Fashion Magazines with Portraying Extremely Thin Women to Support Products - Essay Example

Jennifer Traboulsi 12.12.09 Composition Research Paper Introduction The images of slim female bodies having a perfect look are everywhere: onTelevision, in printed media etc. These lucrative body shapes are able to sell anything they advertise, whether it is a perfume, mobile phone, a car or even an after-shave. However, this growing trend of portraying skinny models as icons of fashion creates an unusual predisposition in common women to seek for the popular image of ultra-thin American woman. The ultra thin female bodies have haunted the entire media. While going through the pages of a womans magazines, whether it is Vogue or Womens Day or Good Housekeeping, or McCalls, one can easily see long articles emphasizing the need and ways to lose weight in order to have a great life. The research paper’s purpose is to review fashion magazines for advertising and portraying extremely thin women to support products, and therefore creating unrealistic expectations for young women. This frequent and excessive portrayal of ultra thin women leads to a number of unhealthy and fatal emotional and biological impacts on female readers. The impact of these magazines on self esteem of young women, as they compare their body shapes with the “perfect” ones of models, seriously needs to be denounced. The myth about beauty will be broken by revealing the real benefits media enjoy by impacting the values of women. The paper also focuses on identifying ways through which this insecurity can be prevented or remedied. Changing standards of feminine beauty with time The portrayal of women as a marketing object has a long history in media but the trend of extremely thin models is not very old. Earlier, the idea of female beauty was closely linked to her realistically voluptuous body. In the early 20th century, the culture of fashion underwent a shift from the chubby female figure to a thinner fragile look. However, this thinner new female ideal was not really misleading and made women to think about taking care of their health. This description of female figure initially created a healthy trend in common people as they started to incorporate sports activities in their free time to make their bodies healthier and more active. During the mid 20th century, ideal female body image became thinner (someone like Marilyn Monroe who was a size 14 was considerably overweight as compared with today’s standards). After initial acceptance of this idea, the trend went on following the notion, “the thinner the better”. Unfortunately, with passage of time, these underweight models became the representatives of female beauty, which is still the case today. However, with the development of digital imaging techniques, the beauty ideal presented today to young women is more unrealistic and unattainable than ever before. The recent hype for promoting the thin beauty is increasing towards unattainable thin figures, most of the time being artificially “perfect” which is facilitated by digital tools and computer. In this way media can be held responsible for creating stereotyped notions of beauty, being linked with skinny, ultra slim and very female bodies (Arya, 2009). The myth of beauty Being surrounded by so many media with so many skinny women raises the question of what actually can be called an ideal or perfect female figure. The description of beauty described by the media seems to be quite similar to a Barbie doll: a thin and tall figure, always smiling and ready to be played with. The ideal body shape broadcasted by media is actually of skeletal and underweight woman. The representation of skinny women is supported by media to such an extent that it became the standard for the ideal body for Miss American contests, where most of the contestants weigh much less than 15% of their expected body weight and therefore giving a clear cut message that it’s ok to be underweight but still you can look pretty (University of California, 2007). An ideal female image with a thin and toned figure has played the role of brainwasher in influencing the females. This myth of ideal beauty results in continuous dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction surrounding women & cultural acceptance of classification of this Barbie-doll body type to be the ideal makes most women feel that their bodies are inadequate, as they tend to compare themselves with the figures of super skinny body. This results into major health problems like eating disorders and emotional deprivation. Hoax of media in promoting an illusion about beauty – a contemporary dilemma: Mandel, a teacher at Arizona State University, believes that the entire idea behind using ultra-thin models is to develop complexes in the minds of women and force them to seek inspiration from these beauties. In this way, advertising seeks to increase the consumer ship of the products like beauty boxes or diet pills. First a problem is given and then a solution is offered. Mandel says, “It’s better to use extremely thin models because that’s what makes women feel bad about themselves and want to buy the products advertised.” (CANWEST NEWS SERVICE Saturday, February 18, 2006). The magazines earn great money by targeting women and imposing false standards of beauty on them. Therefore, the people of media, behind the creation of false idea of beauty are genuinely clever, as they know how to be benefitted and play with the self-consciousness of women. Thus, "the images that are presented in advertising are designed to