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
Sex and Young Girls In Kilbourne’s “Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt” she speaks extensively about how advertising could have many underlying and shocking meanings when analyzed closer. Some factors that Kilbourne speaks of in her essay allow us to look deeper into the hidden concepts of advertising and show a world of suggestive sex and abuse. Many of the ads allowed us take a closer look at how woman are portrayed as objects to sell a product. I believe that many of underlying factors influence our young girls. Many of the ads today give an image that in order to be happy and satisfied in life you have to be sexual or look sexy to get ahead.
The many celebrities like Miley Cyrus and magazines who all try to portray their idea of a woman, alter and distort their perception of womanhood. These girls wear overtly sexual and suggestive clothing and opening act promiscuously in their interactions, forced to go through extreme diets, wear large amounts of make-up and even modify their bodies through surgeries all due to the cumulative pressures of friends, family and their developed self-confidence issues to become this counterfeit ideal. These girls wear uncomfortable heels, constricting clothing and skimpy outfits to hyper sexualize themselves. This is what they believe it takes to become fun, sexy and a desirable woman in today’ society. They go out, drink, “grind” and “twerk” (different forms of highly sexual dancing), and hook up with random guys.
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
Young women seem to be especially affected by our culture’s obsession with weight and beauty. America today is a girl-destroying place where young women are encouraged to sacrifice their true selves in exchange for false selves that are more culturally acceptable. “More than any other group in the population, girls and their bodies have borne
Who decides what is beautiful and what is not. I feel that the media has a lot to do with how women, in the United States anyway. With all the magazines showing thin, almost anorexic women on magazine covers young women feel that that is what they should look like. So then these young women starve themselves and/or binge and purge themselves. Some even die because of trying to fix a certain mold of what is beautiful.
A popular example would be the treatment of women in The Big Bang Theory. For a good majority of the show’s first few seasons, there is only one main female character, Penny. She’s presented as the stereotypical beautiful girl who is coveted by the males of the show; however, she also seems to lack equal intelligence and is often made fun of by the show itself over her inability to understand most topics being discussed. She’s basically an example of a pretty girl who’s all looks and no brain without any talents to make it through life, and is extremely objectified because of this. On the contrast, other women on the show such as Amy seem to have an extraordinary amount of intelligence, yet lack the pretty looks to go along with it.
The oldest of the two, Britney, is fairly overweight, practically “borderline diabetic”. She is obese because she likes to eat, and as I said before in a small town with poor knowledge of nutrition, Britney likes to eat out because everything is very convenient to her. This is only half the problem as to why Americans are the way they are with their diet. Coming from a female’s point of view of why more than half of women in America are obese, the article “Fat is Feminist Issue” by Susie Orbach, explains the fact that society today show up and have certain images of what a lady should look like. They portray women as a huge sex object because sex sells.
If you aren’t as ‘skinny’ or ‘pretty’ as all the other girls, you have a larger chance of getting bullied. This leads some girls to have eating disorders and anorexia for trying to fit in with the group. If you have glasses, red hair, a bad haircut, crooked teeth, are disabled, smart, dumb, have a big head, big ears, freckles, you’re too tall, too short, basically anything, they will find something to judge you about, even if you are just the slightest bit different! These bullies are yet to realise that everyone is beautiful in their own way and that we need these unique people in the world to create the next generation, because without difference everyone, everything will be the