Beauty Ideals
Sarah Gonzalez write a summary of the beauty ideal, from an intersectional approach, explaining its impact on women 's lives
Beauty Ideals Women today have more pressure than ever to conform to societal norms and ideals of beauty. Everyday we see hundreds of advertisements telling us we have to look and act a certain way to be accepted, to be beautiful. Some women just go on their innocent diets and pay a little extra at the spa to look their best, but sometimes some women take it too far and may develop an eating disorder or mental illness such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which is an unrealistic belief that one’s appearance is unacceptable and ugly, to an extent that the people affected can’t even leave their house. The media will stop at nowhere to make women feel that their bodies are at a worse state than having a disability, and will continue to make them feel unequal just for the sake of making money off of them. Television programs, magazines, and the Internet promote certain ideas of beauty, which “mainly affect young, middle-class women,” and those who are low in self-confidence to begin with. The types of women being portrayed in these advertisements are usually “thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual.” This promotes the idea that women have to constantly be under a magnifying glass, picking out all of their flaws, and fixing them. (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 208) Advertisers’ intentions are less to hurt women but mostly to sell their products to them, however, in the process, they’ve made millions of women believe that they are somehow not good enough just because they can’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model. Because of the standards that the media sets for women, some take it too an unnatural and even deadly level. Anorexia and bulimia affect millions of young girls who either restrict their food or starve themselves to be thin, or show bulimic behavior by purging food or over-exercising in order to compensate for eating or binging.
Beauty Ideals Women today have more pressure than ever to conform to societal norms and ideals of beauty. Everyday we see hundreds of advertisements telling us we have to look and act a certain way to be accepted, to be beautiful. Some women just go on their innocent diets and pay a little extra at the spa to look their best, but sometimes some women take it too far and may develop an eating disorder or mental illness such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which is an unrealistic belief that one’s appearance is unacceptable and ugly, to an extent that the people affected can’t even leave their house. The media will stop at nowhere to make women feel that their bodies are at a worse state than having a disability, and will continue to make them feel unequal just for the sake of making money off of them. Television programs, magazines, and the Internet promote certain ideas of beauty, which “mainly affect young, middle-class women,” and those who are low in self-confidence to begin with. The types of women being portrayed in these advertisements are usually “thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual.” This promotes the idea that women have to constantly be under a magnifying glass, picking out all of their flaws, and fixing them. (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey 208) Advertisers’ intentions are less to hurt women but mostly to sell their products to them, however, in the process, they’ve made millions of women believe that they are somehow not good enough just because they can’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model. Because of the standards that the media sets for women, some take it too an unnatural and even deadly level. Anorexia and bulimia affect millions of young girls who either restrict their food or starve themselves to be thin, or show bulimic behavior by purging food or over-exercising in order to compensate for eating or binging.
Cited: Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives. New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. Print.