create an illusion, a fantasy ideal that will keep women continually consuming. The influential power of the diet, fashion, cosmetic and beauty industries and their advertising strategies target this...” The media targets women by linking ideal beauty with different products, and women been frequently evaluated on the basis of these stereotypical standards of beauty fall prey to the standards imposed to them. The magazines provide solutions in the form of advices and tips for different types of diets. However, the dieting plans promoted by these magazines are often useless or provide temporary solution resulting in regaining more weight. As a result, by presenting these unattainable solutions, they make women continually consuming their products and gaining huge profits. The undeserved publicity given to thin and unhealthy female figures by media, pressurizes and imposes women to keep using the products being endorsed by them. The purpose of creating such unrealistic image of women is to maximize the profit as women will keep spending on the products (e.g. cosmetics) and therefore assuring their profit. The most frequently targeted population is the youth as they have a tendency to find their ideals in these artificial images of media and start spending money on diet industry to attain an imposed criterion of beauty. The women are often affected by this illusion of beauty so much that they start comparing themselves with the so called ideal female body without realizing that they are only looking at the modified and edited images that were previously not so unreal. What is particularly disturbing about the construction of the digitally modified ideal is that many young women who compare themselves to these images do not realize all the computer work. The impact of media’s fake portrayal of the female body The media has a strong influence on shaping a culture. The values and behaviors of people are often shaped unconsciously by the ideologies and principles described in media. It is not unusual that advertisements are not just playing the role of market booster for products they promote, but also supplies ideals of beauty and perfection, and this leads to a growing desire in youth to carry a popular image of being “cool”. However, the extremity of this impact is not often verified. A perfect example of the influence of these advertisements is the growing level of distress and depression in female college students, being reported in a journal of Canadian Academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 2004. The advertisement gives us a description of women as pretty, young and smiling species. These images “invade” a woman’s mind with the unrealistic image and leave her with no option but to work in order to correspond to these standards. Only in the year 2007, in the U.S., about 90% of the surgical and non-surgical practices were carried out on women as reported by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Emotional impacts This unnatural body standard pressed by media results in women getting increasing worried about gaining fats in the form of larger hips, or rounded bellies… The fear of rejection leads them to shape up the areas that naturally store more fat in the female body and are more difficult to shape since they are the base of their beauty. When they fail to attain this picture of a perfect body shape they start getting frustrated and ruining their lives as they feel they are not capable to meet the demands of their society. This feeling of dismissal make them emotionally dependent upon others who can offer them solutions to deal with the problems, created by these people. To improve their image they actually finish by destructing the real person in them. Biological impacts Eating disorders The demand placed on a woman in our society, to change her into a size-zero, results that these women wait for some magic or end up fighting with diseases like depression or eating disorders. In the US, the dissatisfaction is so current that being concerned about maintaining a thin figure is considered to be typical of a woman. This dissatisfaction leads to eating disorders, characterized by strict alterations in eating habits as well as certain physiological changes. Approximately 7 million women around the world suffer from one of the eating disorders (Serder, 2004). However the health risks posed by this dissatisfaction are not the worst part of the story. The most regretful thing is how teenagers and adult females start feeling about themselves. They start losing confidence about their personalities and spend their time and energy to achieve a perfect body, which assures them a healthy life, good relations and a happier future even if it is not true (Wendy and Katherine, 2004). Anorexia A renowned singer Karen Carpenter died in 1983 due to heart attack while fighting with anorexia. Some of the characteristics that women suffering from anorexia nervosa encounter are an irrational panic when dealing with obesity, a preoccupation with their weight and food, a distorted body-image and persistent starvation. These results in losing 85% of body weight in the patients suffering from this disease (University of California, 2009). There are a number of other reasons responsible for this disorder, but it is not untrue that the role played by media by declaring these skinny women as beautiful is very important. Bulimia nervosa Bulimia is also an eating disorder, a little bit similar to Anorexia that severely affects women. However, bulimia is classified by a binge eating followed by purging. In