Ideal In American Culture
Jane Castellani
Trista Martin
LA 202-OL6
5/15/2012
Ideal Image
It’s pretty easy to see that the beauty ideal in American culture is thin. The media seems to target women—especially through advertisements, shows, celebrities, and other media outlets. Most of the media industry promotes being thin and nearly condemn any who dare to stand out from what the entertainment world deems beautiful.
It’s come to the point that if a girl, regardless of age, is concerned, even to the point of obsession, over her weight nobody would think anything of it. That’s because it has become a social norm to want to be thinner and diet. This desire to be Hollywood skinny is just so prevalent among women of all ages. (Haley K. Dohnt and Marika Tiggemann, …show more content…
2006).
This is the information age—an age where everything you could possibly want to know is literally right at your fingertips. We are constantly surrounded by the overwhelming power that the media industry holds. Whether it is through printed advertisement, things on television, sound, and the strongest of them all, the Internet. “Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces” That’s what a New York Times writer said about the amount of ads popping up across America. These ads serve both as something to teach and inform, and as a reminder to people that they’re not as beautiful, strong, smart, or powerful as those pictured in the ads. Something that they don’t’ mention is that these models have gone through some sort of Photoshop work; have had an extensive amount of care put into their hair and makeup prior to the shot; and the people have gone through ridiculous training and diet; instead, they play them all off as being naturally that way versus them being fantasized to perfection.
A good example of how quickly the ideal image from media can consume a person’s self-confidence is from a study on Fiji. Sometime in 1995, when TV was first introduced to Fiji, the island was hit by a huge increase in eating disorders since then. Around 1999, researchers from Harvard said that western images and values from media led to anorexia and bulimia among the Fijian people who, prior to the medias introduction, valued the fuller figure. It makes you give it a second thought to how strong the influence of media really must be—to be able to alter a culture’s perspective on what they found attractive and what they now find attractive thanks to media.
These days it’s a challenge to find a girl that’s honestly satisfied with the way she looks. There is a documentary written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011, called “Miss Representation”, which describes the challenges women and girls go through as a result of the mainstream media’s focus on physical value as a means to measure success in our culture. One of the statistics from the film talks about how teenagers spend an average of ten hours and forty-five minutes per day consuming media (this includes watching TV, watching movies, reading magazines, listening to music, and going online).
Girls are constantly bombarded with an infinite array of magazines that are filled from page to page of unrealistic images of flawless women and celebrities who appear to be perfect, when in reality these images are airbrushed and the amount of work some celebrities put into their appearance is ridiculous. They are contributing to the creation of a culture that is focusing more on the external beauty than the internal. Young girls are developing eating disorders in an attempt to look like some models but they many times don’t realize that they’ll never achieve a perfection the models themselves have yet to grasp. The girls especially need to be reminded that these celebrities pay trainers and nutritionists so that they can look the way they do and that all magazines will airbrush their models to achieve what the media has deemed as perfect.
Eleven-year-olds getting bikini waxes, nine-year-olds who are conscious of their weight, and from a survey on Yahoo! Shine, there are 25% of tweens and teens who considered plastic surgery based on what they see on television. Two-thirds of children eight to eighteen already have a cellphone, which raises the statistic by 39% from five years ago. Three-quarters of kids have an iPod or other type of MP3 player, which is four times as many as five years ago. The shows that are popular on TV right now are negatively affecting girls and are warping the views of what they view as “normal”. As an example, out of all of the girls that watch reality television, 78% thought the gossip was normal vs. the 54% who didn’t watch. Another whopping 74% of girls who watch reality TV also believe that their physical appearance is the most important things, as compared with 42% who don’t watch. (Jennifer L. Hartstein, 2012).
We don’t have all of the wholesome television like we used to. No longer are shows like Gilligans Island (1964-1967), which simply showed a shipwrecked crew, trying to find a way home in a comical way, I Love Lucy was about a wife who got herself into trouble through various silly schemes, and Get Smart (1965-1970) there was a clumsy, naïve, but able spy, who applied justice with humor. Instead, our shows mainly consist of reality television that pretty much glorify sex, partying, and unrealistic drama.
Now, arguably, some have said that the media is a positive influence on these very impressionable kids and teens. Many modern-day issues wouldn’t be as popular among the younger crowd without the medias constant reminder of the problem. Things like the “green” movement wouldn’t have blown up like it had without the help of the media. Through media young kids are exposed to educational television that promotes learning, creativity, and, many times, friendship and sharing as well.
In addition to the educational side of the media, it also could be positively used to introduce minorities and people with other beliefs or sexual preferences, into our society and present these people as they would any other person. We often hear references to “the gay community”, but Manning (1996) speaks, reminding us that multiculturalism is not so much about defining groups as it is about accepting individuals. If not for the modern media glorifying and promoting homosexuals in a positive light then we may very well still be condemning them to the point of physical abuse now as we did before in earlier times.
