Beauty Standards Research Paper

Media Beauty Standards ' Effects on Women 's Self Esteem Beauty standards, which vary but nevertheless exist in all societies, are generally relatively narrow. For instance, in China women were forced to bind their feet for centuries in order to be regarded as beautiful. Women who failed to have small feet were seen as un-marriageable. Similarly, specific beauty conventions exist also in the United States and other Western countries. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, American society 's stereotypically ideal measurements for a woman 's figure were a 36-inch bust, 24-inch waist, and 36-inch hips. The full-figured woman was thus deemed attractive. This changed in the late twentieth century when the slim, slender, and "fit" body became the ideal figure for both men and women. For women, the "ideal" female body grew slimmer over the decades starting with the 1970s (Sherrow 55). American society moved slowly from admiring female figures like Marilyn Monroe 's and Susan Hayworth to obsessing about increasingly thinner figures. Research has in fact
This does clearly enough play a crucial role in the growth of the self-confidence of girls from a young age. The research documented in the movie highlights for instance how 30% of nine year old girls are already concerned with their weight. The girls themselves display signs of dissatisfaction with the extremity of thinness associated with beauty but oblige nevertheless and narrate stories of attempts to diet or concerns about their body. This deep concern with one 's external image from a young age impacts without doubt the eating habits of the girls and could lead to the development of eating disorders and problems in their interaction with the other