Most girls, if not all girls, have gone through one particular phase in life: finding self-confidence. Despite the fact they may say or act otherwise, most girls have gone through a phase where they feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I would like to say that I am comfortable in my own skin and come across that way (I also eat a lot), but I am just like any other girl and have gone through the phase myself (and when boys call me cute, I tend to turn into a strawberry and deny it vehemently). Over the centuries, American focus has shifted from judging a girl based on her personality to judging a girl based on her body image and sexuality, and in The Body Project, Joan Jacobs Brumberg goes into detail about how the United States have shifted in their views of girls’ bodies. Once upon a time in a century not too long ago, character was considered …show more content…
A girl can be seen as beautiful and attractive, but continued to be shunned - all because they don’t wear the latest trends in fashion (but what if they like wearing solid colors or nerdy shirts from Walmart?). They may have a great personality that would attract many suitors in the nineteenth century, but if it is not up to the status of some people, they’re deemed unworthy. It is honestly one of the saddest things I have witnessed and experienced. Through The Body Project, Brumberg explains how American girls have shifted from judging a girl through her personality and internal character to judging through her appearance. But as we become more comfortable with our bodies, American girls are going through yet another shift: we are judging girls based on not just their appearance, but also through their material possessions. It is a rare sight to see someone judging others based on their internal character, but Brumberg clearly illustrates how we have gone to a world of material
A majority of the population was ugly even though the idealistic standard of beauty was far above the average person living there. Instead of tall, muscular, light, and carefree people, most ended up being dark, small, and unattractive. This relates largely in the current society because magazines portray thin to be beautiful, and until the last decade has this beauty standard started to change. When things as simple as a beauty standard are different from the current world, it allows readers to think upon the idea of living in a different
Today, society has standards or expectations that are set, now people expect different things of girls and women. For example, people don’t care about your personality, it’s all about the looks. “She was an fair as this morning and fresh as tomorrow’s flowers and lovely as any maid when a man shuts up his eyes and traps her, in cameo perfection, on the shell of his eyelids.”(42). He’s saying she is the most perfect women he has seen.
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).
Our appearance is the first thing people see, but is beauty really only skin deep. According to the history books and Steinbeck, it is skin deep. Throughout history women have been told what they can and cannot wear, how they should or should not look, and how they can act or cannot act. From the 1800s to the mid 20th century, it wasn’t even culturally acceptable for women to wear pants. In Steinbeck’s Novella , Of Mice and Men when we are introduced to Curley’s wife, we are given a vivid description of her body and her beauty “She had full, rouged lips and wide-spread eyes”, (Steinbeck 31).
The human body has always been idealized in society. From cultural expectations to body image stereotypes, women of all centuries have struggled with the need to fit the idealized mold of the prefect wife, adoring mother, and even the ideal woman. Renée Cox, a photo and mixed media artist, is one of the most controversial women to incorporate the body into her work today. In Cox’s work Hott-En-Tot (Robertson 107), Cox shows the relationship between her own culture and the stereotypes that it projects onto the body.
They should love and embrace their bodies. The opposite sex does not respect women’s bodies like they should. Girls must be taught at a young age about self-confidence because it is very important. The sixth and final Girls Bills of Rights states, “Girls have the right to prepare for interesting work and economic independence” (
In the essay by Yusufali, she boldly writes: "[By] reading popular teenage magazines, you can find out what kind of body image is "in" or "out"' (page 52). By this, Yusufali explains how women
In the year 2105, the American culture is a society that thrives off of the obsession of materialism and gaining the approval of others. Culture tells us to worry about how many “likes” we get on a picture of ourselves or the number of comments that tell us how beautiful or handsome we are. Beauty will fade, but people are willing to do anything that they can to preserve it forever. From plastic surgeries for a thiner nose, to silly home remedies for a wrinkly face, we won’t stop until perfection is achieved. The writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the nineteenth century did not differ much from the American culture that we see today.
Standards for girls in today's society The American society set standards for girls and young women to follow. Companies are selling products and sexualizing girls at a young age. It's bringing in the culture norms of today’s society. To solve the problem, they should utilize diverse models to advertise many of the products.
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).
Men and women nowadays are starting to lose self-confidence in themselves and their body shape, which is negatively impacting the definition of how beauty and body shape are portrayed. “...97% of all women who had participated in a recent poll by Glamour magazine were self-deprecating about their body image at least once during their lives”(Lin 102). Studies have shown that women who occupy most of their time worrying about body image tend to have an eating disorder and distress which impairs the quality of life. Body image issues have recently started to become a problem in today’s society because of social media, magazines, and television.
American beauty standards further perpetuate a divide between different races and subcultures as vessels such as social media, TV commercials, and other advertisements circulate, and a cultural myth is not only formed but accepted by communities as they are exposed to what the “ideal” standard of beauty should be as dictated by others. A cultural myth in America is not only formed but accepted by communities as they are exposed to what the “ideal” standard of beauty is. American beauty standards ultimately intersect with broader systems of power, privilege, and racism. The ideal standard of beauty with the mythical notion that it can be achieved leads to a sense of inferiority among men and women alike that don’t align with what society deems
In a society that is heavily influenced by mass media, women are repeatedly compartmentalized into unrealistic, and often degrading standards of appearance and sexuality. Doris Bazzini’s research on magazines and Caroline Heldman’s blog explores themes related to a woman’s appearance, while Jessica Valenti elaborates on the concept of virginity in her essay titled, “The Purity Myth”. Despite the diversity in scope when it comes to womanhood, there is a numerous set of expectations that a female must fit in order to be “ideal”. However, this checklist is so specific and debasing that it renders the criteria useless. The three main pre-requisites in being the ideal woman include physical attractiveness, sexual accessibility, and purity.
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.
I’ve certainly hit this wall that is “this terrible emphasis on physical perfection” with the efforts I make to strive for whatever image of ‘perfection’ that I only define by what I see in advertisements. While I am certainly in the cohort of girls who “learn early on that they’re going to be judged first and foremost by how they look,” it was never a subliminal message I received from advertisements. My mother had always placed a great emphasis on my appearances, in a way that she never bothered with my brother. While her daughter should be smart and hardworking, but she should also be “perfectly groomed and polished, plucked and shaved” and not at all deviating from what my mother thinks society expects of a