Media Influence On Beauty

Improved Essays
Everybody feels different about their bodies. Some may feel that there needs to be a change and others have learned to love their body. In the end what is the cause of body dissatisfaction? Is the image many see in the media something we want to see? Or is the media corrupt? By establishing unattainable standards of beauty and perfection, the media drives ordinary individuals to be dissatisfied with their own body, thus causing mental and physical disorders, a rise in unrealistic social expectations, and low self-esteem.
With the beauty standard being taken to a whole different level:
In the United States, the discrepancy between the extraordinarily thin body type promoted in the media and the reality of average women's bodies has been implicated
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With new fashion trends coming out and the way models portray themselves in the media also is another factor in this. The mass media are probably the most powerful conveyor of beauty ideals, promoting an unrealistic image of female beauty that is impossible for the majority of females to achieve (Rollero 195).With this being said the media can dictate what type of expectation should be held, weather it being the newest fad diet. Gay and straight men alike are shelling out significant sums of money for gym memberships, styling products, salon haircuts, manicures, and waxing treatments (Derenne 259). With women and men spending their money on all these products they wish to meet this standard to fit in with the crowd. Many pay attention on being in the crowd rather than being themselves. It’s something in this century that needs to be changed and the story beneath under it is everyone doesn’t have to be what they see in the media. The pressure to look young and beautiful is at an all-time high, and more and more people are picking up the phone to schedule surgical enhancements. Americans spent $12.5 billion on cosmetic procedures last year, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Since 1997, the number of both surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed annually has increased by a whopping 465 percent. (Lerner and Lerner 408-411). As Lerner and Lerner stated, it shows that the plastic surgeon is making profit off of this but with the individual it gives them the sense that they fit into society. In a culture where mass media promote model-thin, photographically manipulated images of beauty that are difficult to impossible for the average woman to achieve, body dissatisfaction is common (Smith 1). With the photoshopped images removing all the imperfections this causes many to think that is the ‘perfect human’. When in reality the images the viewers

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