Dear freshman college girl,
Commercial break! As Americans, is it nearly impossible to ignore the constant blast of advertisements that are shoved in our faces on a daily basis, and these advertisements usually include a beautiful, flawless woman. Women love to look at other women and so do men, so its no wonder that a beautiful woman is often used in media to sell products and send out messages, however being a female isn’t easy. From the moment baby girls open their eyes, they are bombarded with images of beautiful women, and are told that the ideal image of beautiful is what they see in the media.
Throughout history, the ideal image of beauty has been difficult for women to attain. In the United States today, we are constantly bombarded with images of the “ideal” man or woman, and these images effect us and shape what we come to know as our “generalized other.” Our generalized other “functions as a sort of monitoring or measuring device with which individuals may judge their own actions against those of their generalized conceptions of how members of society are expected to act.” (Devor, 530) We see the faces in media as a part of this judging device, and we tailor our behaviors and our appearance accordingly. In our world today, media is one of the main factors that shapes and idealizes our conception of the what we think society expects from us. As a very young girl I loved to play with Barbies. From their perfect hair and skin, their long legs, flat tummies, and giant breasts, I idolized Barbie and thought that she was perfect. This is a perfect example of how early this standard of beauty is impressed on little girls, and unfortunately, it never really goes away. In reality it actually gets worse as girls grow older and feel even more pressure to look attractive.
Since women are subconsciously comparing themselves to what they see in movies, television shows, magazines, and on billboards and ads, women are striving for an image of beauty that is not realistic and certainly not healthy. The images portrayed in the media contain attractive females, with bangin’ bodies, beauty, and sex appeal. In a patriarchal society, it is easy for women to be pressured into placing priority in vanity and appearance, since females in our society have always been told that life is easier when you are attractive, and appearance is extremely important.
As women, we are expected to look good for the opposite sex and can consequently turn themselves into objects for men in this male dominated society, and this can have extreme consequences for girls who compare themselves to Kim Kardashians and Kate Moss looking women that they see in the media. Shelly Grabe, a professor at the University of Wisconsin stated in her article, "I want to stress that it's totally normal for women to want to be attractive, but what's happening in our society is that many women are striving toward something that's not very realistic or obtainable, and that leads to a lot of health consequences." (Grabe) In a society with rising rates of obesity and eating disorders, girls face many obstacles to fit into the expectations of our society’s idea of what is attractive and desirable. The most devastating consequence of our medias skewed portrayal of beauty: the distorted and unrealistic standards females hold themselves to and the consequences they have on girls self-esteem and body image.
The images in media portray extremely beautiful woman in skin-tight and skimpy clothing, with perfect symmetrical faces and rockin’ bodies. Take Cosmopolitan Magazine for example, with a different beautiful bombshells on the cover every month surrounded by sex, dieting, and beauty tips. The message of the magazine reads loud and clear: stay skinny, always look pretty, and use sex to your advantage. Girls are pressured to place a high priority on their looks above all else. This pressure to be obsessed with appearance has devastating effects for many girl’s body image and health. Women are striving to achieve a weight that is unrealistic for them, which brings me us to the next issue caused by this the unrealistic image of beauty portrayed in our media: negative body image and weight issues. Jennifer L. Deere, a psychiatrist with a special interest in body image and eating disorders explains, “children exposed to excessive TV viewing, magazines, and movies are at higher risk of obesity. When other variables are controlled, TV exposure independently increases the odds of becoming overweight by 50% for both men and women. Furthermore, the type of exposure, not the amount, is correlated with negative body image. Specifically, rates of exposure to soap operas, movies, and music videos were associated with higher rates of body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness.”
The current media culture is complicated and very confusing. Women are told that they can and should “have it all.” They expect family, career, and home to be perfect, and Martha Stewart tells them how to do it. The media them with mixed messages about what is sexy, making it difficult to choose a role model. The heroin chic waif made popular by Kate Moss in the early 1990s competes with the voluptuous Baywatch babe personified by Pamela Anderson and the athletic soccer stars who celebrated a World Cup victory by tearing their shirts off. Thankfully, Barbie’s designers revamped her figure back in the late 1990s . However, with increased availability of plastic surgery, today’s women are faced with similarly unrealistic expectations every time they open a fashion magazine.
There can be a solution to this problem. Girls deserve to feel great about themselves and feel beautiful by their own standards, not the ones that corporations portray as beautiful and females are pressured to conform to. I believe that the solution to this problem is addressing it at an early age. Children need to learn, both in school and at home, that they do not need to try to achieve unattainable looks and weights that are unhealthy for them in the long run. Times are changing, and the rain-thin flawless portrayal of beauty is so rare that it’s crazy to even imagine that the average girl can look like a supermodel with the right make-up, hair-style, and diet (or lack of food at all if that’s what it takes).
No comments:
Post a Comment