Media and the Idea of Beauty Essay Example for Free

Media and the conception of Beauty EssayElizabeth Rosales Cultural Anthropology-A18 Yi,Zhou April 21, 2011 Response Paper Killing Us mildly Who argon we? Who am I? With the average American exposed to approximately 3,000 ads a day they all inspire us of who we ar not and who we should be. The images we atomic number 18 constantly bombarded with by the citizenry media dont honorable sell products they sell values, images, concepts of love, sex, and normativity, standards to which we so often compare ourselves to.Ads reinforce gender binaries, all making a statement about what it means to be a woman in this culture of thinness stressing a particular importance on physical beauty. Jean Kilbournes film Killing Us Softly explores and exposes the detrimental effects of the objectification and dehumanization in the representation of women in the customary culture, specifically advertisements.With only little than five percent of women of the entire population that reflect the images of the women advertised, the majority of women are left to feel dishonored for not trying hard enough. Womens bodies are increasingly subjected to strict scrutiny under a magnifying glass by our superficial culture, these actions bring forth and further feed the shame and embarrassment women tie with their bodies, their sexuality, their size, and their weight.Spending self-conscious days, weeks, months, and even years in previous of a mirror and scale, inspecting our bodies in front of a mirror comparing ourselves to the images spread everyplace magazine covers as women we are repeatedly reminded that our bodies are home to imperfections and there is always room for improvement whether that be through exercise, plastic surgery, dieting, or over the counter beauty and health products. Rosales 2 Is this self-improvement or self-destruction?Today, 1 in 5 women are likely to develop an eating disorder and cosmetic surgery is more popular than ever before. More and more women each day are going under the knife for dumbbell enhancements losing all sensation in their breasts. Such procedures dehumanize and objectify women transforming them from subjects to objects, all because as women we are learn by the dominant culture to want to feel desirable and seek the approval of men. The breasts, therefore, become a source of pleasure for the men and not the women who undergo the procedure.These internalized feelings drive many to strive to obtain an undoable beauty and recognize up to certain impossible expectations whether its consciously or not. We fail to understand that most of the images we are exposed to are computer generated, they are not real women they have been movie shopped and manipulated to look like that and yet we continue to perpetuate these images as the standards for beauty. Much more, the standards that women are expected to live up to is a paradox of ideas, we are to be both innocent and sexy, virgin and experienced boor/doll-like and sex objects simultaneously.Can that be any more absurd? Gender is a performance that the mass media is declamatoryly responsible for defining, if we are not thin or beautiful enough then we are not feminine enough. The oppression and misrepresentation of women is not limited to gender though, race plays an active quality in the representation of women. Asian women for example, are depicted as docile and passive lovers, whereas black and Latino women are hyper sexualized and portrayed as exotic promiscuous creatures dressed in animal prints.The perfect rarified woman was manufactured and its time we recognize this, she is an illusion that doesnt exist outside of caricature. quite of altering our Rosales 3 bodies to fit those Barbie doll like measurements we need to start portraying the large diversity of women accurately and stop condemning those who are not thin enough, tall enough, light enough, as not being beautiful because they arent trying hard enough to fit those categor ies.