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Women body image essay
Gender stereotypes and popular culture
Gender stereotypes and popular culture
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Victoria Jenkins is an Australian author who has made a name for herself writing the highly popular Detective King and Lane series of novels. The first novel in the series was The Girls In The Water that Jenkins first published in 2017 to much critical acclaim and popularity among crime fiction fans. The series of novels features Detective Constable Chloe Lane and Detective Inspector Alex King who are the lead investigative characters that solve some mysterious murders in their hometown. Even though Jenkins’ writing has only come to the fore in the recent past, she has always been a writer. Right from her childhood, she would write stories and went on to win her first literary prize aged only ten.
The models in the advertisement are far from average American women. The models represent the “ideal” American doll with tall, long legs; a “naturally” tanned complexion; and a waist size under 26 inches. Many Americans resonate with and aspire to achieve this image of beauty—regardless of how infeasible it may be. Consequently, when the Victoria’s Secret models kickbox, rock climb, or run on the beach, the audience desires the same look when they work out. So, the next time that a young woman shops for some new workout clothes, she buys from Victoria’s Secret because she’ll be one step closer to looking like a VS
The article Boys on the Side by Hanna Rosin discusses the “hookup” culture that has largely replaced dating. Young women are behaving like frat boys, and no one is guarding the virtues of honor, chivalry, and everlasting love (Rosin 38). Girl land a book by Caitlin Flanagan discusses sexual culture and how in earlier times, fathers protect their daughter’s innocence and girls understood their roles to also protect themselves. The central argument is that women have effectively been duped by a sexual revolution that persuaded them to trade away the protections of and from young men (Rosin 38).
In music when a musician transposes a piece, they change the notes or the key of the song so that it matches their ability and personal taste. Transposing takes away the original sound of the song and instead has the imprint of the musician. Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the world’s most renowned composers, transposed his music. Why did he do this? When Bach wrote a song, he later changed the parts so that his favorite instrument, the harpsichord, would sound the best.
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).
It is a serious numbers that are increasing daily, and its constantly been fuel by the press. As research shows, it is an issue that the standard of beauty for women is so unreasonable. Promoting a thin standard that is not achievable or realistic could be detrimental to adolescents s health. It is important to realize that parents should limit their children’s exposure to the media, by encouraging participation in activities that promote self- esteem building. This could help children form a better
In Mean Girls (2004), Cady Heron is shown to move from the periphery to a hard-core member through the adoption of various plastic characteristics and consumption activities. Cady’s physical appearance removes the barriers to entry and opens the metaphorical doors that allow her to be first accepted as a potential member of the Plastics since she is described as a “regulation hottie”. Her physical appearance reflects that of the hard-core members of the Plastics and as a result, prompts an invite sit with them at lunch for the rest of the week. She achieves periphery or prospect status by conforming to the specific uniform worn by the girls, one of the various idiosyncrasies that differentiate the Plastics from everyone else.
Many advertisements have images of women that have their faces or mouths covered and are positioned in ways that make them look weak. In contrast, when a man is placed in an advertisement, he is shown as being big and powerful. Men are pushed into the norm of being tough and powerful, just as women are portrayed as weak and passive. These advertisements are examples of how media has a very large influence on us as a culture. “But by the age of 5 or so, most children have developed a fair number of gender stereotypes (often incorrect) that they then use to guide their own perceptions and activities” (Newman 66).
When watching “Killing us softly,” a documentary of advertising’s image of women, I found that aspects of the film were similar to my own experiences. As the video explained, girls learn early on that looks matter. From elementary to adolescence, I experienced negative judgement and bullying. In elementary I was always labeled “fat”, “ugly”, and was even teased for having a scar under my eye. From then on I was always concerned about my weight and appearance.
Fundamentally, the perception of their body alters in response to stimulus regardless of the lack of physical changes in their actual form. In one of their hypotheses, they sought to show that when young women are subjected to television programs and commercials laden with thin ideal images and situations that it temporarily increases the viewer 's body dissatisfaction and depression. Their results were paradoxical; they concluded that the viewers saw the images of these women as an attainable ideal and essentially a goal that they could work towards, giving them hope and a slight euphoria. In addition to this, Swami and Smith (2012) reference another study from 2009 in which viewers became more depressed when watching advertisements featuring women presented as being more realistic than most models used in television. Those who performed the study suggest results are due to “ the extent that images of average sized models focus viewers’ attention on their own bodies” which “may trigger a fear of fatness among female viewers.”
The myth that Hollywood is encouraging is to strive to be thin. Thinner is better, prettier, sexier and more attractive. Instead of celebrating and promoting all different body types and the individuality of all body types they single out one body type and infiltrate the media in all facets. The media has become the standard and are being looked too for examples to live by regarding outer appearance. Hollywood has resulted in extreme thinness.
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.”
Have you ever looked at an image on Social Media, seen a movie, commercial, or show and looked at yourself and felt ashamed or unsatisfied. Many women around the world have struggled with their weight and how others see them. Media images of ridiculously thin women are everywhere – television shows, movies, popular magazines. The Media often glamorizes a very thin body for women. These are also the pictures that are being shown to teenagers at a time of their lives that they are particularly susceptible to peer pressure and looking good(Tabitha Farrar).
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.
Whether it’s magazine covers, instagram, twitter, on television or just on the world wide web in general, everywhere we look we see stunning models. Models that are incredibly thin and can look good in anything. Our society is obsessed with how perfect they look, yet at the end of the day women everywhere looks in the mirror and doesn’t see the body of the girl she sees on social media. Even though women come in all shapes and sizes in nature, the expectation to have a skinny, perfect body just seems to be the expectation for our society nowadays. Society puts too much pressure on females to have the perfect body.