangerous place that makes teens feel insecure. Teens spend more than one-third of their day on social media looking at stereotypical images of “perfect” bodies and people. As a result, they become insecure about themselves because they are not like the people in the pictures. The media states that a perfect person is skinny, tan, has shiny hair, straight teeth, and completely clear skin. However, because teens are going through a lot of physical changes they do not usually look like social media 's definition of perfect and they become insecure.

The media portrays the average person as flawless, thin, tall, and beautiful. They advertise products that can help a person achieve what they call “perfection.” They slap photos all over the place, on billboards, magazines, and ads, showing us what a “real” person looks like. The media brainwashes us into believing that we need to meet their standards in order to achieve ultimate beauty and should we stray from the path they pave, we will not be considered beautiful. Our society places too much emphasis on our appearances, forcing many to undergo drastic changes to become “beautiful.”

In Cindy Pierce’s article, “How Objectifying Social Media Affects Girl’s Body Image More Than You Think,” she argues that society controls how girls and women see themselves, and this will not be solved until they stop caring what other people think. Things celebrities and people we know post online make girls feel inadequate to the standards of others and in effect makes them unhappy with what they look like. Pressure is starting to build on girls at an early age and into adult hood to reach this standard of beauty set by social media. The only way to escape this feeling of being unworthy or less than the ladies in magazines is to become numb to the idea that women are not good enough. Women in magazines are photoshopped to sell products to help women reach the standard the internet has set.

Modern advertisements in the media show a single definition of beauty, which is typically impossible to achieve by the average person. When a child grows up around these pictures of what beauty is they start to believe that these pictures and people are normal and are what everyone should look like. When this child grows up and realizes that they do not look like the people they see in magazines and on TV they begin to believe that they look wrong and that they are not beautiful. This can lead to many issues such as eating disorders and depression.

The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).

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.

As guest editor of Star Telegram newspaper, I did what was asked of me and reviewed the article written by Susan Bordo “Never Just Pictures”. Bordo focuses on body image and our perception of beauty and how we are “supposed” to look according to the media. “Never Just Pictures” should be published because Susan Bordo has factual evidence to back up her reasoning to her claim about body disorders, the role that different types of media have on society, and how it is creating a false image of what true beauty really is. In this article, Bordos central claim is for the readers to get an understanding of today’s obsession with body image, and how we are no longer accepted for just our personality and our good traits but for the physique of the human body.

This constant fixation on physical perfection has created unreasonable beauty standards for women, ones we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Such standards permeate all forms of popular media, particularly fashion magazines and advertisements. Women are bombarded with the notion that we must be thin in order to be desirable. These images project an

Also, cosmetic procedures have increased by 39% over the past five years (from 2011) with surgical procedures up 17% and nonsurgical procedures up 44%(ASPS statistics). It shows that young women are willing to put themselves in danger because they feel the need to meet society's expectations of beauty. When going into cosmetic surgery, there is a risk of death or side effects that people are aware of, but still undergo the procedure. All because we live in a world where first impressions are made by how we look and thanks to magazines advertisements they set the “ideal” look for us and we all try to reach that look no matter how it

Plastic surgery is the rigorous medical process of altering the human body through means of reconstruction, the removal of tissue, and the addition of tissue for cosmetic purposes. People see it every day and do not even question it. People’s faces and bodies are augmented in ways that humanity sees so regularly that viewers have become blind to it. Seeing faces and bodies perfectly sculpted by knives for sharp cheekbones, fuller lips, larger breasts, and a slimmer waist has tricked society into forgetting what the average person actually looks like. Consumers have become so blind to this constant fake image that humanity does not notice the difference until an unaltered, natural image is forced down our throats.

Teenagers have become much more focused on what he or she looks like. This is because, they are searching their identity, and trying to be someone that the media expects them to be. With social media, comes the stereotypical version of what a man or woman should be like. For example, women are expected to dress sexy, and have the perfect barbie doll body. Whereas men, are expected to be muscular and tall.

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.

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.