The ideal female body image is much worse than in the past. Today, women are supposed to be stick thin, but with large breasts- a near physical impossibility. The body must be perfectly toned and if your body needs to be fixed, diet pills will do the trick! Contrary to the images we see in advertisements, the average woman's size is a 14 in the United States, the size at which "plus-sized" clothing begins. The media has created these unhealthy standards for women by only showing skinny, perfect girls in advertisements and on TV shows. These media portrayals of women have been linked to eating disorders and low self-esteem among young girls.
Advertisements often emphasize sexuality and the importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products, but this places too much pressure on young women to focus on their appearance. Advertisements today that are aimed at women are promoting this "thin ideal" and the need to meet such high standards of beauty, and it is almost impossible to not be exposed to these messages when women are viewing so many advertisements on a daily basis.
I think this is an extremely important issue that needs to be talked about this semester in Race, Gender, and the Media. It is an issue that many times gets looked over but has such a substantial impact on young, female minds.
I absolutely agree!!! It is aggravating at times to see some of these women in the media who are 5'10, 110 lbs, and have DD cup size. There might be one woman out of 100,000 that looks like this; and if you drop the breast size down to an A cup and add the 20 pounds they so desperately need, it still leaves young women with an obscure outlook of what a woman's body should look like because we are all made in different shapes, sizes and structures. You can't make yourself taller, widen your shoulders, or lengthen your legs to create this ideal image for yourself. These ads are causing young women to focus on the wrong things in life. This is only touching the surface of problems concerning women in the media. We haven't even touched down on the overwhelming amount of roles that women are suppose to secede to such as sexual, innocent, dominating, and most of all inferior. Because we see these in roles played out in all sorts of advertisements and in the media, it is confusing for young women to figure out who they are... who the masses want them to be... and what there purpose here on earth really is. Imagery of this decree is simply another distraction for all mankind.
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