Body Image In Society

Society has had this idea that the perfect body image is what we see in the magazines and on billboards. Our ideal body image that we are taught throughout the media is women must be flawless, with clear skin, long limbs, strong healthy hair, little waist, big perky bust, and to be a size two. The media doesn’t just make the perfect body image for women, but also with men. Men are taught that to really be a man and have the perfect body they must be tall, buff, have broad shoulders, be masculine, have toned, and handsome. What most of society doesn’t realize is the images we see are photoshopped and edited to make these men and women “beautiful”.
People in our society don’t believe that they are beautiful unless they look like the images

Hart says in her article that in the 1910 women’s body image were expected to be something called the “Gibson Girl”, where women wore corsets to keep their stomach and waist small, they also were expected to have long necks and sloped shoulders with their hair done in big curls. Hart also includes that in 1960 the new perfect body image was changed to the “The Twig”, where women were suppose to have narrow hips, be petite, and with a doll face. The latest body image that Hart has recorded was in 2010 called “The Booty Babe” where women were expected to have a big butt, little waist, and big breasts, women 's body image was expected to be the hour glass figure. In all of these different time periods the image was different, but the expectation wasn’t. Women are expected to look like the certain image that is flaunted throughout the media during that time period, but in reality the expectations for a woman are the parts that cannot be changed, such as hips, being petite, a woman 's face, waist, breast size, and the actual figure of a woman. These are things that are not able to be changed even if they wanted them to be, with the exception of surgery, but it’s not something that is able to be worked on to change at the gym or something that can be changed quickly. Society needs more runway

Women already have enough trouble with accepting compliments from others and actually hearing the positive things people have to say to them, the last thing women need is an image to compare themselves to that lowers their self-esteem. In the article, "Women and the Negativity Receptor" Ball states that while she was watching the movie Pretty Woman the scene where Julia Roberts character is talking to Richard Gere’s character and Roberts is talking about how she never planned to become a stripper, no one really does, she just followed that line of work because she didn’t believe she could do anything better, then Gere’s character says that she has a lot of potential in the world, and Robert’s character replied back, “The bad stuff is easier to believe.” Ball realized that most of society is like Julia Robert’s character, by setting their bar low, doubting themselves, insecure, scared, and afraid to fail. The image of the plus sized Victoria’s Secret Angel is the perfect example of the exact opposite of that and the perfect example of how everyone should believe in themselves, how everyone should be confident in who they are and go for what they want in life. Stated in the article, "Women and the Negativity Receptor" Ball researches on why women have low self-esteem and she came up with that part of the reason why women have low self-esteem is that there is an area in a female 's brain that is actually there just for the negative thinking someone’s brain has, stated by the