The Media Lies - A persuasive article about Body Image in the Media
The Media Lies
Trying to look perfect? Slapping makeup all over your face won’t help. It will just lead to oily skin and spots. Having plastic surgery won’t help. It will just cost a lot and may cause you serious or permanent damage. Why spend hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds a year trying to make yourself look “perfect”? Why cover up who you really are so that other people think you look good? Why should you spend all your time worrying about what other people will think of you? The answer is you shouldn’t.
Women's magazines and television programmes are filled with weight-loss advertisements. According to the Women's Center of Media and Body Image the average American person is subject to about 3,000 of these adverts on a daily basis. This ongoing exposure to these images has proven to change and alter our perceptions of reality and how we see things. These images of perfection are not what normal women look like without major help and surgery. It’s difficult for young girls to understand that the people they see in magazines don’t actually look like that in real life. So they continue to search for these unrealistic and false images of what the media believes a “perfect” woman should look like. Many of the images you can find on television and in magazine adverts have been proved to be unattainable and unreachable goals we mentally set ourselves. The majority of models and actresses that we see on a daily basis are reported to be at least twenty pounds underweight. Twenty years ago, models weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23% less than the average woman. Although the average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds, the average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds. Photograph editors have the ability to elongate your neck and legs, darken your eyebrows, and narrow your face. The finished, yet altered product is then plastered on billboards, on signs and in magazines everywhere for all to see.
Last year
Trying to look perfect? Slapping makeup all over your face won’t help. It will just lead to oily skin and spots. Having plastic surgery won’t help. It will just cost a lot and may cause you serious or permanent damage. Why spend hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds a year trying to make yourself look “perfect”? Why cover up who you really are so that other people think you look good? Why should you spend all your time worrying about what other people will think of you? The answer is you shouldn’t.
Women's magazines and television programmes are filled with weight-loss advertisements. According to the Women's Center of Media and Body Image the average American person is subject to about 3,000 of these adverts on a daily basis. This ongoing exposure to these images has proven to change and alter our perceptions of reality and how we see things. These images of perfection are not what normal women look like without major help and surgery. It’s difficult for young girls to understand that the people they see in magazines don’t actually look like that in real life. So they continue to search for these unrealistic and false images of what the media believes a “perfect” woman should look like. Many of the images you can find on television and in magazine adverts have been proved to be unattainable and unreachable goals we mentally set ourselves. The majority of models and actresses that we see on a daily basis are reported to be at least twenty pounds underweight. Twenty years ago, models weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23% less than the average woman. Although the average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds, the average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds. Photograph editors have the ability to elongate your neck and legs, darken your eyebrows, and narrow your face. The finished, yet altered product is then plastered on billboards, on signs and in magazines everywhere for all to see.
Last year