Popular Media's False Image On Women

Throughout the years women have been portrayed in media in many different ways. Women are often represented in movies, television shows, music videos, and pornographic films. They are seen taking on many roles, such as: mothers, wives, business professionals, and background roles. Many people have set stereotypes of women and they are often seen in media. These stereotypes may be negative or positive stereotypes, depending on the way women are being depicted within the specified source. Stereotypes may influence the way people view themselves and can affect them throughout their lives. They can also affect the way other people see a certain group. Some people believe the way women are portrayed in media affect the self body image of young girls and cause them to become promiscuous at a young age. Others believe this creates expectations of women should be like for men. When advertisements first became common, they often targeted this demographic to sell items making housework like cleaning more time efficient. This is still often seen in today’s society, home good advertisements seem to be aimed at women. There are several opinions on the effect the portrayal of women in media has on society.

It is too common for women to compare themselves to images of models, actresses and singers they see in the media. Many of these images aren’t even real, media uses photoshop to make models look thinner and clearer. These images distort our perception of beauty, Photoshop makes models look unattainably perfect. The video Evolution was created in 2007 by the Dove self-esteem project, and highlights the untold story of the journey from real to retouched photos (The Evolution Video). This video illustrates just how lighting, makeup and digital manipulation distort our perceptions of women.

The stereotypes of women in social media are constantly being thrown our way. Have you noticed that the only ones being shown on TV or in magazines look almost identical? You know what i'm talking about; it is usually caucasian hererosexual men or women with a very skinny and toned body who has straight hair. These people are shot picture after picture, but have editors ever thought about how the people who don't look like may this feel? When I look in the mirror it is obvious that is not what I see, being an average black woman with kinky hair. The standards of beauty today is very hard to live up to which causes a lot of burdens on everyday women and even young girls. When I younger it was hard for me to be secure with who I was due to

The fact is, the media projects an unrealistic image of beauty onto our society. From size two models on runways to magazines with edited images causing women in them to appear flawless. This merely provides women an unachievable ideal to reach

What does the media tell us about women? It tells us what is “most important” and that’s how we look. They surround us with images of ideal female beauty. We have been learning from such an early age, that we must spend our time to strive to be like the women in these images and to feel ashamed and guilty if we cant live up to these incredibly unrealistic expectations. But failure is inevitable, when the women we are being shown are photo shopped and airbrushed to seem thinner, with faces so flawless that there is not a wrinkle or a line to be seen. This idea of beauty that society is showing us is so edited that it can’t be achieved. Not even the women in these images we are being shown look like this. The media is beginning to dictate our lives, influencing our thoughts, opinions, and actions. Through this use of magazines, advertisements, and social media, we are being shown by society what we need to look like in order to be beautiful. Society challenges women to be strong and independent, by showing us that in order to be seen as the ideal female we have to look like a woman that has been altered with on a computer for hours until she doesn’t even look like

Every day, millions of Americans view the front covers of magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and more. They see them while at grocery stores, on the television, and even in the waiting room at a doctor's office. The media offer advertisements with models that are seemingly slim with perfect skin, hair, and teeth. American propaganda leaves most young, adolescent girls between the ages of 5-18 to consider that the complexity of beauty is strict to be thin and perfect, though it is targeted to young adolescents, it does aim towards older female and male age ranges as well. An article states, “While the media attempt to target every person, the level of exposure is dictated by gender, and the majority of harmful messages is focused more toward women. For instance, in media such as magazines where a person relies on an image to relate a feeling, girls are often made to look inferior” (Chapman). When it comes to the media, specifically in the American culture, the popularity has massively increased over the years, turning to new weekly issues, becoming common to the society and civilization. This causes issues associated with eating disorders, depression and suicide, and self-esteem/confidence young girls.

