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.
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.
Natasha Eason Engl Comp Sec 214 Sept 20, 2011 Ad Analysis Essay Cover Girl is one of the most successful cosmetic companies in the world. In this ad Cover Girl is trying to endorse the product Exact Eyelight Mascara. The ad to me seems to target young and middle age woman of any race or some men that think that they can make their women (spouse) look like the model in the ad. The ad uses white and nude like colors, very large text and a very close up picture of the model to show how the new mascara will bring out a person’s eye. It shows the four different shades that the mascara is available in on the side to try to get the target audience attention.
NOW explains that their endorsements are intelligent, well-rounded authentic women, but Fazzone wants to know if they are really women who bask in the sex object role, and what are the shows NOW endorses are really about? Felicity was the third-most feminist show in NOW’s “Feminist Primetime Report,” yet the women would do anything for the crush she followed to college. For example, in the show, once a week, Felicity would revolve her life around the same guy. The other shows that were ranked high in NOW were heroines they stated as one’s who “broke out of the sex object role,” but Fazzone explains that instead these “heroines” are empowered only because they’ve decided that what really drives female power is sex. How authentic are these actresses that NOW endorses, Fazzone questions.
Most women these days would do anything to look pretty and attract the opposite sex. This story gives us the importance of body image to women and they get judged about it. Amber the “finger throated sickness one”. She gets teased because of her anorexic appearance. This is a mental illness common to the young woman.
CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY ESSAY: The Goddess Aphrodite vs Gillette Venus razor blades In todays society, there is a huge upsurge on the importance placed by Western society on physical beauty, particularly for women. Woman these days go through extremes to appear beautiful by spending ridiculous amounts of money on plastic surgery, purchasing chic make up products, and last but not least, most woman on a daily basis put themselves through the torturous procedure of shaving their legs. In Greek mythology, the Goddess Aphrodite, effortlessly appears to be breathtakingly beautiful. Mythology is everywhere these days, and there are thousands of companies, groups and corporations that embody the Greek deities from ancient mythology, and apply it to their products. One in particular is the Venus razor brand for woman, which was named after the Greek Goddess Aphrodite.
“I am on this stage because I am a pretty, white woman, and in my industry we call that a sexy girl,” says Cameron Russel on her Ted Talk. While people in poorer countries can’t pay for surgery that they need to survive, Americans spend millions on surgery to make them look better. For example, the number of breast surgeries increased five hundred and ninety-three percent from 1992 to 2002 according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons website. Magazines geared toward woman are filled with cosmetic advertisement, which targets women in their teens to thirties. Its main contents are make-up, jewelry, fashion design, and celebrities.
‘The Beauty Myth’ is an obsession with physically looking ‘perfect’ and traps the modern woman in an endless cycle of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to achieve what society has deemed "the flawless beauty" regardless of whether it is realistic or not. Naomi Wolf censures the exploitation of women by the fashion, beauty and advertising industries, particularly in women’s magazines as we delve deeper in to the chapter on ‘Culture’. She claims that as a result of being sequestered from the world and isolated from one another, the only real women’s space in modern mass culture where women can seek solidarity is through women’s magazines. Ironically, it is through the same myth that women are brought together and driven apart. These women may not share any particularly close relationship, but develop a sense of solidarity through sharing similar interests, agenda, or worldview.
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.
Media: Influence to Empower or Break Down In today’s society an unlikely movie scenario would portray a woman who is a size 14 and doesn’t have perfectly clear skin, a toned body or perfect hair. In this film there are countless “hotties” vying for her heart and she bags the hunkiest stud of them all. Viewers are left wondering if the casting director was crazy for choosing such a woman to play this part because movies like this just don’t exist. All the eligible bachelors are always after the girl who is a twelve on a scale of ten. 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.