It’s on the shampoo commercial that interrupts my favorite TV show. It’s on the billboards that I pass on my way to work. It’s on the magazine covers that I glance over as I wait in line at the grocery store. Everywhere I turn, the mass media is promoting the idealistic image of a woman’s appearance.
We see celebrities and models with their skinny physique, bronze-colored skin and long, shiny hair; and we call this beautiful.
The media puts so much emphasis on this definition of beauty that society has learned to see anything shy of these unrealistic standards as lacking. Despite the impracticality of the goal, women continue to strive to mirror the perfection they see in the media.
According to World Watch Magazine, approximately $8 billion are spent buying cosmetics every year, and according to Rita Freedman in her book Bodylove, “One woman in two is dieting much of her life.” However, no diet or make-up compares to the results produced by Photoshop.
With all the editing – airbrushing, tinting, limb lengthening, etc. – the models look more like wax figures than normal human beings. Yet society sets the bar at these half-fake images of “perfection,” and we just go along with it.
We as women are trying to live up to this image that is not only unreasonable but virtually impossible to attain. It’s ridiculous that society expects of women this unachievable standard of beauty.
Because of the media, young women around the country are going to drastic measures to meet these unrealistic expectations. They seek plastic surgery in hopes of becoming more attractive in society’s eye. They use tanning beds and spray tans to have a feigned outdoor look. And they diet to excess, which occasionally yields diseases such as anorexia and bulimia.
Women are constantly fighting a battle with their bodies to reach or maintain the ideal weight, despite the fact that the ideal weight is not necessarily a healthy weight. The stress on women to parallel the perfection we see in models sets the stage for not only an unhealthy lifestyle but also an unhealthy attitude.
The media presents beauty as essential to happiness, thus sending the message that without the ideal body one will never be content. As the media fuels insecurity among many young women, it is simultaneously destroying their self-confidence.
Instead of promoting images of a body that could only be obtained through unhealthy practices, the media should be admiring the bodies of athletes, who achieve their good figures through a well-balanced diet and exercise. A fit body is just as attractive as a skinny one, and anyone can achieve it without plastic surgery or self-starvation.
The mass media may not have a duty to encourage young women to live a healthy lifestyle, but it should represent beauty in its true and natural form rather than through perfectly-crafted Photoshop images. As a result, young women would have an appropriate ideal of beauty to emulate.
