The girl’s interests are usually limited to make-up, hair, boys and shopping. Movies such as ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Clueless’ and television shows such as ‘Big Bang Theory’, ‘Home & Away’ and ‘Sex In The City” encourage the idea that teenage girls and women are ditzy, stupid and superficial. The movie Clueless (1995), for example, stared Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a rich teenager from Beverly Hills. She was blonde and beautiful, and enjoyed the "typical" teenage girl activities. Cher and her friends spent all their time shopping, doing makeovers and chasing after guys.
Teenagers feel guilty about their bodies due to the media, and how they see themselves. In a short poem, Lang Day, the author, describes how she saw herself, “Flat-chested, ribs protruding, I always felt fat: bottom heavy. Oh, those massive, rippling thighs spreading whitely as bread dough on the car seat! At twelve I thought i'd die if my waist exceeded 21 inches”(9). This young girl had suffered from anorexia for years all because of how the media portrays “beautiful women.”.
Fatty and skinny!! Want your clothes?” The boys referred to Cassie by her name because she was wearing spaghetti string singlet with her cleavage dangerously hanging out. They ran out of the water naked and the first thing they noticed was not the author’s body fat but the anorexic like Amber. The author wears a “pretty girl’s suck shirt”. This obviously showing that the author isn’t a pretty girl.
How is she supportive when she tells her child this one sided statement of winning to whatever means possible. Adding to this atrocity; she outfitted her daughter, then 4 years old, with faux breasts and padding for her derriere to more convincingly portray the curvaceous Dolly Parton. When I read about it, this display of pageantry is immoral and down-right disgusting. I’m thinking this was her way of reasoning “do what it takes.” Most stage mother’s claim that their child wanted to enter the
Some say Madelyn’s grown-up beauty is giving other young girls unhealthy ideas about how they should look and these people sure know what’s good and bad. Should our 10 year olds be exposed to the world in such a way? I think not. Girls under the age of 16 should not be allowed to pose for images or walk on the runway.
“Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: you have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6) altering anything and everything this little girl ever knew to be true about herself. One comment ruined her entire view of herself and other girls, that she had to be like them since they did not like who she was born being. The “Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf states things like, “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us... During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...” all of this saying that the stress put on
In the poem, the speaker states the girlchild has “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (4), showing that she already wants to alter her appearance. As children grow into young adults, they become aware of outside judgments; as the girlchild was made aware in the poem. “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:/ You have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6). Girls are pressured into looking the way media portrays beauty. Unfortunately, outward appearances take on a more important role than other characteristics to teenage girls.
There is always a low self-image body against women by media. The media is too much interested in about how the women would look in thin body. There are so many advertisements where the women’s body is very thin. Women begin to believe that they can never add up to the shown models in advertisements. This can lead to many eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, over eating and bulimia.
Fake tans, hairspray, makeup, big hairdos, false teeth, puffy dresses; just add a tantrum or two and you’ve got yourself a children’s beauty pageant! Ever since child beauty pageants were first introduced in the 1960’s, they have been brutally shamed upon by a majority of the public. No doubt that many of us ‘love to hate’ seeing children strutting around on a stage looking like Barbie dolls. And it’s fair to say the media
All of these things helped conform little girls into thinking that their role in life was to be something pretty for a man to look at. Modern times are not that much better. Little girls are still given Barbie dolls and feel pressure from an adolescent age to look a certain way. This epidemic is causing girls to succumb to eating disorders, face bias when it comes to their appearance by others, and have a general low self-esteem. Stereotyping people is just as dangerous as bullying