Media and the Idea of Beauty Essay

Elizabeth Rosales Cultural Anthropology-A18 Yi,Zhou April 21, 2011 Response Paper cleanup Us Softly Who atomic number 18 we? Who am I? With the average American opened to approximately 3,000 ads a day they altogether remind us of who we are not and who we should be. The images we are constantly bombarded with by the mass media fathert just sell products they sell values, images, concepts of love, evoke, and normativity, standards to which we so often examine ourselves to.Ads reinforce gender binaries, all making a statement approximately what it means to be a woman in this culture of tenuity stressing a particular importance on physical beauty. Jean Kilbournes film Killing Us Softly explores and exposes the detrimental effects of the objectification and dehumanisation in the representation of women in the popular culture, specifically advertisements.With only slight than five percent of women of the entire population that reflect the images of the women advertised, the majo rity of women are left to thumb aignominyd for not seek hard enough. Womens bodies are increasingly subjected to strict scrutiny under a magnifying candy by our superficial culture, these actions bring forth and further feed the shame and embarrassment women associate with their bodies, their sexuality, their size, and their weight.Spending self-conscious days, weeks, months, and even years in front of a mirror and scale, inspecting our bodies in front of a mirror comparing ourselves to the images spread over magazine covers as women we are repeatedly reminded that our bodies are home to imperfections and there is always room for improvement whether that be through exercise, plastic surgery, dieting, or over the counter beauty and wellness products. Rosales 2 Is this self-improvement or self-destruction?Today, 1 in 5 women are likely to develop an eating disorder and ornamental surgery is more popular than ever before. More and more women each(prenominal) day are going under th e knife for breast enhancements losing all sensation in their breasts. Such procedures dehumanize and objectify women transforming them from subjects to objects, all because as women we are conditioned by the dominant culture to want to feel desirable and seek the approval of men. The breasts, therefore, become a source of delectation for the men and not the women who undergo the procedure.These internalized feelings drive many to strive to recover an unattainable beauty and live up to certain impossible expectations whether its consciously or not. We fail to recognize that most of the images we are exposed to are computer generated, they are not real women they have been word picture shopped and manipulated to look like that and yet we continue to perpetuate these images as the standards for beauty. a good deal more, the standards that women are expected to live up to is a paradox of ideas, we are to be both innocent and sexy, virgin and experienced child/doll-like and sex obje cts simultaneously.Can that be any more absurd? Gender is a performance that the mass media is largely responsible for defining, if we are not lithesome or beautiful enough then we are not fair(prenominal) enough. The oppression and misrepresentation of women is not limited to gender though, race plays an quick role in the representation of women. Asian women for example, are depicted as docile and passive lovers, whereas black and Hispanic women are hyper sexualized and portrayed as exotic promiscuous creatures dressed in animal prints.The perfect nonpareil woman was manufactured and its time we recognize this, she is an illusion that doesnt exist outside of caricature. Instead of altering our Rosales 3 bodies to conform to those Barbie doll like measurements we need to start portraying the large renewal of women accurately and stop condemning those who are not thin enough, leggy enough, light enough, as not being beautiful because they arent trying hard enough to fit those c ategories.