Media and the Idea of Beauty Essay

Elizabeth Rosales ethnic Anthropology-A18 Yi,Zhou April 21, 2011 Response Paper Killing Us restfully Who are we? Who am I? With the average American exposed to approximately 3,000 ads a twenty-four hours they all remind us of who we are non and who we should be. The images we are for invariably and a day bombarded with by the mass media dont just take products they sell values, images, concepts of love, sex, and normativity, standards to which we so often compare ourselves to.Ads reinforce gender binaries, all devising a statement about what it means to be a fair sex in this culture of thinness stressing a particular importance on physical beauty. Jean Kilbournes film Killing Us Softly explores and exposes the detrimental effects of the objectification and dehumanization in the representation of women in the general culture, specifically advertisements.With only less than five percent of women of the entire commonwealth that reflect the images of the women advertised, the majority of women are left to feel ashamed for non trying hard enough. Womens bodies are increasingly subjected to strict test under(a) a magnifying glass by our superficial culture, these actions bring forrard and further feed the shame and embarrassment women associate with their bodies, their sexuality, their size, and their weight.Spending 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 everyplace magazine publisher covers as women we are repeatedly reminded that our bodies are home to imperfections and there is eternally room for improvement whether that be through exercise, plastic surgery, dieting, or over the counter beauty and health products. Rosales 2 Is this self-improvement or self-destruction?Today, 1 in 5 women are likely to machinate an eating disorder and cosmetic surgery is more than popular than ever before. More and more women each day are g oing under the knife for breast enhancements losing all sensation in their breasts. Such procedures dehumanise and objectify women transforming them from subjects to objects, all because as women we are conditioned by the paramount culture to want to feel desirable and seek the approval of men. The breasts, therefore, pass a source of pleasure for the men and not the women who undergo the procedure.These internalized feelings hinge upon many to strive to obtain an unattainable beauty and live up to certain impossible expectations whether its consciously or not. We fail to cognize that most of the images we are exposed to are computer generated, they are not real women they have been photo shopped and manipulated to look like that and yet we get over to perpetuate these images as the standards for beauty. Much more, the standards that women are expected to live up to is a paradox of ideas, we are to be both innocent and sexy, sodding(a) and experienced child/doll-like and sex objects simultaneously.Can that be any more absurd? Gender is a performance that the mass media is largely answerable for defining, if we are not thin or beautiful enough thusly we are not feminine enough. The oppression and misrepresentation of women is not particular to gender though, race plays an active role in the representation of women. Asiatic 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 ideal woman was manufactured and its succession we recognize this, she is an illusion that doesnt exist outside of caricature. Instead of fastening our Rosales 3 bodies to fit those Barbie doll like measurements we need to pay back portraying the large diversity of women accurately and stop condemning those who are not thin enough, tall enough, light enough, as not universe beautiful because they arent trying hard enough to fit thos e categories.