Fashion and Flesh - Essay Example

Fashion and Flesh “Thin is in” is a slogan that often embraces the covers of fashion magazines or is seen above the image of a beautiful Hollywood starlet. As celebrities and fashion models are the idols of many young women - and some that are not so young - these women believe that what they are seeing gracing these covers are ideal images, the perfect female bodies. It is because of this that many females use these images as guidelines for how they should also look. They compare themselves to these false images, deciding what about them that they do not like in comparison to these models.

Unfortunately, males also look to these images to determine whether or not the females in their lives can compare, or if they have made the cut to be considered attractive. Television, movies, and magazines have greatly altered our perception of what a normal, healthy, beautiful human being should look like. Plus-size models, though they do exist, are very few and far between. It is almost impossible to find a magazine or watch a television show or movie that does not have a very thin female as the center of attention, or as a supporting cast.

Yet when people in real life look around at the other people surrounding them, they tend to become confused at how many different body types there really are in this world and how very few of them can actually be compared to those on the silver screen. Unfortunately, the same perception is made as these people look at themselves. To constantly see size two waists on television and then to look down at your own size five body has the ability to be discomforting. It suddenly becomes a dream, a goal, to look just like the skinny frame viewed on television.

Eating disorders have become very common in young females, and many of these cases can be traced back to the lack of self-esteem they feel after having viewed too many of these thin starlets. They either expect themselves to look the same, or else are expected by others to be just as thin. Becoming the glamorized perception of beautiful has become a dangerous, unhealthy task. As punishment for not looking as thin and as beautiful as the models and television, girls begin to withhold food from themselves, or exercise to the point of exhaustion.

The altered perception that females have in regard to natural beauty essentially results in them altering their perception of themselves, and thus their physical appearance. Instead of being role models and promoting the beauty of diversity, these images speak for themselves when other girls consider themselves not physically good enough. Males tend to set as much in stock of airbrushed females as regular females do. They become attracted to the faces and bodies that they see on the screen that, just like females, they expect to see the same images in public - amongst their friends, sisters, and girlfriends.

The models and stars have set standards that many males expect females to pass, if not over-exceed, and they become disappointed when they do not. There are many males that do not even want to date a female unless they are as thin and beautiful as one of their favorite female television stars. Natural beauty is a thing of the past, back in the days when movie stars wore their curves with pride. What is most unfortunate is that many females, especially the young girls, are unaware that the images they are seeing nowadays in magazines and on television are inaccurate.

Some of these women are naturally thin, a few of them exercise or have personal trainers, and yet there are many that are simply airbrushed to look that good. Natural beauty has been replaced with makeup, weight loss programs, and the need to compete with a false image of what beauty supposedly is. Beauty rests in the diversity of appearance, not with being able to wear the smallest pair of jeans.