It’s an argument we’ve all heard before and there are more than a few books that have tackled the subject. But what’s different from even the last three years is just how widespread the media has become. Today’s teens spend an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes absorbing media in just one day, which includes the amount of time spent watching TV, listening to music, watching movies, reading magazines and using the internet. This is a generation that’s been raised watching reality TV – observing bodies transformed on Extreme Makeover; faces taken apart and pieced back together on I Want a Famous Face. They are, as Tina Fey puts it, bombarded by "a laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.”
Today's society is constantly besieged by the media, through advertisements and extolling the importance of female beauty and discrediting other virtues such as
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
(Pigott, 2). Likewise, Catherine altered her body size to meet their gender expectations and various cultural beauty standards. By applying the gender lens to this, we can better understand how gender expectations and cultural beauty standards intersect to shape women’s experiences of their body. It emphasizes how cultural beauty standards can have a significant impact on women's body image, self-esteem, and confidence. Women often feel the pressure to comply with the cultural ideal of beauty, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy, and shame if they do not fit the mold.
In an article named "The Ugly Truth about Beauty" written by Dave Barry. The author Dave Barry explains how women think of their appearance, and how man think about their appearance. Although, Barry strongly points out that men just shave and focus on other things such as the superbowl. Barry says that women see themselves as not good enough and while making this point Barry explains that woman feel as if a dog catcher is going to throw a net and collect them. Barry then says if a women were to ask you if she looks good, the best way to answer this question will be to collapse to the floor, and fake a seizure, yet there are other answers such as you look good, very beautiful or simply amazing.
Imagine being told as a female in today’s world you must look or act a ¬¬certain way in order to be accepted. Being what you want to be is not allowed and changes have to be made in order to be included. They say “pain is beauty, and beauty is pain” as they way a woman looks today are completely different from ten or even fifty years ago. In this paper, the reader will understand the mind of a woman in today’s society and the difficulties to be not only accepted but being her own person as well. Not only has the appearance of a woman changed but also role titles and job descriptions as well.
Now, not only have women in the work place been subjected to unfair conditions, we also have an impossible look to achieve. Jean killbourne, now a speaker, once a model was destroyed by societies standards on what women are to look like. When we watch television and we see a simple shampoo commercial we do not realize it at the time, but if we stop and look at the bigger picture we realize that the “girl next door” who is just washing her hair like every young lady does is anatomically perfect. Killbourne in her speech shows the audience a picture of a young woman that has been photoshopped to the point of distortion; it shows that young lady’s hips are smaller than her shoulders, and her waist no bigger than a child’s. We know that as women it is hard enough to focus on our careers, but now we must look like barbie’s as well?
I grew up in a home where men were not present in my life, and I was raised by POC women some of which had old-fashioned views like Carmen. I know and watched how Eurocentric beauty standards have impacted the women in my life and even myself. I’ve gained a lot of information, history, perspectives, and experiences in how beauty standards impact different people, and feel this was an interesting and important issue to discuss and bring to light in this paper based on my extensive knowledge on the subject. This is an important question and issue to discuss because this is something every woman deals with from a young age.
Out of all the articles I looked at and read, the two article I chose that draws me close to my topic would be “How Instagram is Perpetuating the Beauty Myth” and “Chivalry, feminism and the black community “by TheGrio. The article How Instagram is Perpetuating the Beauty Myth is about the fact that instagram really affects women in general about how they look, how they feel about their insecurities, feminine advertising or “Femvertising” which companies use female empowerment to sell women their products. The other being Chivalry, feminism and the black community by TheGrio. This article would be about how manners and chivalry are dead in the society we live in; the article talks about the times of today and how black people are affected by
I am referred to in many cultures as beautiful. Not because I pretend to be someone I’m not, but because I proudly represent my values and beliefs without fear. I urge each of you to reconsider your definition of beauty. Instead of casting yourselves as weak inferiors, set a shining example of independence and strength.” She looked over the crowd of women and saw them glance at each other not really knowing what to do or say.
In the “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf, she briefly outlines the “violent backlash” against feminism that uses a form of ideology of how women are supposed to be perceived socially. Wolf noted that these images are in place as a “political weapon against women’s advancement”, where women are having more shame, guilt and denial and is wondering if it isn’t “neurotic” but something important in women rights (1990, p.9). Many of these liberated women who gained legal and reproductive rights in the early 1970s are feeling inadequate due to trivial things such as physical appearance. These physical inadequacies are things such as weight, looking youthful, clothing and body hair. These women are trying to discover a relationship between liberation and beauty
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.
Beauty is often distorted, misunderstood and shadowed by a wide amount of conflicting pressures. It is something we endlessly strive for, rather than see
This vision of beauty has already made many people think they are without beauty because they don’t meet the airbrushed, commercialized standards of this superficial
Women often find they are compared to false idols who do not exist. The comparisons women have with their beauty and other women’s beauty can have a positive or negative emotional or physical consequence. “We compare how we think we look to other people and their looks and we end up making a decision about whether we are much better or much worse” (Patrick). Women have been taught to compare themselves to others for most of their lives. In reality, the people women compare themselves to, are comparing themselves to someone else desiring the exact same
