Jill Stark’s opinion article, appearing in The Age 19th Jan 2008, outlines in a concerned and direct fashion, that most stereotypes seen in glossy magazines have a negative and dangerous impact. She contends that there is a growing trend for woman to produce magazines, promoting healthy and realistic figures, empowering the female. The headline ‘Sick of impossible princesses, real girls fight back’, indicates to readers how fed up the author is with these unrealistic stereotypes. Stark informs the reader that the traditional content of glossy magazines, with “extreme dieting tips and air-brushed waifs in micro bikinis”, is being questioned by ‘real girls’ who are “fed up with images of emaciated models and a celebrity culture pushing them to be thin, sexy and silent.”. Confronted with these images, the reader is encouraged to sympathise with the author’s contention.
Kyrsten James WIBIS 188-005 October 15, 2012 Word Count # Fat Is a Feminist Issue By: Susie Orbach Obesity and overeating is a topic that is ongoing within the United States and in many lives of woman today. Fifty percent of women that live in this country alone are estimated to be overweight. Individuals of our society are always looking for new diets, dietary plans, supplements, and or advice. Every woman would love to be considered physically fit, and beautiful in the eyes of others, but this within itself is a challenge. Everyone perceives beauty in different ways, shapes, and forms.
INTRODUCTION Having body image anxiety is obviously due to having a negative self-perception, and such insecurities mean decrease in confidence. Liberal Democrat MP Jo aswell as previous research firmly believe that specific exposed media can have a negative influence on the way one sees their own body. Beauty promoting advertisements such as L’Oreal are very unrealistic. Research has been citied showing how the increasing airbrushing culture leads to huge self-esteem problems. Whether it be online, on magazines, televisions or in billboards, More elaborately, women are portrayed to have perfect looking skin, voluminous shiny hair, sexy long legs and non existent stretch marks and cellulite.
As stated in the article by Robin Henig, “Over the centuries, women have mauled and manipulated just about every body part – lips, eyes, ears, waists, skulls, foreheads, feet… (55). With certain ways women try to build their confidence level for their visual appearance, they go through a great deal of risks; consequently, severe dangers are more likely to occur, also expressed in the article. In this article, Robin Marantz Henig explains and exposes many different forms and ways woman have deliberately made changes to their bodily figures to fit in the standards of perfection in beauty. She clearly isn’t in favor of these practices from her statement in the article, “The crazed quest for beauty at any cost had led to some bizarre practices along the way” (56). Exactly, very bizarre practices that woman go by to feel better about there appearance rather then their health.
There are a number of women who have eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia trying to look like Miss USA when really it just might not be their body type. Women who starve themselves and call themselves fat on a regular basis. Well they would have nothing to compare themselves to if we as a society weren’t constantly flashing slim women on TV or in magazines. I wonder if there was a Mr. America pageant if men would start to doubt their body types and conform to what is socially accepted for a mans body. All in all I was shocked when I read this and think it is very sad that on national television there is a body type this is accepted.
Consistently, women are diminished by advertisers to pretty body parts used to sell products, a practice that perpetuates the glorification of this unreasonable ideal of beauty. Women’s bodies have not only become a huge money-maker for advertisers, businesses have picked up on women’s insecurities about their bodies and have capilatized on these insecurities. On one hand, advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present young anorexic models as the paradigm of ideal beauty; on the other hand, the media floods the airwaves and magazine pages with ads for junk food. In 1996, the diet industry (as in diet foods, diet programs, diet drugs) took in over $40 billion dollars, and that number is still climbing (Facts and Figures 1). Young women seem to be especially affected by our culture’s obsession with weight and beauty.
From an early age we have been shown with images and messages that reinforce the idea that to be happy and successful we must be thin. Even if someone reads magazines, newspaper, watch television it will say that being fat is very bad. The most frightening part is that this destructive message is reaching kids. Many of them feel bad that they don’t look like that actor or actresses. There is always a low self-image body against women by media.
Dear Plump Betty, The media portrays a very unrealistic idea of how an ideal body should look. The models that you see in magazines live a very unhealthy lifestyle. In the modeling industry, they would get paid to nearly starve themselves to death-in order to achieve a stick thin and anorexic body. It may look like a glamorous life, but behind the scenes, many of them are abnormally thin, and have eating disorders. It seems as if models nowadays or becoming even thinner, while many women are getting heavier, so there is a wide range between the "ideal" body shape and the reality.
In 2001 the Daily Star wrote an article on how the fifteen year old singer, Charlotte Church, was becoming a woman and becoming more mature by saying "She's a big girl now... looking chest swell". It’s highly inappropriate for any type of journalist to comment on the fact that a fifteen year old girl is developing a bigger chest. Magazines also focus on woman’s body shapes and how they should look. This is having a massive effect on women as they read it and the message to them is that this is the only way to look and be considered attractive. This unhealthy for women as they are always thinking about it and are constantly insecure about their appearance.
It isn’t just the film industry that functions this way; movies, magazines, celebrities, commercials, the internet, television and diet/exercise advertisements emphasize a high and often unattainable standard of beauty and physical fitness. Women are surrounded by these forms of media, and some believe that in order to be the right size and look the right way they must stop at nothing to achieve it. Despite the previously described standard that the media creates, more recent campaigns have been made to use all kinds of women and advertise to promote high self-esteem. While the impact that the media has on the self-esteem of women is generally negative, it can impact women positively as well, though these efforts have not yet undone the standard of beauty that the media has emphasized to the public. How exactly does the media portray women?