When the word “Beauty” is typed in the google search bar, many different sides pop up in the results. Make up advertisements, weight loss products, women’s magazines, and the list goes on and on. All ways to modify the way a person looks in order that they can become more attractive or appealing. The world is infatuated with achieving perfection. Society is heavily influenced by what they encounter in the media through television, fashion, and magazines. Glamour and Cosmopolitan hold the secrets to perfection within their pages by making their readers strive to look perfect in the eyes of the society. The ultra thin models that flaunt their extremely small bodies and appear in the media are influencing society incorrectly. The media is ruining the image of real beauty. The fashion industry is poisoning the minds of young women and society. This poison destroys the perception of beauty and self-image in the minds of others. Beauty is who a person is as an individual, imperfect, not an ultra thin, airbrushed model in a fashion tabloid. The perception of beauty has greatly transformed over generations. In the early 1600s large curvy women were considered the most beautiful in contrast to todays stick small waists.
Women wore their hair mounds up on their heads along with elaborate wigs and curly pieces, they wore their hair in amazing shapes and styles. But this perception of beauty is not without its imperfections. Women kept the same style for a little more than a week because it took the stylists more than a few hours to accomplish such a beautiful creation. Also the women slept sitting up to avoid damage to their treasured locks. But the most imperfect aspect of this beauty trait was the unsanitary conditions that attracted lice and rodents to this style. Later in the eighteenth century, women wore satins and silks but despite their appearance they literally stunk. Women of that time used perfumes to cover up existing soils and scents, therefore making themselves extremely unsanitary and thenceforth causing problems like rotting teeth, hair loss, and even damage to the eyes when Belladonna, a serum extracted from a plant, was dropped into the eye to make it more lustrous. Even men during that time had imperfections that they wanted to correct, make up was used, male and female, mainly a white lead-based powder which ultimately destroyed their skin in order to accomplish a desired outcome. Then from the 1600s through the 1920s women gradually became thinner in beauty’s eye.
The Essay on Race And Beauty In A Media Contrived Society
... to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of ... Race and Beauty in a Media Contrived Society Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of ... standard of beauty by which white women are judged in this country. They are taught that their blonde hair, blue eyes, and creamy ...
In the 1950s Marilyn Monroe, a famous actress during that time period, wore a size fourteen, compared to the size zero to seven that models wear today. Marilyn may have been considered one of the most beautiful women of that time, but her beauty was not gorgeous completely naturally. She had received surgeries to perfect her chin and nose. Marilyn’s iconic legacy for her looks was not natural but created to influence many on what is considered beautiful. But the beginning of the end for normal sized women was Twiggy Larson, a super skinny and considerably underweight model, she “revolutionized the modeling industry opening the door for miniature models”(Wade).
Twiggy made it popular to look anorexic and extremely sickly, but society leapt up and accepted her as exquisitely beautiful. Although Twiggy changed the mainstream fashion industry, there are cultures who embrace their own individual ideas of beauty.
Across the globe there are many different ideas of beauty, from China to the tribes in Africa beauty is measured completely differently. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, foot binding was an example of beauty in China. Women’s feet were bound to only be about 3 or 4 inches long, this unnatural feat brought suffering to the ladies who endured such pain to become “beautiful” in the eyes of their society. This process was a symbol that a woman was considered fit enough to marry into a wealthy family. In the more tribal parts of Ethiopia, women and some men bear lip plates. These disks are placed to being in a girl who is going to be married. She slowly adds a larger one after the previous one has healed, this represents her beauty and also her status in her society. Orators and Leaders often have large lip plates to distinguish power. Another example of beautification would be Neck Rings, the Karen tribe found in Thailand, contains women with many brass coils around their necks. This will elongate the neck therefore producing a more attractive and pleasing figure. This also exemplified wealth as well as her beauty. If a woman wished to remove her brass coils she would choke to death, unless her head was help up by someone.
The Essay on A Woman’s Beauty
In reading Susan Sontag’s “A Woman’s Beauty”, she explains that women think they have an obligation to be beautiful and that they consider how they look more important than who they are. Sontag also adds that women are sometimes obsessed with their outer beauty that they lose sight of their inner beauty. Fashion and the Media both have taken outer beauty way too far for ...
All of these painful producers of beauty all conclude an idea that people will do anything to maintain status of attractiveness and beauty, no matter the imperfections the road may cause. Appearance means everything to a woman, to strive for the standards of the flawless beauty that women hold in comparison with the magazine goddesses. These women, especially the youth, make it their top priority to try and mold themselves to fit the “perfect” shape created by the fashion industry and media. The young girls that read magazines, featuring stick-thin models, and are lead to believe that they are supposed to look like this “perfection” that is inconceivable to achieve. It is impossible to become like the models because of the vigorous Photoshop work and extensive editing done to the models in the magazines. Teen girls strive to become more like what they see in magazines therefore feeding into an inaccurate and unrealistic self body image. Should the girls of society glorify the women in the magazines?
Although model’s sizes are shrinking, some of the world’s highest noted fashion designers explain to society that they create architecture, not clothes made for the natural woman. The fashion designers claim that their model displays the architecture on a six foot frame. These models are living mannequins, bred tall to show off the garment and are trained to display the compositions. The fashion designers also explain that the artwork is allowed to breathe and be displayed without distractions, saying the slender models are as the Fugg girls, an online fashion blog explain it to be an “Escape from the female body”(The Fugg girls).
The Term Paper on How The Marketing Affects The Changes In The Fashion And Textiles Industry
How the marketing affects the changes in the Fashion and Textiles industry Fashion appears, grows up and dies. Sometimes it has descendants in next fashionable line, sometimes it seems to disappear forever. But what is fashion and what does it mean to be stylish? Fashion has three scenes: manner, mode, style, way (how something is done); it is a characteristic or habitual practice; it is the ...
