Exactly, very bizarre practices that woman go by to feel better about there appearance rather then their health. For example, seeing today’s issues for beauty; models and movie stars all over the media show how being thin is the “hot” look as the expression came forth, “thin is in”. Woman all over the world view magazines, articles, television, movies etc, and with more people expressing vanity, many others confidence level has decreased. Everyone wants to look perfect. Everyone wants to be beautiful and wanting people to find them attractive which leads
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.
Female Chauvinist Pigs are women who sexually only objectify other women and themselves. Some women gain empowerment by disciplining oneself from women who are “girly girls”, while simultaneously objectifying such women like going to strip clubs and reading Playboy. Others gain empowerment by objectifying themselves through sexual appeal. Both are an attempt to gain status whether being through the attempt of acting like a male chauvinist or through embodying what society portrays as the ideal object of male desire. As an example, Camille Paglia, in an interview with spin magazine expresses “The people who criticize me, these
The article “Raunch Culture” by Ariel Levy discusses how life in the twenty first century has become very raunchy and erotic. She talks about how easy it is to blame the males of our culture for objectifying women. However, it is the women who are volunteering to have these pornographic or racy photographs and videos taken of themselves. Even women athletes are posing for scantily clad pictures, and they are getting more attention for that than their specialized sporting events. This article discusses that women taking control of their sexuality and objectifying themselves are not, in fact, the same thing.
In my opinion, Americans tend to think that their appearance is everything and go to great measures to get their desired looks. I also believe that people in society are always trying too hard to make them self look like their ideal celebrity. I feel that men and women have different standards when it comes to appearance and how they view it. I also agree with Nancy Hellmich in her article, “Do Thin Models Warp Girls Body Image?” as she says that girls are becoming skinnier and skinnier as the years go by. I think as society tends to focus on their appearance more, it also becomes more dangerous.
In her view, a backlash against girls is taking place, led by scholars and authors who are sometimes critical of Gilligan's research methods and conclusions. "At a point when people have started to look at girls and see their strength, suddenly this comes up," she has said. By "this," Gilligan means the explosion of "mean girl" books and movies, portraying girls as equally as—if not more—aggressive than boys, in their own conniving and manipulative way. "I don't know if I'd call it a backlash," says Marnina Gonick, Penn State education and women's studies professor, "but I would agree that the mean girl idea is troubling. I'm especially critical of the way these problematic relationships between girls are represented in the media."
We are expected to play the role as a lady. With the media pushing that models are suppose to be rail thin to make it big on runway or as an actress, females tend to be at risk for health problems, such as anorexia and bulimia. This also causes depression, anxiety, and overall low self esteem which could in turn lead to suicide. According to the National Institute of Mental, between 5% and 10% of females in this country suffer from a variety of eating disorders. Not only is there the portrayal that women should be thin but also beautiful.
The Exploitation and Misogyny of Women by the media The passing of the Woman's Right Act empowered women to do things that would have once been considered impossible such as, taking part in beauty pageants, modeling in the nude to holding high positions in offices. In hip-hop and advertising Jean Kilbourne and Joan Morgan concur that woman's bodies are being dehumanized, over sexualized and objectified. Consequently, although women have made remarkable progress, their unbridled autonomy and power are being exploited by the media.Hence forth, the explosion of pornography and the mentality that sex sells anything and everything have caused advertising agencies and the music industry to use woman's bodies as the main tool for commercializing and selling their products. Hence, the media uses sexism and violence in advertising to get people’s attention in order to get them to buy their products, and also to obtain free press. In “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt” Jean Kilbourne believes, that sexism and violence in advertising is systemic and rooted in our culture.
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.
In today’s generation people are a lot more judgmental, therefore many women believe they have imperfections and flaws. With cosmetics, this allows the women to cover up blemishes and acne that they may have, but people who prefer natural beauty could argue this