In a study from 2008 by Nielsen, shown in an article in the Los Angeles Times, shows that kids between the ages of two to five watch up to thirty-two hours of TV a week, and kids between six and eleven watch up to twenty-eight through live and recorded TV, and also through playing video games.
Senior vice president of insights, analysis, and policy at Nielsen, Patricia McDonough, was quoted saying: “They’re using all the technology available in their households, they’re using the DVD, they’re on the Internet.
They’re not giving up any media—they’re just picking up more.” So in a time where kids are watching over twenty-four hours worth of media throughout the week, is it still right to think that all they’re absorbing is harmless?
Simply put: all things have both a pro and a con, but it would seem that overall, the medias vast influence is doing more to harm our society and women’s self-confidence than to help it. We need a movement that will promote a healthy lifestyle that doesn’t require so much fantasy and fiction mixed in. So many people get wrapped up in reality television and the life of celebrities that they try and live those people’s lives instead of their own.
The old Hollywood star Cary Grant was quoted saying: “Even I want to be Cary Grant.” We need to show that these models and actresses aren’t all smooth skin and thin bodies by birth but are idealized in the minds of Hollywood to look and dress the way they do, and that it’s not nature. We need a wakeup call to what is truly reality and what is pure …show more content…
fiction
Women naturally are more aware of their appearance so that they may attract a mate but one must always be aware not to be too critical of your own body because it doesn’t look like the one in the magazine.
You can’t look like them.
Don’t be naïve to think that the media is just all fun, but also, one can’t be so critical so that they would believe that the media is all bad. We need a happy medium between the two of them so we can enjoy the media and return it to its roots, which was to simply entertain.
Works Cited:
Dohnt, Haley K., and Marika Tiggemann. The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Vol. 35. Springer Science+Business, 2006. Web.
Story, Louise “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad.”
New York Times, 15th January 2007, Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html?pagewanted=all "TV Brings Eating Disorders to Fiji." BBC News. BBC, 20 May 1999. Web. 15 May 2012. .
Hartstein, Jennifer L. “Media and Tween Girls: Creating a Positive Influence.” Psychology Today, 9th April 2012, n. pag. Web.
Gold, Matea. "Kids watch more than a day of TV each week." Los Angeles Times, 27th October 2009, n. pag. Web. 1 May. 2012.
Manning, Toby (1996). All for one and one for all. New Statesman and Society, 9,
25-26.
Trista Martin
LA 202-OL6
5/15/2012
Ideal Image
It’s pretty easy to see that the beauty ideal in American culture is thin. The media seems to target women—especially through advertisements, shows, celebrities, and other media outlets. Most of the media industry promotes being thin and nearly condemn any who dare to stand out from what the entertainment world deems beautiful.
It’s come to the point that if a girl, regardless of age, is concerned, even to the point of obsession, over her weight nobody would think anything of it. That’s because it has become a social norm to want to be thinner and diet. This desire to be Hollywood skinny is just so prevalent among women of all ages. (Haley K. Dohnt and Marika Tiggemann, …show more content…
2006).
This is the information age—an age where everything you could possibly want to know is literally right at your fingertips. We are constantly surrounded by the overwhelming power that the media industry holds. Whether it is through printed advertisement, things on television, sound, and the strongest of them all, the Internet. “Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces” That’s what a New York Times writer said about the amount of ads popping up across America. These ads serve both as something to teach and inform, and as a reminder to people that they’re not as beautiful, strong, smart, or powerful as those pictured in the ads. Something that they don’t’ mention is that these models have gone through some sort of Photoshop work; have had an extensive amount of care put into their hair and makeup prior to the shot; and the people have gone through ridiculous training and diet; instead, they play them all off as being naturally that way versus them being fantasized to perfection.
A good example of how quickly the ideal image from media can consume a person’s self-confidence is from a study on Fiji. Sometime in 1995, when TV was first introduced to Fiji, the island was hit by a huge increase in eating disorders since then. Around 1999, researchers from Harvard said that western images and values from media led to anorexia and bulimia among the Fijian people who, prior to the medias introduction, valued the fuller figure. It makes you give it a second thought to how strong the influence of media really must be—to be able to alter a culture’s perspective on what they found attractive and what they now find attractive thanks to media.
These days it’s a challenge to find a girl that’s honestly satisfied with the way she looks. There is a documentary written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011, called “Miss Representation”, which describes the challenges women and girls go through as a result of the mainstream media’s focus on physical value as a means to measure success in our culture. One of the statistics from the film talks about how teenagers spend an average of ten hours and forty-five minutes per day consuming media (this includes watching TV, watching movies, reading magazines, listening to music, and going online).
