In the novel Collins writes, “The girl tribute from District 1, looking provocative in a see-through gold gown…With that flowing blonde hair, emerald green eyes, her body tall and lush… she’s sexy all the way”(125).Collins makes it clear that society has a very specific image of what sexy should look like. In today’s society women are constantly being dehumanized in advertisements. Sex sells so most advertisements show at least one female body part. They always end up showing a pair of legs or lips positioned into a sexual form. In a Dolce and Gabana ad, a women is shown being put down by a male twice her size with three other men eagerly watching .This is degrading for women because it makes it harder for men to take them serious when the media has given them little value in society.
In today’s world, media heavily affects the way we perceive ourselves. The ideal body image that most people perceive nowadays is no longer based on an average but based on how media and society promotes it and that is a body that is highly unattainable for most women. Media promotes size 0 as the ideal body image causing many women judge themselves based on the beauty industry’s standards. Mass media defines the ideal body image by promoting it through the various platforms such as magazines, advertisements, and television and that is extremely immature. One example to prove my point is that the girls on magazine covers are mostly photo shopped to perfection.
She has no identity beyond that of an object to be gawked at by an intended male audience. In the twentieth century, this idea is maintained. Sexualized images of women are continually circulated via mass media. In the form of pin ups - usually well-known personalities, but like earlier depictions of women they were presented as sexual objects, their sole purpose was to flaunt their sexuality for men. Tired of being misrepresented as subjects and overlooked as serious artists, women artists revolted during this feminist movement with a kind of art that had an undeniable presence that was too shocking to be ignored.
The media has made body image very important in today’s society. What people watch on television, read in magazines, hear on the radio, and see on the internet, soon becomes the standard of reality and desire. Female actors continue to become thinner, taller, and more beautiful. Magazines are filled with images of what woman are supposed to look like. With the media constantly invading the lives of woman with these type of images, it is no wonder teens begin to believe in the standards, of what woman should look like, set by the media.
A Peek into the Unachievable Gossip Girl is a popular and widely watched show by a younger teen audience that craves to get a look into the lives of the rich and elite of New York private school girls. The main female characters in the show are given many characteristics that set the basis of how girls need to act and dress in order to be successful in getting the man they desire. The main goal of the show is to sometimes subtly and sometimes pretty obviously show that women should base their lives around those of the men that they are with or want to be with. The ideology seen in Gossip Girl is that women are not as dominant and successful as men and they need to constantly strive to be thin, flawless, long legged, rich, big chested and know how to use their sex appeal to get what they want in life. That is the definition of what beauty is in the show.
Everyday girls are bombarded with advertisements telling them that they are not good enough. These commercials make girls believe they need take pills, diet, and have surgeries to “fix” them when there is nothing wrong. These commercials also paint an unrealistic and absurd image of women in men’s brains causing men to wait around for the supposedly perfect woman, when they do not exist. Being a girl, beauty industries affect me every day. Commercials on TV, magazines, or just walking through the mall, advertisements about make up or weight loss programs follow me wherever I go.
It's disturbing to think that girls like you and me are doing this to their bodies simply because of what is portrayed in magazines like vogue and fashion catalogues. Media targeting teenage girls, like you and me, are emphasising the ideal of thinness as beauty. The media and fashion industry in my viewpoint are pushing a dangerously thin image that young girls may try to emulate. The promotion of the thin, sexy ideal in our culture has created a situation where the majority of girls and women don't like their bodies. This then leads
Adolescents and Body Image Recently, the world witnessed a surge of criticism on fat-shaming, with many plus-sized women coming out to flaunt their bodies and starting “Love Your Body” campaigns. Size zero went from an ideal body size to something women started looking at as unnecessarily and disgustingly unattainable. Marilyn Monroe became the new ‘ideal’ of a woman. Today, more women want to be like her. More runway designers are showcasing plus-size models in their shows and designing clothes for bigger-sized women.
According to modern day society, girls should walk and talk pretty, have perfect skin, and cake on makeup; they should watch their weight and keep up with the newest trends in fashion. The mass media depicts unrealistic images of beauty, which have led many adolescent girls to attempt to become these unattainable figures. Girls go to extreme measures to imitate society’s impractical beliefs of beauty. The pressure that society puts on women to be thin is unhealthy, which links to the increasing rate of eating disorders and psychological problems among young women. There have been plenty of studies linked to the negative impacts of body image caused by the media.
Bringing Fight Club out during that was not a good idea for some peoples, and “even some religious organizations tried to avoid it from being out in the theaters” (Reed). The movie Fight Club was meant mostly for a male audience. Describing the struggle men were going through during the emasculation era of the men after World War II. Instead of visiting bars, drinking a beer in front of the TV, or doing sports during their free time, man was becoming a serious shopper. Here, the narrator was addicted to buying furniture.