Beauty in the Eye of the Media

The media today has a very altered perspective of beauty. Beauty is a subjective thing, without a doubt, so it is difficult to define or label, but whoever is deciding what “beauty” is in today’s society has got it all wrong.

Women are objectified now more than ever in the media. In ads and commercials, women are portrayed as a thing, not as a living person. They are portrayed as a want or desire or a lust, not as a human being. The women in these ads are not real. They have pounds of makeup on their faces, their hair is all done up, and they are photo shopped to look paper thin and perfect. But the fact is, nobody can be that perfect. Nobody is that perfect. That girl in the ad doesn’t even exist.

The media has made beauty unattainable for women. Young girls, teenagers, and grown women are constantly striving to look like the models in these ads. They want to dress like the models, wear their hair like the models, and be as skinny as the model, but no one could possibly ever look like that because the model herself doesn’t even look like that.

Beauty has become such a big part of modern day American culture, and I think it’s more of a negative thing than a positive one. Seeing ads like this doesn’t make women feel better about themselves, it doesn’t help little girls grow up in the right mindset, and it doesn’t give women the respect we rightfully deserve. Ads today are demeaning to women, which is interesting when you think about it because women are held to a higher standard in the workplace, as if we are not as good as men.

Ads are just a way of using a woman’s body to sell something, and that, to me, doesn’t seem fair. What do you think about today’s ads? How to you feel about society’s expectations of women to look perfect? And how do you think this is affecting the little girls who are surrounded by this from a very young age?