Even though the highly established designers insist that their clothes are not made for real women, they still commercialize and market the idea of what a woman should look like, influencing the self image of a woman. Many stores that are targeted for young teens commercialize the super small sizes.
Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister Co., and Gilly Hicks are all guilty of tarnishing the ideal beauty. Their posters are wall to wall of a holocaust-like victim wearing only one tank top sitting on a beach. The pictures also contain extremely sculpted bodies of men, cropped so that the heads are not visible but just the torso. If this is a clothing store, why are the pictures mostly of nude models? Why doesn’t Abercrombie sport their clothes in the advertising? The answer is that people are attracted to Abercrombie’s ideal beauty. Society has come to believe that those posters are the perfection that they wish to achieve. Through those posters Abercrombie sells their clothing items because people are influenced that it is “cool” or will help them find their way to beautiful perfection. Abercrombie’s corporation is also corrupt. Working there, a person would find that looks ARE everything at the store. The daily checklist’s first box says: “The Models are beautiful, attractive, energetic, smiling faces.” But this is not the case most of the time. The girls that are hired are only those who fit “The Look Policy.” The Look Policy basically states that those who are hired should resemble those models on the wall.
Everyday Hollister gives out applications to all who ask, but when the interview comes around notice that no obese people obtain jobs. Also notice that when you walk into an Abercrombie or a store of that nature, that every one who is employed is decently attractive to modern culture’s standards. The stores may have many different types of people working who are beautiful on the outside but they discriminate on the thousands of people who may not fit into the “Look Policy” but are beautiful on the inside. The effects of the underweight body image has on women is devastating, it can cause women to resort to sickness and disease. For those who are trying to obtain the sickly image of perfection that the fashion industry holds over our heads, the results can be awful. Juliette Terzieff, an online columnist and fashion journalist explains the effects on her blog, “Diseases like Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa take control of a girl’s body as she strains to reach a sickly image of perfection, with her understanding that the skinny appearance is considered beautiful in society” (Terzieff ).
The Essay on The Media’s Effect on Women’s Body Image
The Media's Effect on Women's Body Image September 1, 2010 While women have made significant strides in the past decades, the culture at large continues to place a great emphasis on how women look. These beauty standards, largely proliferated through the media, have drastic impacts on young women and their body images. Arielle Cutler ’11, through a Levitt grant, spent the summer evaluating the ...
Young women also face depression. Young girls are distraught because their self image has been shattered by the super slender women in magazines. The pictures remain in the back of their minds knowing that they will never have that so called perfection. Not only do young women face problems from the fashion industry, but the models face these issues as well. The size zero girls are not healthy and extremely underweight, facing pressure to continue their ways of malnutrition to stay at their unhealthy weight. The models go to bookings and told to lose five pounds because her waist must be no more than 24 inches or smaller (Eagleson).
The models would work hard to reach their starving weight. Also drugs are prominent in the industry, models want to escape from their starving bodies and the pressure to use drugs is all around. Young women and models both face problems of eating disorders, drug habits, and depression trying to reach this hopeless strive for the perception of what the fashion industry believes is beautiful and perfect. Terzieff explains that he industry realizes the effects of the skinny situation and has begun to take action. Madrid, Spain and Italy have joined forces starting legal action. Spain and Italy’s fashion industry’s are changing. Models now must have a healthy body mass index of eighteen percent or more. Now at fashion shows they encourage the young models to eat healthy foods to maintain an healthy body type. Also by monitoring minors, only hiring women over the age of sixteen, encourages women to have normal, healthy bodies a real woman should have. The global efforts are reaching all around the world, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ( campaignforrealbeauty.com) has begun to provide the world with commercials presenting real women and their bodies for the world to see and understand what is real beauty.
The Essay on What Effects Do the Fashion Industry Have on Eating Disorders?
What effects do the fashion industry have on eating disorders? Picture the most beautiful teen model you have ever seen. Picture this someone as tall, super skinny, flawless skin and a very outgoing personality. Now picture Ella Jeffery. She is the exact opposite. Ella lacks confidence in everything she does. Maybe it is down to the fact that she is constantly tormented at school or because she is ...
With all the forces around the world generating efforts to keep the perception of beauty true, those small changes will make a immense impact no the fashion industry. The perception of beauty and self image in society has been dramatically altered by the fashion industry and media throughout the generations. The skinny model’s bodies are influential to women and society destroying the image of what is beautiful. Women strive for the impossible appearance of perfection, while trying to avoid disease, drugs, and depression. The perception of beauty is being distorted, and must be stopped. Although the fashion industry has made changes, more must be done before the ideal image of beauty is completely twisted around. Works Cited Eagleson , Holly. “Skinny Scandal” Seventeen Magazine. New York, New York, May 2007, Hearst Communications Inc. Natascha, Kaminsky “Skinny Model Ban will not Help” 16/12/2006 MosNews Terzieff, Juliette “Fashion World Says Too Thin is Too Hazardous” 9/24/06 “UK: Fashion council won’t band ultra-skinny models” just-style.com (January 25, 2007): NA. General Business File ASAP. Thompson Gale. Central High School – Bay City (MI).April.2007 .html> Wade, Meredith. “A Short History of the “Ideal” Female Body.” December 27 2006. Works Consulted Dove “Campaign For Real Beauty” May 23, 2007 “Five skinny models barred from Madrid catwalk” Daily Mail UK May 20, 2007 Henry, Lori “Skinny Fashion Model Debate” March 26, 2007
