Assignment for Women's Bodies, & Women's Health

Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media, which is most influential medium that set the standards of female beauty. These standards are defined as “thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual, with flawless skin and well-groomed hair” (208). Such standards of beauty are unattainable for most women; most models displayed in media are seen below the considered healthy body weight. This multi-billion dollar industry only wants to maximize its profits, by motivating women to buy products that will bring them closer to the ideal. It is manipulative and deceptive in nature, and it continues to maintain damaging implications about ideal beauty despite its damaging effects to people of all ages and races. Ideal beauty standards oppress women to believe in perfection, however, this goal is unattainable. This type of body dissatisfaction from exposure to the media’s beauty ideal results in eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and unhealthy weight-control habits in women.

Images in the media today project an unrealistic and even dangerous standard of feminine beauty that can have a powerful influence on the way women view themselves. From the perspective of the mass media, thinness is idealized and expected for women to be considered "attractive." Images in advertisements, television, and music usually portray the "ideal woman" as tall, white, and thin, with blonde hair.  This ideal has a harmful effect to women of all races, because these women see themselves as needing to be fixed or corrected. This promotes a type of self-hatred within women, as they see themselves as unattractive. For example African American women and Latino women have to conform to the same body shape, which might be unattainable because they have curves. These women start having damaging ideas of beauty that might cause eating disorders, obsessive dieting, and extreme exercise to conform to the ideal body shape.  This starts to affect their daily lives, because now they want to start looking the way media & society tell them to.  The unrealistic images of beauty effects all ages, races, and classes of women in society to believe they need to look a certain way, in order to fit the ideal beauty standard. This type of beauty ideal damages women mentally, physically, emotional, and spiritually to conform to an unattainable goal that the media and society creates.

Works Citied

Kirk,Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 5^th ed. New York:McGraw-Hill, 2010.