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. She uses the photo and the story about her niece loving her own reflection and giving herself kisses in the mirror to capture the attention of the audience. Starting a speech with a story and visual is a great idea because the speaker makes themselves relatable to the audience. After her story, Ramsey moves into her introduction, where she starts with the question "When is it suddenly not okay to love the way that we look?". She then follows …show more content…
She discusses how students' academics, health, and economic contributions are affected by the unreachable standards society sets for them and that we have to be the ones to turn it around. Ramsey provides the audience with ideas on how to make a difference for the generations to come, like to educate on body confidence, to be better role models, and to work together to change the culture. It is on us, the current generations, to start making changes now so that the generations to come will be happy and confident in
This section involves the examination of student culture and who or what made them the way they are today, as Edmundson seems to think that it is not the students’ fault for creating the culture in which they are ensnared. He has come up with this idea that students are “self-contained” and that “strong emotional display is forbidden” (7); but this is simply their “cool consumer culture” at work since the “specter of the uncool creates a subtle tyranny” (21, 8). Students are “desperate to blend in,” and with that in mind, they are neither passionate nor enthusiastic and are “nonassertive,” afraid to speak out and be aggressive (8). Edmundson continues this section by giving answers—his belief of what has happened. He goes from “persona ads” to sheltered childhoods to “future prospects” to “rebound teaching,” all of which circle back to his claim about his students not having an intellectual dedication to school (8, 10-11).
Like Georgiana’s birthmark, I felt insecure on the way I looked on the outside. I did not like the way I looked and was ready to take extreme measures to make my body fit the mold I had envisioned for myself. Hawthorne said,” The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original” (Hawthorne 215). When someone looks at themselves in the mirror, they pick out every single flaw they can find. In my mind when I looked at myself in the mirror I envisioned this less fat and attractive human being with a new find level of confidence.
The paradox of being half ugly is shown all throughout Hitler 's actions. In WWII the entire Jewish population was the target for Hitler and his Nazis party. This led to millions of jews being persecuted and killed. One example of the ugliness of the war would be the discrimination and the hatred of other races. While in power Hitler created concentration camps to contain Jews and people not of German background.
In Rachel Simmons article “Selfies Are Good for Girls”, she claim that self portrait increases the self-esteem level of teenage girls as their conscious narcissism rises. She assert that as girls get older their confidence level decreases because stereotyping in society increases along with judging people based on their outer appearances. To show addition, Simmons’s say if girls “act too confident” they will be isolated. She claim that young women denied compliments with intense rejection because they want to hear more of the compliments. Simmons emphasis that “selfie is tiny pulse of girl pride - a shout-out to the self.
It so shown throughout the book that it is more important to work on your future than to focus on things society makes important like looks, popularity and
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.
Beauty Pageants deprive children of their confidence and childhoods because they lower girls self esteem. In today 's society, many magazines, movies, and runways pressure women to look a certain way, and to act a certain way. Young girls, even girls as young as one years old, can be affected by today’s obsession with fitness and perfection. These girls can take drastic measures to change what they look like, even going as far as starving themselves (Freymark 29). Beauty pageants are notorious for highlighting outward looks,and to many girls who believe that they are not beautiful enough, being judged on one 's appearance can cause a devastating blow to a girl’s confidence.
So when people look and see that they don’t look like they’re favorite super-model it can put a downer on their self-confidence. This causes many girls feeling that they aren’t good enough in society, society won’t accept them because they aren’t perfect and they start to not like their body. When for many females they can’t lose as much weight as their friend can just because of their genes and how they were born. “The lack of connection between the real and ideal perception of their own body and firm willingness to modify their own body and shape so as to standardize them to social concept of thinness…” (Dixit 1), being focused on unrealistic expectations can cause women to lose themselves and change their attitude on how they view their body, and not for the better.
Nowadays, many teenagers imitate famous people that they followed on Instagram. This could have an effect on another factor such as their self-esteem. Following strangers such as celebrities and models may cause the individuals to have a lower self-esteem and feel dissatisfied with their life by seeing the pictures celebrities post day-to-day about their lavish lifestyles, “perfect” bodies, and pretty faces (Wallis 2015). Next, other studies done to test the exposure of images of models to girls have found that participants who viewed pictures of the models reported a significantly lower body satisfaction and self-esteem report than those in the control group who were not exposed to any models (“Social Media and Self Esteem - Dos &Don’t for Teens and Parents”). In addition, another study in Germany call this phenomenon the “self-promotion-envy spiral,” and it happens when Instagram users compare themselves to the people they’re connected to on the platform (Dion, “The Effect of Instagram on Self-Esteem and Life Satisfaction”).
Social media is a powerful source in today’s society, 81% of the population in the United States alone has set up a social media profile. Many use the media for useful things, like educational opportunities and business inquiries. Although there are people who may look at it more in a concerning aspect. Many people today view the social media as a stage where they are judged and told what the real way to look and act is, more specifically, body image. Social Media has a negative impact on body image, through creating a perfect view physically which affects someone mentally, targeting both male and female, and turning away from the real goal of social media.
The quote by Susan Sontag really opened my eyes to what beauty is considered as today. In the quote she’s saying that the way beauty is in society today, is that you have to look a certain way in order to be beautiful. It made me question the amount of women and young girls that actually feel this way. There is actually a wide variety of reasons that girls, boys, women, or men feel the need to change the way they look due to social media, magazines, beauty products, and many more. They think they have to change to be beautiful but the only change they need to make, is the way they think about themselves.
Body shaming is one of the biggest problems in today’s generation. It is the practice of making critical, potentially humiliating comments about a person’s body, size or weight. It is obvious that all of us come in different shapes and sizes but society and the media puts a lot of pressure on us with beauty stereotypes and standards to deem some as healthy and some not. Recently, there has been a lot of controversy recently about body image and body shaming, especially among teenagers. Body shaming is an extremely personal concept and can take a negative toll on a person.
American society has created unhealthy beauty standards that people want to live up to, but they ridicule those same standards when their goals can’t be achieved. Woman criticize how other women look but are offended when others do the same to them. There is “fat-shaming” and “skinny-shaming,” and now, no one's body seems to fit the “ideal” mold that Americans have crafted. It’s a hypocrisy of ideas. Body shaming is certainly not a new phenomenon, but social media outlets have caused it to spiral out of control.
All these expectations are there, not for the student to over-achieve during the course of their studies at university but to merely ‘settle in’, hence one could argue the unrealistic nature of these expectations. The first-year student, many of whom have just graduated from the comfort of high school, find themselves faced with new found academic challenges, having to participate in as much as possible, establish friendships, be social and pro-active, make conscious career choices and take responsibility of their independence. (Aladag, 2009 et el
Self-esteem Self-esteem is referred to ‘‘positive or negative attitude towards one own self’’ (Rosenberg, 1965), Self esteem is analyzed as a key predictor of psychological well-being, at least among people in Western societies (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, &Vohs, 2003; Oishi, Diener, Lucas, &Suh, 1999). According to Harter (1999) the perceptions of physical appearance and self-worth are interlinked, as perceived appearance is consistently evidenced as the strongest single indicator of self-esteem among female adolescents. (Harter).