In journalism class fall quarter, there was a discussion about the images we see in the media and how this affects our body image. Every single person raised their hand when asked if they knew of someone or had a personal experience with severe body image problems.Can you relate to this?
Every day American citizens are
exposed to 3000 advertisements that paint a false picture of reality and tell us how we are supposed to look and act.
Men and Women alike can't open a magazine, turn on the television or walk into a store without being bombarded with the image of being perfect. The images to the left represent how media portrays the perfect male and female. Men are supposed to have big muscles, shiny white teeth, distinct jaw line and a charming twinkle in their eye. Women are supposed to be petite with large breasts, toned abs and a sun-kissed glow. This is not reality. The truth is not many people fit into this stereotype. There are people with all different shapes and sizes.Because of this influence people take beauty to the extreme: spending drastic amounts of money on diet supplements, plastic surgery, gym memberships, steroids.
A
recent example is Heidi Montag, from The Hills. Pictured above in a PeopleMagazine feature, Heidi spent thousands of dollars on 10 different bodyaugmentations in order to look "perfect." Another example is Greg Valentino. The man whose literal bicepexplosion has become a gym rat phenomenon, Gregg boasted a 28"armmuscle, and
openly took steroids.It is important to know that the images we
see daily are not correct representations of what even the models actually look like. Pictures are photoshopped, airbrushed, and retouched to be more appealing to the target audience. The picture below shows an example of a model's photograph before its retouching and you can see the distinct chages made to her face and body.
Notice there are no wrinkles on her face, legs are toned, any stomach bulging disappears, her skin color is given an airbrushed softness, and even her back is more curved than before.
In recent years, there has been a definite shift in the culture of how men and women should look. Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has taken the initiative to promote natural beauty, and being happy with who you are. The campaign is "committed to freeing the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes" (dove.us). In recent years, people have stopped focusing on calorie counting and low-fat diets, but eating and living healthy lives with more healthy exercise.
As two girls, it is hard to tell whether men or women face more difficulty with body issues. We feel that men and women are both, unfortunately, faced with the difficulties of looking perfect. Do you think one sex has more trouble with self-esteem and body issues than the other? How do you feel that these problems in our culture can be eliminated? Do you think body issue is even a problem?
This topic interests me. I agree with what was said in class – that girls face significantly more pressure in terms of how they look. Before we discussed the issue in class, I always thought that this was because men are more visual in their judgments, and women are more interested in what's under the surface. In our hetero-dominated society, women who wish to attract men will naturally assume that their looks are of utmost importance. Men, on the other hand, are more interested in being high achievers, which is the usual aspect attributed to being attractive to women. I thought it was very interesting how the girls thought they received more pressure to look good from their fellow females. I personally have never felt that I had to improve my looks based on feedback I got from other people. As I said though, I feel that being a high achiever is important. I have noticed that the typical male in advertisements is a tad more toned than myself, and that irks me, but when I sit down and take a moment to think I realize how illogical that is. If sex sells, then companies are forced to use attractive models in order to compete. Because we come into contact with so many advertisements, it's no surprise that we begin to associate those unrealistic models with normality. Still, they're just the product of our competitive markets. Perhaps the real villain in this story is capitalism?
ReplyDeleteThis topic interests me as well. It is ridiculous how we are always surrounded by the media showing us these perfect pictures of people. In reality, people will never look like those pictures because of how they can fix the pictures to make them perfect. Also, the magazines love to catch celebrites when they are not wearing makeup or look thicker than usual, and they make a huge deal out of it. That is another way of sending the message that we need to be thin and look perfect all of time. I do feel like it is more shoved in the females' faces than the males, but I still think males can have a distorted body image. I think males have some pressure on them to be "fit" because they can be judged as well. I feel like females are constantly be judged by both sexes, whereas men I feel like are judged more by females. I do not know if this conflict with the need to look perfect will ever go away.
