Aimilly Baez
Human Communications Midterm
Should Beauty Standards Be Banned in Social Media?
For the past decade or so, sad to say; social media has become the biggest form of communication. It’s amazing how much of an impact social media has upon our generation, and our youth. Everyone you know has some type of social media handle, and if they don’t the person is looked at as an outsider. How many times has someone came up to you and told you “Did you see this person’s posts on Instagram?” and based a full on conversation from there. Though social media definitely has an immense amount of pros, it also has a various amounts of cons. Beauty standards for instance in social media definitely has taken many turns, and it’s sad to say that …show more content…
If you are a certain amount of heavy, you are not considered beautiful and that’s disgusting. You rarely see heavy models, from music videos to company ads, you never see a woman that's not “thin.” There have been many studies that evaluate whether social media and social comparison plays a big part in eating disorders, depression and other psychological disorders that cause women to take unhealthy precautions to change their appearance. Though many of these social media images are “digitally modified in order to look flawless” (Arendt, F., Peter, C., & Beck, J. (2017) many women still feel a huge amount of dissatisfaction when they see a woman who is thinner than them. They begin to compare themselves to the subject who is being idolized on social media. This comparison then enhances into self-evaluation. The woman then asks herself “what can I do in order to make myself look like her?” and no woman should ever have to go to such extents in order to be accepted in social media, or in the world in …show more content…
According to a study that was made by Maya A. Poran she cited from other articles something that really stood out to because as a woman, I see it alot in many of my social media handles. “It has been said that white women seem to have a uniform notion of what beauty should be (Parker et al., 1995) and their conception of beauty tends to match the culturally popular images of white women in mainstream media (Wolf, 1991).” Poran’s experiment consisted of 157 women; 52 African American women, 48 Hispanic women, 51 Caucasian women, and 6 “others” which were women who chose not to enclose their ethnicity. The purpose was to see the conception of beauty and perceptions of cultural standards and social media from these ladies. After a series of questions, one being “What is beauty to you?” there was a big difference of definition when it came to race. The women of color and hispanic women who answered the question all answered this question in this exact order; you had to “(1) being white, (2) having white features, [i.e., hair, nose, skin color) (3) being thin, (4) have a pretty face (or handsome) and long hair.” (Poran, M. A. (2002). Which is the exact beauty standard that is represented in social media, and the world
Human Communications Midterm
Should Beauty Standards Be Banned in Social Media?
For the past decade or so, sad to say; social media has become the biggest form of communication. It’s amazing how much of an impact social media has upon our generation, and our youth. Everyone you know has some type of social media handle, and if they don’t the person is looked at as an outsider. How many times has someone came up to you and told you “Did you see this person’s posts on Instagram?” and based a full on conversation from there. Though social media definitely has an immense amount of pros, it also has a various amounts of cons. Beauty standards for instance in social media definitely has taken many turns, and it’s sad to say that …show more content…
If you are a certain amount of heavy, you are not considered beautiful and that’s disgusting. You rarely see heavy models, from music videos to company ads, you never see a woman that's not “thin.” There have been many studies that evaluate whether social media and social comparison plays a big part in eating disorders, depression and other psychological disorders that cause women to take unhealthy precautions to change their appearance. Though many of these social media images are “digitally modified in order to look flawless” (Arendt, F., Peter, C., & Beck, J. (2017) many women still feel a huge amount of dissatisfaction when they see a woman who is thinner than them. They begin to compare themselves to the subject who is being idolized on social media. This comparison then enhances into self-evaluation. The woman then asks herself “what can I do in order to make myself look like her?” and no woman should ever have to go to such extents in order to be accepted in social media, or in the world in …show more content…
According to a study that was made by Maya A. Poran she cited from other articles something that really stood out to because as a woman, I see it alot in many of my social media handles. “It has been said that white women seem to have a uniform notion of what beauty should be (Parker et al., 1995) and their conception of beauty tends to match the culturally popular images of white women in mainstream media (Wolf, 1991).” Poran’s experiment consisted of 157 women; 52 African American women, 48 Hispanic women, 51 Caucasian women, and 6 “others” which were women who chose not to enclose their ethnicity. The purpose was to see the conception of beauty and perceptions of cultural standards and social media from these ladies. After a series of questions, one being “What is beauty to you?” there was a big difference of definition when it came to race. The women of color and hispanic women who answered the question all answered this question in this exact order; you had to “(1) being white, (2) having white features, [i.e., hair, nose, skin color) (3) being thin, (4) have a pretty face (or handsome) and long hair.” (Poran, M. A. (2002). Which is the exact beauty standard that is represented in social media, and the world