The slender, “beautiful” women are regarded as influential, successful, and erotic. This being said, it is very much so based on facts and reason, also known as logos, in the aspect that real life is often viewed this way. Throughout Elementary school up to High school, no one wanted to be best friends with “the fat kid”. As the world already knows, girls and women in general seem to stress over their physical appearance and have been especially concerned about weight for many years now. The emotional effect media has on a woman’s mindset, or ethos, could very well send her overboard into what is commonly known as an eating disorder.
Nancy says, “Girls are being bombarded with the message that they need to be super-skinny to be sexy.” (Hellmich 706) I believe that is very true when she says that but what young girls don’t realize is that you could be beautiful and sexy with any body type that you might have. I think that there needs to be a clear message that tells young girls that because if there isn’t it could become very dangerous for
Many fashion companies use models that are plain, have “flaws”, “moles in unbeautiful places”, and unmade up faces in their ads unlike the heroin chic images. Bordo noticed the industry maneuvering into accepting diversity, but then noticed the lack of change in body types. She agreed with the direction of the ad campaigns, but disagreed on how the concept of body image is still not changing. People need to be realistic that not everyone’s body is built the same, and the media needs to stop trying to brainwash and be real. Susan Bordo is constantly writing about body image and how the media influences eating disorders because she has done her research and knows what she is talking about.
I do agree with Drevno in this article. It seems like everybody is trying to look like the ideal figure, but as we all know the majority is not ideal so we try to become that attractive figure that we think everybody wants. Drevno says in her article “Everywhere you look you will find images of women and men who typify what our society considers “beautiful”(P.2). What that quote means is that “unreal” beauty is all around us because our world believes that that is the true meaning of beauty when according to Drevno it is not. A friend of mine named Moe, was in a sense overweight and he didn’t like it because of what other people thought about it.
This is a mental illness common to the young woman. This illness happens because people call you fat even though you are skinny. To not get teased in society you have to look and act normal. Cassie is the one that looks the hottest and that’s why the boys remember her name while referring to the other girls by their appearance. Forgotten Jelly shows us how people
Twenge states, “To many older people, it’s funny. But too many younger people the main consumers of the reality shows on, say, MTV it shapes their views of the world” (pg 7). Narcissism is shown often, and without hesitation on reality TV younger viewers are being conditioned by the depiction of narcissism. Slowly, the excess amount of narcissism seems normal. For instance, on “America’s Next Top Model” young viewers wish to be thin, tall, and overall a model, but go about it in the wrong ways.
Models of a very low weight are setting bad examples to these girls and can be held responsible for the increasing number of girls with eating disorders. The fact that some websites celebrate anorexia and hold up skeletal models as examples to follow
When young girls see people in advertisements that look that way, Jean Kilbourne, creator of “Killing Us Softly III,” explains that they try to mimic the look of these models who have been digitally enhanced and are genetically skinny. She claims that if there wasn’t this pressure on young girls to look a certain way, there would be less eating disorders and girls would be more confident about how they look. The media doesn’t care that thousands of girls are killing themselves to become a body type that rarely exists, the media just wants to sell their product by using someone that society sees as sexy to sell it. Kilbourne also talks about how women in advertisements are seen as objects. She talked about a specific ad for skateboards where the woman is on all fours and the man is using her as a leg rest.
The thing is, People try so hard to be as beautiful as they can, and long for “Pretty blue eyes”, But beauty is not just a physical thing. Pecola Knew she was Physically ugly. She Longed for a prettier complexion, White skin, prettier eyes, Etcetera. it seemed to me that pecola truly believed that if she was beautiful, she would be happy. “It occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison, 46).
Partially in saying that, women mostly feel the need to make themselves look good because they themselves see them only being attracted to the good looking guys and the only way they think of trying to do this, is by using their looks as a part of attracting the opposite gender. Society automatically assumes most girls will all have the same type of attributes. They’re expected to be nice, attractive, mature, emotional, and not too aggressive. Women are automatically judged the second they are seen by the public. If women were to step out of their own determined “role” they’re then automatically considered as outcasts by society.