ReplyDeleteAs a teenage girl who just got finished with high school, I feel like an expert on this topic. One good thing about my high school, though: we had uniforms. But looking back, we all still judged one another and probably made one or two snarky remarks about how someone looked in their uniform or how it fit. In high school, and in college, there are already so many things to worry about. It really sucks that we have to constantly be worried about how we look as well. Like Erin mentioned in class, girls don’t always dress up for the guys. We dress up to feel good about ourselves and look stylish… More stylish than the girl next to us so all our girlfriends think we have a unique and cool sense of fashion. I feel like guys face an almost equal amount of pressure, though. There might be a lot of skinny, airbrushed models out there, but campaigns, like Dove, support women and true beauty. So at least we have some people rooting for us. There’s really nothing like that for men, but they’re still faced with so many “perfect” bodies in ads. Guy models in the media always look perfect: tanned, muscled, and, well, kind of sterile to be honest. That’s not how every guy looks, or maybe even wants to look, so I vote for some scrawny, bearded guys in the next Old Spice commercial.
ReplyDeleteAfter we discussed this in class I found it funny how many things in our lives revolve around this. But another conclusion came to my mind, and I don’t know if it’s a secluded incident within my life, or if others find this to be true. It seems to me that most the pressure of how to look comes from others of the same sex, not the opposite. This idea seems farfetched at first, but really think about it. I mean, I personally find the idea of a girl starving herself to be skinny unattractive. And, keeping this not too personal, I find a girl with curves more attractive. Now, it is very true that males tend to be much more physical and visual than females. However, it seems that when I go out with my guy friends that most of us aren’t that worried about how a girl is dressed or if she’s 20 pounds heavier or lighter than the next girl (besides most guys can’t guess a girls weight within 40 pounds anyway). Guys are pretty simple creatures. If we think you’re pretty, we think you’re pretty. Then, on the other side of the coin, it seems that girls are attracted to you if they’re attracted to you. In my experience, girls will appreciate a “nice body” or if their significant other works out, but it is far from required or even desired that much. It’s just an added bonus. However, at every party you hear girls talking about other girls. “Someone needs to hit the gym”, or “cute dress, I think I wore the same thing to a middle school dance” (I’ve heard both of these, no lie). Also, go to a practice for a male sport. “You’re a pussy” and “good throw guns” seem to make up a majority of the conversation. So, maybe we should start to question how we criticize people of our own sex, not just the other.
ReplyDeleteLet’s face it…girls are judging bitches. I found a particular comment in class kind of funny, but so true. I forget who is was, but someone commented on how girls are always judging other girls. I mean in some aspect obviously girls are obviously trying to impress the guys, but in the other aspect I as a girl realize guys do not really notice the outfit I am wearing or the jewelry I have on, yet I still wear it and pick out my outfits precisely when I am about to have a night out on the town. The media and such has emphasized image so much that girls and even guys are always so worried about their image, even though the people on tv and in magazines have so many touch ups and do not really look like what they appear. I do not think necessarily one sex has more self-esteem issues than the other. I know people of both sexes who truly care about their image and I also know people of both sexes who are completely happy with how god made them. I think it just depends on the person itself and how important image is to them.
ReplyDeleteSomething else that i find interesting on this topic is how many stores have changed to have separate branches for plus sizes. But when it comes to this, who decides the line between average and plus? These stores now have their average sizes ending at 30. Is this a good message to send to people? Even these pants seem to run small being that a girl that is 5.5 and weighing 135 isn't comfortable in them. That is a ratio of being fit and healthy to doctors standards but needs to go to a different department store?
