Body Image Assigment

 

For this assignment I chose the girls from the hit TV show Pretty Little Liars.  They’re all very beautiful and I believe this show portrays the beauty ideal perfectly. According to our text, “Feminist scholars have analyzed the oppressive nature of ads and media representations that bombard women and girls with an ideal of beauty defined as thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual, with flawless skin and well-groomed hair (Kirk, Okasawa-Rey).”  As we can tell from the picture, these girls have all those qualities in the show because in real life they look like your average American girls.

The background color of the picture is a very neutral, soft color as well as their outfits adorned with glitter and flashy jewelry. Their positions are very close together, symbolizing unity and their stares and facial expressions are mysterious.  This is all part of the theme of the show, which is what this ad is trying to sell explicitly: trying to get the people to watch Pretty Little Liars. I would say other corporations are also working with this ad to try and get the consumer to buy the types of clothes and jewelry these girls wear, even though they “dress up” way more to go to school than normal high school girls. However, this ad is not only selling the show, it’s selling the beauty ideal implicitly as well. 

In order to sell their products, multi-billion dollar corporations make women feel like they need to correct their bodies by trying to get society to look like these girls.  If women were completely satisfied with their physical appearance, these corporations would not make any money. Therefore, they have to create false beauty ideals of women’s bodies and brainwash society into thinking this is what is considered beautiful and what is socially acceptable to be more successful in life.

Kirk, Gwyn , and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives. 5th ed. New York, New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. 207-210

Balke, Jayne. "Interview: Pretty Little Liars’ ‘Tyler Blackburn’ on Being a Series Regular, Revealing “A’s” Identity.” TV After Dark with Romancia and friends.  N.p., 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2012. <http://tvafterdarkonline.com/2012/02/interview-pretty-little-liars-tyler-blackburn-on-being-a-series-regular-revealing-as-identity>.

 

Beauty Ideals

The reading on Chapter 5 called “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Health” emphasizes the importance of a woman’s body and how society has constructed beauty ideals in which only one type of appearance is acceptable and beautiful.  As women, we learn our physiological and emotional changes that happen each phase such as menstruation, menopause, and the elasticity during pregnancy and childbirth. However, society reduces women to only their bodies using them as sex objects, and child bearers. For example, many women’s bodies are being illustrated as advertisements to sell a special brand of clothing, cars, or some type of perfume or cologne.  This degrades the female body to only its physical appearance making other women feel as if they need to look some type of way that would be socially acceptable.

The advertising industry creates beauty ideals by displaying very thin models with flawless skin and perfect hair, therefore, making this appearance as the new “beautiful.”  Most of the population affected is young adult females that take this very seriously by going on extreme diets that can be harmful to their physical and emotional health, thus developing eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.  What the female population doesn’t take into consideration is that these images are edited and photo brushed and that the women represented don’t actually look that way. The purpose of beauty ideals is to create insecurity, self-hatred, and distorted perceptions of size, appetite, and attractiveness. As a result, women think their bodies need correction eventually leading them to go out and purchase these products that will make them prettier than what they are. This cruel, vicious cycle undermines girl’s self-confidence and self-esteem.

As American citizens we should do our best to resist these beauty stereotypes. These standards should not be tolerable because they break the laws in unacceptable ways by being racist and sexist promoting body hostilities. Just because a person is fat or thicker than the rest doesn’t mean they’re unhappy or any less sexy or smart. They can be more or equally successful in life than thinner ones.  Still, it can be detrimental if the obesity becomes so problematic that causes major health risks such as heart disease and high blood pressue. In that case, the person should just reach a satisfactory weight that will improve their health.  Beauty ideals are standards socially constructed for the solely purpose of advertising that can create lifelong health effects.

Word Count 403

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. 207-210.