An article I found online reviews one of the many issues the media has today. This article talks about beauty standards projected on to females that promote insecurities and unrealistic expectations for women. Women from a young age feel a pressure to match what they see on the media that tells them the standard of “beauty”. With the median portraying certain physical attributes to what is beautiful. This can cause women to feel as if they are not beautiful and often causes them to develop a plethora of insecurities and body image issues. The media has a deep understanding of what can leave impressions on women young and old, resulting in using that knowledge to manipulate fears and promote products that can “help” them. The media uses this as one of its many economic tools, as women naturally will associate these beauty standards with whatever product or service that is trying to be sold. While the media sees it as selling and promoting products and services, it is also pushing an agenda. An agenda that has lasted for far too long. These unfair standards have women looking for unrealistic bodies just to feel beautiful and anything different from the medias set standard cannot possibly be beautiful.
After the reading of Chapter 14 in the sociology textbook, I felt that this article perfectly talks about one area of many in which the media creates issues. With media growing in usage and power, todays society is the most prone to influence as it has ever been. Media plants seeds in peoples brains that individuals do not even recognize are there. What people do recognize are insecurities, standards, and stereotypes that we have become accustomed to as a standard due to the media. The media has a particular agenda that it pushes, and it greatly impacts society with ease. There are individuals and groups that go strongly against what the media is trying to do, but that does not mean the majority of society avoids falling victim to the thoughts planted in our brain. Women’s beauty standard is one of many examples, but it is easily identifiable as creating these standards subliminally through advertising, marketing, and media in general can be seen with a simple glance. Another topic that is pushed is men’s standards as well. All of these agendas by the media are believed to be pushed mainly by economic motivation, and society can only hope that the media will change its ways one day.
WORDS: 413
http://mediasmarts.ca/body-image/body-image-girls
Kendall, Diana. 2012. Social Problems in a Diverse Society. 6th edition. Pearson.
ISBN: 9780205152902
Alec's Sociology Studies 