This is disappointing to me. How are little girls suppose to grow up with any self confidence when something as big as the Miss USA pageant is making them feel like their bodies need to be altered to be beautiful? In our society thick or bigger women are not acceptable. It is skinny, tall, big boobs, and a tan that is in. And if your natural body type is so far from that, well then hurry and change yourself with thousands of dollars in cosmetic surgery.
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.
How authentic are these actresses that NOW endorses, Fazzone questions. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays the lead role with her take-charge attitude who can dominate both genders, yet her promo photos show off the cleavage of her bra less self! Outside of their “innocent” TV shows, it is clear that these actresses are being marketed for their sex appeal, and not their wholesomeness. These actresses do not meet NOW’s criteria of portraying authentic women,
I know how we always want the next new makeup or hair product that’s going to make s look like the model in the commercial. Women can’t just run to the store in sweat pants because they value their appurtenance too much. Women don’t feel as confident when they don’t look nice, but men don’t really care either way. In the reading, “Do thin Models Warp Girls Body Image?” I agree with Nancy when she says thin models on the runway or on TV can cause very young girls to become anorexic or bulimic. 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.
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.
Society’s perception throughout history has put extremely unhealthy looking women in the media spotlight as the ideal image of beauty. “The desire to fit the cultural ideal of thinness drives many women to diet severely. In some vulnerable young women, this leads to bingeing and purging or self-starvation,” says Terence Wilson a psychologist at Rutgers University (Smolack). “The general public seems to have an unhealthy obsession with celebrities. The media is constantly bombarding us with images of celebrities with extremely thin bodies.
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.
When we see the TV commercials and the ads in them, always see the products for male gender, as a woman as an object to call the attention of the genre. In fact, 57% of rock music videos portray women as a sex object, a victim, as unintelligent, or in a condescending way. (Confidence Coalition). Orbach’s state “ The media present a woman either in a sexual context or within the family ” (Orbach 203) what we mean is that the stereotype of women, causes it to be used in only two ways, and one of them is like an object. This is why singers like Jennifer Hudson, after achieving success, try to conform to a stereotype labeled by
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.
For example, the word “butterface”, which means overall the woman is attractive “but her face”. Today’s media is barraging women with images of what they are supposed to look like. Examples like these lead women to feel incomplete and inferior because she can never be perfect and completely secure in her