Emely

Woman and The Media

Visuals

 
The images above show the difference of beauty today and beauty before. our society views woman like miley cyrus as beautiful because she is thin and provacetive like many woman in todays music industry. Before woman like Marilyn Monroe were considered beautiful. She was beautiful for natural beauty and her full curvy figure.

 Khatam, Ryan. Marilyn Monroe at the Beach. Digital image. Neat-Stuff-Blog. N.p., 23 Dec. 2011. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.
Miley Cyrus ‘snorted White Powder off the Back of the Toilet’ at the Met Gala. Digital image. Cele|bitchy. N.p., 28 June 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. 

This video exploits woman and there bodies. It only shows tall skinny women parading around for the men in the video. This makes woman feel like they most look this way in  order to have the attention of there preferred sex. The unrated version not only has the women parading around but they are also topless, making the women who see this even more insecure of there bodies. 

Blurred Lines. Perf. Robin Thicke. 2013. YouTube. YouTube, 20 Mar. 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.



 Images like this are all over social media websites and make woman feel like the only way to be happy is to be skinny. Many people do not realize the harm what they think are inspirational quotes/images will do to a woman with body issues. When woman see this they see more of a reason to stop eating and become skinny like how society wants them to be. The creator of the blog i retrieved the images from, Izzy Hillard, agrees that images like this do affect a womans thoughts about herself. 

Hillard, Izzy. "Read Me ASAP!" Weblog post. Izzyhilliardournews. N.p., 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.

ESSAY

In today’s society, women feel the need to take drastic measures in order to look thin and beautiful due to the pressure magnified by the media. A woman’s appearance means a lot to them and the media plays a role in the struggle they endure of body image. Although men can be affected by the images in today’s media, women are affected more by the media because society expects them to look a certain way. Many different types of media such as magazines, music videos, social networking, and the modeling industry affect the way a woman see’s herself. Both genders do get affect in different ways but when you look at the big picture the woman get more of the backlash based on body image and what our society sees as acceptable.

            In our society media plays a huge role many aspects of our lives. Based on images present to us in magazines and on television many women feel unconfortable about their body and their self-esteem drops. The media today not only lowers the self-esteem of many women, but in the process pressure young woman to obtain the “ideal body image.” Realistically not many women are going to ever become a size 0 like many models. In fact, the modeling industry sees a size 6 to be plus sized. I am a size 11. Would that make me obese in the eyes of today’s society? ABC News writer Edward Lovett says, “Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23 percent less.” (Lovett) Lovett is stating how woman in the modelling industry are dramatically losing more and more weight making them anorexic thin. When an ordinary woman sees these models getting thinner they feel the need to become thinner as well.

            Now let’s go back in time to where being curve was a good thing. Marilyn Monroe was the definition of beauty in the 20^th century. In the 1990’s she was named People Magazines “Sexiest Woman Of The Century”. Ms.Monroe was a sex icon and everyone thought she was beautiful, and she was also a size 12. Back then size did not define beauty. Today what our society see’s as beautiful is someone like Miley Cyrus, skeletal and size 1.

            Within the fashion world young women starve themselves to be as thin as they are told to be. Liz Jones, former Marie Claire editor, talks about her final issue as editor in an article she wrote. Jones says that the cover was three plus sized models perfectly fine in their skin until someone told them they need to go on a diet. Things like that are leads to eating disorders. Jones states, “In Britain an estimated 60,000 people, most of them young women, suffer from eating disorders…Many of them take up smoking or eat diet pills to keep their weight below a certain level. Of all psychiatric disorders, anorexia has the most fatalities…” In other words, woman become so consumed in becoming what society wants they do whatever it takes, like starvation leading to health problems, just to do it. In America one in 200 American women suffers from anorexia.(Mirasol)

            Not only the fashion world that does this to woman. In social networking websites like Facebook or Instagram it is very simple to change how you appear in a picture. Many woman see pictures of woman just like them, only they do not see the real person, they see the photo shopped person. This then makes them feel like they have to hide who they are or take drastic measures to change.

            Music videos do this as well to woman. Take the “Blurred Lines” music video. This song is about sex and degrading woman. The entire cast of woman in this music video or topless and nothing over a size 1 or 2. Not a single curvy woman. This then makes woman want to look thinner like them so men could want them like they do the woman in the video. 

            Personally I am one of many women who have suffered from an eating disorder because of society and the media. My family would always make fun of my weight telling me to look more like my older sister, thin and beautiful. I remember every time I went to visit a relative the first thing I heard was “Gorda”, that is Spanish for fat. Many former friends at the time also would tell me that I needed to lose weight. When this was happening I was about 15 years old, 5’2 and 145 pounds. I was over-weight and I did need to do something about it but the way people approached me about it I felt like the only thing I could do was stop eating. I would look at magazines and see these thin women that men went crazy over and wished that was me. I became anorexic and in less than a month I went from 145 to 100.  In the end it took a lot for me to realize what I was doing was unhealthy and I needed to change things for the better.

            Many woman and teenage girls go through the same thing as I did, but not all have the epiphany I managed to get to. Some become so consumed in being “thin and beautiful” like the woman being idolized in the media that they never snap out of it. In Liz Donato’s article, “The Medias Unrealistic Beauty Standards”, she states,

“According to the Crisis Connection, an organization that works to empower victims of domestic violence, eating disorders have grown 400 percent since 1970. The Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that up to 24 million Americans suffer from an eating disorder, and over one-half of teenage girls use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking, and vomiting. With the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, anorexia claims the lives of 150,000 American women each year.”

            This shows that due to all this pressure from the media, society, and even friends and family, women are dying just to be considered beautiful. 150,000 deaths of woman a year because of anorexia is ridiculous. Something truly needs to be done. If this continues how many more a year will die?

            In the end something should be done. A woman should never have to be a victim in societies trap. Every woman is beautiful in their own way and if the media showed little more of the average woman and less skeletal woman people would be able to see that. 

Annotated Bibliography 

Donato, Lisa . "THE MEDIA’S UNREALISTIC BEAUTY STANDARD." The Marshfield

Times. 2 Apr. 2012. 7 Oct. 2013.

This article provides information about how media hurts woman. Lisa Donato talks about how many woman at a very early age begin to question there bodies and want to lose weight based on pictures in magazines and advertisements on the TV. Donato goes on to explain how the cosmetics companies feeds on these low self esteemed woman. These women then begin to develop eating disorders and die just to be accepted.

"Eating Disorder Information and Statistics." Marisol. N.p., 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.        

           This websites give statistics of eating disorders between men and woman in America. It provides information about anorexia and bolima. It also talks about the over weight side of eating disorders and the percentage of Americans with eating disorders.        

Jones, Liz . "What I think about the fashion world." Mail Online. 7 Oct. 2013.      
            Former Marie Claire editor Liz Jones, discusses the corruption in the fashion industry. Jones explains how she did not agree with the way models where being shown in magazines making other woman feel like they must be stick skinny like that. She also was concerned about the health of these underage teenage models that develop eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia just to “fit in” to the crowd in the fashion world. Other magazine editors and designers did not agree with her and went against her trying to justify making fashion icons out of skeletal woman.
 

Lovett, Edward . "Most Models Meet Criteria for Anorexia, Size 6 Is Plus Size: Magazine."

ABCNews.12Jan.2012.7Oct.2013
Edward Lovett explains how the modeling industries standards have gone up as the sizes of there models go down. He goes on to explain based on research how throughout the years what was once considered an average model is now plus sized. Lovett talks about how many of these models have all the signs of woman with anorexia.