binging and purging cycle, women take large quantity of food at one time (binge eating) which is followed by purging in the form of vomiting, laxatives, etc. To lower the excess of calories, the patients often use other methods such as extreme exercise or severe fasting. Alternatives Dove campaign for attempting to present a genuine woman One of the ways for changing the stereotyped image of women is by awareness campaigns. One such Campaign was launched by Dove, for Real Beauty that manifests itself in a report called The Dove Report: Challenging Beauty (The Dove Report: Challenging Beauty, 2004). Dove strongly rejects the narrow definition of beauty and emphasizes the need to bring modifications in media, saying that its time to change the medias representation of beauty. In order to bring a wider and more realistic perception of beauty, a democratic research approach was applied to come up with a definition of beauty that is both optimistic and realistic (Arya,2009). This initiative was the result of a survey concluding that a large percentage of American women consider themselves as average and not beautiful. This problem of self-doubt was seen as really critical and a terrible need was felt to make them feel beautiful. They planned to break the stereotypical myth about beauty and wanted to appreciate and celebrate the real beauty. In this way, women of our society can gain confidence about how they are and will not put themselves into negative and dangerous habits. The study conducted by the company also attempted to find out when women feel the most beautiful. The results revealed that for women the beauty of character holds more importance than the external beauty or appearance. This conclusion provided the evidence that women are not really obsessed with external as media describe them. The media misrepresents how people really feel, describing a fake and false image of what we want. This survey also helped in understanding that for women the idea of inner beauty and self-discovery holds more importance than having a smooth skin or having the "perfect" body. Doves global Campaign for Real Beauty was a beautiful effort in order to change the preconceived notions about beauty and moving it from a stereotypical to a real life beauty for every woman of all shapes and sizes. Other possible measures One greatly applicable idea has recently been adopted by French lawmakers to combat body image issues. They have passed a law that all advertising agencies are forced to follow. The French MP(member of Parliament) Valery Boyer has introduced this law, which makes it mandatory to warn the readers and users of newspaper and magazine advertising, product packaging, political campaigns, art photography, press photos of any changes in the physical appearance of a person that is being made (Horton, 2007). The people who disobey this law are subjected to large amount of charges. The issue of Photoshopped body imagery needs to be seriously handled in our culture as well. Also there should be a check to regulate on body weights of models and unhealthy, underweight models should be banned. There is also a need from the part of parents to help young girls in differentiating the unreal fake picture of media, from the reality. This will help them in reducing complexes and insecurities in very early stages of their lives. The growing use of unattainable look constantly seen in media advertising makes women devote their energies thinking and acting to achieve this illusion or spend money on surgical and medical solutions. This “passion” is truly a brainwashing impact of fashion magazines. There is a need for serious effort to be made to promote the utilization of women of different sizes in media and therefore encourage diversity of feministic beauty. The problem will persist unless and until the media shows a more realistic scope of female form that we see in our life every day. The media should play a more responsible and realistic role in showing women as they are and as they want to be. The desire to attain ultra-thin body can lead to such serious problems like undernourishment in women leading to complexities in pregnancy. The Barbie doll description of women, designated to be an object of play for men, seriously need to be changed, otherwise the self-image problems will continue to bother women. References University of Missouri-Columbia. "Women Of All Sizes Feel Badly About Their Bodies After Seeing Models." ScienceDaily 27 March 2007. 12 December 2009 http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/03/070326152704.htm University of California - San Diego. "New Insights Into Causes Of Anorexia." ScienceDaily 23 July 2009. 12 December 2009 . Horton, Julia. “Slim, but not ultra-thin as fashion show displays model behavior after outcry” 12 February 2007.12 December 2009 http://news.scotsman.com/anorexia/Slim-but-not-ultrathin-as.3345809.jp Arya, Vigyan. “Thin models continue to remain in demand” Tuesday, September 09, 2008. 12 December 2009   L. Serder, Kasey. “Female Body Image and the Mass Media: Perspectives on How Women Internalize the Ideal Beauty Standard” Westminster College 2004. 12 December 2009 http://www.westminstercollege.edu/myriad/index.cfm?parent=...&detail=4475&content=4795 Media Awareness Network. “Beauty and Body Image in the Media" 2009. 12 December 2009 Spettigue, Wendy and Henderson, Katherine A. “Eating Disorders and the Role of the Media”. Journal of Canadian Academy of child and adolescent psychiatry, 2004. 12 December 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533817/ Read More