ReplyDeleteAlso when it comes to girls being judgmental toward one another, just look at your average girls magazine. it's filled with images of other women to set the standards for themselves. I can't even think of sources similar to this that are intended for men. I feel there are many particular things such as this that set differences between men and women. I do feel self esteem issues are more present with women and more often in harmful ways. This doesn’t make it any less deserving for attention to men however.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coryseverartwork/3996443365/
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ReplyDeleteI like that this blog post really included guys in the mix. I once was dating this guy and he was so insecure about everything, and he could never take any compliments that I had to give him and I had never had to deal with this before with a boyfriend. It was really weird because I didn't really think about guys hating their bodies as much as women do at times. Of course it's a lot less likely for men to really come out and say that they hate their bodies, but it still happens so attention needs to be paid to this issue. Of course, magazines pick the most attractive and fit men to pose in their issues just like women's magazines do, so of course a man is going to look at this ripped body of the man in the magazine and want to look the same way. Everyone can easily come to hating their body, we just really need to think of all sexes, races, ethnic backgrounds that this negative body image is associated with, not just the normal Caucasian woman's hate for her own body.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kelly’s first statement that girls are judging bitches. We judge each other, call each other names, and are just plain mean when it comes to appearances. Don’t get me wrong, I am as guilty as the next person, but I try and catch myself. I realize that it is not nice so I stop and then think about how I would feel if I heard what people said about me. When it comes to body image, I do feel like girls are under more pressure. Guys workout and like to look good because they want to. Girls workout and like to look good and fit because they feel like they have to. But like Kelsey said, girls do not only get dressed up for guys. We get dressed up and put makeup and jewelry on because we like to, at least I do. My guy friends make fun of me all the time because I will wear a dress to a Reds baseball game. They think it is absurd that I would wear something “so dressy,” as they would say, to sit in the sun and sweat. But that is just me. I don’t think that guys pay a whole lot of attention to what girls are wearing so we are basically dressing up for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteGoing off from what Matt said, I agree with him in that a lot of the pressure to look attractive comes from others of the same sex. In high school I lifted weights regularly not only to stay in shape for sports, but to reaffirm my masculine figure so my male counterparts would not consider me a whimp, sissy, etc. I believe women face more trouble with self-esteem and body issues than men because women are by far more judgmental than men. Most people would agree with this. Obviously people want to look good to impress others, but there are several other factors that go into this. In high school, one of my very close female friends used to have a problem with eating. It got so bad to the point of where she was eating bowls of lettuce for every meal. I think the main reason for her eating disorder was because the media paints false images of what an extremely high percentage of the population does not look like. The media believes there is no such thing as too skinny. For that reason, most models today are disgusting and grossly skinny women. These problems will never be eliminated entirely, but it would help a lot if people were more accepting of their own body and others as well. It would also be beneficial if people looked beyond the false body images that the media lays out for us and realized that it is okay to be comfortable just the way you are.
ReplyDeleteI agree with other posts that members of the same sex do in fact put more pressure and judge those of the same sex more harshly than members of the opposite sex. When I have been around my guys friends I can honestly say that rarely do any of us look at another guy and made a comment about him being really out of shape but occasionally one of us will say something about some guy being really big of jacked. On the other hand there have been multiple times when I have been around some of my girl friends and I have heard them throw hurtful comments out about girls that need to lose weight, are dressed to slutty, or have some sort of appearance issue. In addition to this, I do also feel that females are under more pressure to look perfect than males are. Not only are females judging females but also I think that males judge females more so than females judge males. This creates added stress and pressure on females to achieve the impossible perfect image. I think the new dove ads are very positive and if they become more widespread will help to chip away at the belief that all people should have the perfect body image.
ReplyDeleteTo start off I think that women have more problems with this than men do. I do think that some men like to look a particular way but in no way is it compared to women. I am led to believe that women have less self esteem than men do. I think this is due to many things, even just the harsh judgment between girls on a day to day basis. Girls are harsh and criticize other girls all the time on everything they do. Therefore when girls see these beautiful models on magazine covers they automatically think that they need to look like that. They feel the need to be perfect and that is ruining the idea of natural beauty. I think that the body image is defiantly a problem. Women should be comfortable in their own skin. They shouldn’t need to see all of these beautiful models everyday to tear them down. I think that everyone should exercise and do what it takes to make them feel good and look good. But when I say look good I mean be healthy and enjoy being in their own skin. I think another problem that this causes is it seems as though we have two part of body image. When you look in magazines you always see the models and every once in a while you come across an article about obesity. Whatever happened to the normally sized person? Why does everyone we read about have to either be a supermodel or obese?
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