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.
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.
Cosmetic beauty allows you to be diverse and express yourself, it also allows you to try to test and come up with many different looks. Generally speaking one day you could change your look, and be chic and sexy, while on another day you could calm your appearance down and have a more innocent and sweet look. Confidence is the key in the cosmetic outlook. Many females feel more beautiful and nice about themselves due to the fact that they have makeup on; you could say that cosmetics help people feel more self assured about themselves. In today’s generation people are a lot more judgmental, therefore many women believe they have imperfections and flaws.
She does this in order to show how the obsession that the girlchild has with her own body was one of the largest factors in the suicide. Another one of the stereotypes that Piercy draws upon is their behavior. Piercy describes how the girlchild was told to “play coy.” This describes the societal pressure of what is stereotypically “lady-like.” She was “advised” to act as other ladies would act, and she tried to the furthest extent she could manage. She attempted to act demure and sweet, which was the only thing society allowed for. The term
In today’s society women are always worrying about their appearance. Their perspectives on how they should present themselves are imposed by everything around them. Friends, celebrities and the media are the main reasons why women fee the need to live their lifestyle a specific way. Sometimes, celebrities don’t even need to say anything to have an effect on one; women in today’s society are already provoked on changing just by feeling intimidated by them. In Nina Power’s text, ‘One- Dimensional Woman’ the author also argues that you don’t need superficial things to feel good about yourself, or to even look like perfectly thin stick figure to be a feminist.
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.
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
Meanwhile, these advertisements would also mislead the young customers, because the message that advertising sends to the girls is the main qualification for a woman to get a better job or to have a brighter future is the way she looks. Furthermore, in those advertisements and pictures Fair and Lovely are using photo touch-up techniques to justify
Body dissatisfaction is a major impetus for surgical enhancement. The more a woman is unhappy with her physical looks the more likely she is to get an enhancement procedure. The other body image driving force is appearance investment. Many women want to do it for themselves and or for social reasons. These women feel that appearance is important to their self worth.
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.