Girls are constantly bombarded with an infinite array of magazines that are filled from page to page of unrealistic images of flawless women and celebrities who appear to be perfect, when in reality these images are airbrushed and the amount of work some celebrities put into their appearance is ridiculous. They are contributing to the creation of a culture that is focusing more on the external beauty than the internal. Young girls are developing eating disorders in an attempt to look like some models but they many times don’t realize that they’ll never achieve a perfection the models themselves have yet to grasp. The girls especially need to be reminded that these celebrities pay trainers and nutritionists so that they can look the way they do and that all magazines will airbrush their models to achieve what the media has deemed as perfect.
Eleven-year-olds getting bikini waxes, nine-year-olds who are conscious of their weight, and from a survey on Yahoo! Shine, there are 25% of tweens and teens who considered plastic surgery based on what they see on television. Two-thirds of children eight to eighteen already have a cellphone, which raises the statistic by 39% from five years ago. Three-quarters of kids have an iPod or other type of MP3 player, which is four times as many as five years ago. The shows that are popular on TV right now are negatively affecting girls and are warping the views of what they view as “normal”. As an example, out of all of the girls that watch reality television, 78% thought the gossip was normal vs. the 54% who didn’t watch. Another whopping 74% of girls who watch reality TV also believe that their physical appearance is the most important things, as compared with 42% who don’t watch. (Jennifer L. Hartstein, 2012).
We don’t have all of the wholesome television like we used to. No longer are shows like Gilligans Island (1964-1967), which simply showed a shipwrecked crew, trying to find a way home in a comical way, I Love Lucy was about a wife who got herself into trouble through various silly schemes, and Get Smart (1965-1970) there was a clumsy, naïve, but able spy, who applied justice with humor. Instead, our shows mainly consist of reality television that pretty much glorify sex, partying, and unrealistic drama.
Now, arguably, some have said that the media is a positive influence on these very impressionable kids and teens. Many modern-day issues wouldn’t be as popular among the younger crowd without the medias constant reminder of the problem. Things like the “green” movement wouldn’t have blown up like it had without the help of the media. Through media young kids are exposed to educational television that promotes learning, creativity, and, many times, friendship and sharing as well.
In addition to the educational side of the media, it also could be positively used to introduce minorities and people with other beliefs or sexual preferences, into our society and present these people as they would any other person. We often hear references to “the gay community”, but Manning (1996) speaks, reminding us that multiculturalism is not so much about defining groups as it is about accepting individuals. If not for the modern media glorifying and promoting homosexuals in a positive light then we may very well still be condemning them to the point of physical abuse now as we did before in earlier times.
In a study from 2008 by Nielsen, shown in an article in the Los Angeles Times, shows that kids between the ages of two to five watch up to thirty-two hours of TV a week, and kids between six and eleven watch up to twenty-eight through live and recorded TV, and also through playing video games.
Senior vice president of insights, analysis, and policy at Nielsen, Patricia McDonough, was quoted saying: “They’re using all the technology available in their households, they’re using the DVD, they’re on the Internet.
They’re not giving up any media—they’re just picking up more.” So in a time where kids are watching over twenty-four hours worth of media throughout the week, is it still right to think that all they’re absorbing is harmless?
Simply put: all things have both a pro and a con, but it would seem that overall, the medias vast influence is doing more to harm our society and women’s self-confidence than to help it. We need a movement that will promote a healthy lifestyle that doesn’t require so much fantasy and fiction mixed in. So many people get wrapped up in reality television and the life of celebrities that they try and live those people’s lives instead of their own.
The old Hollywood star Cary Grant was quoted saying: “Even I want to be Cary Grant.” We need to show that these models and actresses aren’t all smooth skin and thin bodies by birth but are idealized in the minds of Hollywood to look and dress the way they do, and that it’s not nature. We need a wakeup call to what is truly reality and what is pure …show more content…
fiction
Women naturally are more aware of their appearance so that they may attract a mate but one must always be aware not to be too critical of your own body because it doesn’t look like the one in the magazine.
You can’t look like them.
Don’t be naïve to think that the media is just all fun, but also, one can’t be so critical so that they would believe that the media is all bad. We need a happy medium between the two of them so we can enjoy the media and return it to its roots, which was to simply entertain.
Works Cited:
Dohnt, Haley K., and Marika Tiggemann. The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Vol. 35. Springer Science+Business, 2006. Web.
Story, Louise “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad.”
New York Times, 15th January 2007, Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html?pagewanted=all "TV Brings Eating Disorders to Fiji." BBC News. BBC, 20 May 1999. Web. 15 May 2012. .
Hartstein, Jennifer L. “Media and Tween Girls: Creating a Positive Influence.” Psychology Today, 9th April 2012, n. pag. Web.
Gold, Matea. "Kids watch more than a day of TV each week." Los Angeles Times, 27th October 2009, n. pag. Web. 1 May. 2012.
Manning, Toby (1996). All for one and one for all. New Statesman and Society, 9,
25-26.