Mass media falsely claims to be an advocate for self-acceptance and the idea that every woman is naturally beautiful, while it simultaneously uses Photoshop to erase all trace of that natural beauty—imagine how much they would Photoshop women if they did not extol real, non-enhanced, beauty! The women in these digitally improved photos look, quite frankly, as real as Barbie and her friends, and few women actually believe that the women in the pictures look that flawless in person. However, these pictures have the power to make any woman, including those in the pictures, feel inadequate because she is not as “attractive” as a Photoshopped image, the power to make a woman detest herself

Media such as televisions, radio, internet, and magazines represent slim women as the model and ideal to follow. Media portray thin women as happy and successful. Therefore, women who follow that ideal are more tented to put their selves in intense diet, to apply plastic surgery, and to have a low self-esteem if that ideal isn’t reach. Many women ignore that, the media portrays of female is a sort of advertisement that many companies do in order to sell their products. In addition, women ignore that those women portray as top model have stylist to make their clothes, hair, and make up. Therefore, in a real word, women have to face many obstacles, they have to work, to take care of their children, to study, to pay their bills and all of that require money and time.

some type of media platform throughout the day. Among these forms of media are photos and videos of woman idealized as the perfect woman. Magazines release photos of women whose looks are highly unachievable and thought as as the ideal woman. An average woman exposed to these photos may feel depresssed and may want to look like the model through unsafe dieting and other eating disorders. The media has affected girls as young as six years old into changing their appearance to look similar to those idealized in television and magazines. The mass media’s portrayal of women today sets standards of beauty that are highly unattainable and unrealistic,

In addition to the unbelievably high beauty standards women are expected to achieve as a result of the media’s portrayal of women, they are also expected to create and maintain a perfect household. Interior design is often perceived by contemporary society as a feminine interest. As a result, a majority of publications dedicated to home decoration are targeted towards women. Whether or not it is directly stated, a magazine’s attempt to target a particular sex can be identified through both the subject matter and visual content. Livingetc magazine is one of six home and style magazines produced by the British company House to Home. Livingetc is described on its website as “the homes magazine for modern living,” “perfect for design conscious homeowners with inspiring ideas.” Although the magazine does not claim to be gendered, its appearance and contents, which not only discuss interior design, but also include segments on women’s fashion, cooking and travelling, are undeniably geared towards female readers.

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.

While the vast majority of images of females are being digitally enhanced, so is our appreciation for normal, healthy, beautiful, and attainable. Photoshop has gone over the top with how they make pictures look, so much that it’s negatively affecting vulnerable children, and teens with low self-esteem issues. One important justification for why people go through serious issues with their bodies like self-esteem, and eating disorders is because of the media. The media plays a huge role in our everyday life, and when a person sees an image they are automatically influenced by what that image portrays.

Fashion magazines, general women?s magazine and advertisements for beauty products use Photoshop regularly and emphatically to make woman look thin, blemish free, and generally aligned with the familiar American standard of female beauty. By featuring digitally altered woman on their covers and within throughout their pages, these media outlets are promoting this unattainable standard of beauty to woman all over the country on mass. By using Photoshop to erase any fat that might exist on a woman?s arms or thighs and any wrinkle under a woman?s eyes, they create a landscape in which woman rarely see images of other woman who look like them or anyone they know in the media. This use of digital manipulation creates a lack of real images of real women associated with beauty. According the video lecture What Is Culture, a major role of popular culture is to ?give you identity what it needs when it needs it? and the fashion media is failing is failing to do this for American women (J., 2009).

The unrealistic standards of beauty is hurting this generation of what the media and society thinks a girl has to look like, for many years the media has been trying to construct the ideal image of what a “perfect woman” should look like. They believe there only beautiful if they have long legs, great hair, and curves in the right places (HuffingtonPost2017). Which is not the influence that we want to carry down to future generations of girls who feel like they must live up to the expectations of girls who have the “perfect body”. With media apps being popular in the 21st century, there was a survey done on some of the top media apps, their study #statusofmind surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain media apps impact health ( CableNewsNetwork 2017). Body images statistics say 80% of woman say images,

Ostensibly, I agree with Cassandra’s implication that media misrepresentations of women, and the mistreatment of female journalists, are matters of fundamental inequality and unfairness. However, I also believe issues are more extensive. North (2012, p.60) argues this viewpoint risks distracting from broader, more sinister concerns, asserting, “…women’s role as fully participating and informed citizens is at stake.” Thus, dishearteningly, media representations of women primarily conform to male-dominated hegemonic structures, which marginalise female opinions, effectively excluding women from significant public sphere debate (North 2012, p.60).