How media is affecting today’s female population.



The Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” shows the unbelievable makeup, styling and Photoshop steps that go into a model’s shoot. Perhaps this will help women rethink “beauty”.


Today, most images of women in the media are based on perfection. Women are often portrayed as Barbie’s perfect ideal: thin, tanned body, blonde hair, and the perfect smile.
Women are changing their appearance based on the focus of fashion magazines, whether it is “200 Ways to Look Hot,” or “Loose Weight Fast!” It is rather disappointing. Women, especially young women, need to learn the real definition of beauty.
The current definition of beauty is based only on physical appearance and powerful communication through mass media assimilated through popular culture.
A recent study in the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” stated that sixty-eight percent of media and advertising set an “unrealistic standard of beauty women can’t ever achieve.”
More than half of the women, (fifty-seven percent), interviewed around the world strongly agree “that attributes of female beauty have become very narrowly defined in today’s world.”
So what is real Beauty? Being beautiful includes more than physical attractiveness. Happiness, confidence, wisdom, dignity and humor are also powerful components of beauty that we tend to forget.
Shocking results in the Dove study revile that forty percent of women “agree they don’t feel comfortable describing themselves as beautiful.” Authentic beauty is a concept that women have difficulty understanding because it is rarely expressed in the popular culture and mass media.
Stephanie Pratt, reality hit star on MTV’s, “The Hills,” revealed to US Magazine her struggle with bulimia. According to the magazine, Pratt struggled with an eating disorder from the pressure she felt to look as skinny as her co-stars. This is just one example of many stories in the media today.
Women feel inadequate because others will judge them by the media’s impossible ‘Barbie standards.’ Images of women in the media can influence our lives and we don’t even know it. For example, women feel they must diet in order to become beautiful, and they become obsessed with their weight which may lead to anorexia. Dove studies revealed, one in three women around the world are dissatisfied with their bodies figure.
Popular culture and mass media should portray a realistic definition of beautiful. Women should not be exploited by the media. Women should be strong, healthy, independent, and self- assured. Physical beauty comes in so many forms. We need to see beautiful as powerful, intelligent and unique, not just about our physical appearance.
We can broaden our ideal of beauty and can support what’s positive. We can bring each other up rather than push each other down. We can set goals, be strong, and still be women. Women need to find realistic and positive role models and realize that beauty is more than skin deep.