This week in class we talked about beauty, media, politics, and sexism. We watched the documentary MissRepresentation and it truly spoke out about all of the dangers our society is putting on younger generations. Well after coming back from class, I got onto Instagram and started looking at the pictures that were uploaded. I came across a lot of pictures that reminded me of how media is portraying beauty. As we saw in the documentary, it is a beauty that a lot of people try to go after but do so in a dangerous way. I saw a picture uploaded with two models from a spanish tv reality show. They are wearing a lot of makeup and the caption says "mirror mirror, who is the prettiest." I was shocked to see how my perception of this picture had changed after viewing the documentary. Before seeing Misrepresentation, I would of liked the picture and just moved on thinking in my head, "Wow, how I wish I looked like those girls." But after seeing this documentary, I became conscious of how wrong it is to be putting images like these with questions like these where young girls can see this.
After analyzing that picture, I continued to scroll down and then found another picture of what media portrays women to be. In this picture, we can see Kate Middleton described as flawless even though she is playing cricket but with high heels. This just shows us how our entire life we have been influenced by this media that tells us what we are supposed to look like. And as they mentioned in the documentary, if we don't look like this then we are not accepted. I just found this very sad because even though we think that we are going towards the right direction, we still see that we have a long way to go. Young girls are getting very involved in these social media and this is what they are seeing every time. They then start to hate themselves because they don't look like this. But who does? Not even these models or public figures look like this. They are photoshopped and are directed to stand and pose in specific ways.
If we do not act now and take a stand against these social media and these news outlets, our younger generation will be more affected than my generation is. We are putting beauty as a priority over intelligence and success. I believe that we must use what is causing the problem to solve the problem. We should not only regulate these media but we should use this media to show what real women look like. To shine light on what really matters. To show young girls what a successful women looks like. Because as one of the quotes from the documentary said, "you can't be what you can't see," and if these girls are not seeing what real women are and are exposed to photoshopped pictures, then they will aim to be this way. It will great an even bigger mess because who knows what other things beside eating disorders will need to happen before we take a stand.
I definitely agree. It is truly crazy how much the media, especially social media affects our perceptions of beauty subconsciously. It is one of those things that you never really think about, but subconsciously it always plays a role in how you look at pictures and whether you like them or not. I think by bringing light to this situation, because it is something that goes without notice, we can start to eliminate this misconception of beauty and focus on the things that matter.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate how misleading the media is especially to younger generations. I absolutely agree that social media like Instagram opens the door for influential images and ideas to flood the public eye. It also doesn't help that these unrealistic expectations are being delivered to us in the most convenient ways possible, through our phones, computers, etc. Just like Cristina said, and as it was stated in the documentary, if people don't look like these portrayed images of beauty then they are not accepted. Why should people, and especially younger generations live their lives hating what they look like because they cant make themselves look like photoshopped images? Focusing on what really matters that makes up an individual is a change that is very much needed, and it definitely needs to be projected as loud as the phony images have been.
ReplyDeleteI liked the movie Missrepresentation. I thought it was a good way for society to public their opinions about women in the society. Everything now a days is so revolved around how one looks, or what a mans standards are of a women. The media plays a big role in influencing all of this. There are unrealistic pictures of people online and in the media that girls are bending over backwards to look like. They are getting unrealistic views of what they should look like because a certain ad or picture is seen as "beautiful". Majority of things in the media are not real and women and especially young girls need to know that and embrace the beauty they have and be their own original self instead of trying to be someone else that they'd never be happy with.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you for sure. I think the discrepancy between retail and reality is reaching an increasingly dire level—what has to happen before we address the crisis of self-image? However, I don't think that beauty standards are the cause of problems like eating disorders, depression, etc... They're absolutely, indisputably related, but I view them as more of a symptom than a cause. In class and in everyday life I occasionally hear conversations about how our distorted standards of beauty are the root of girls' self-loathing, vanity/obsession with looks, and how those beauty standards are the direct cause of things like eating disorders and other mental health issues. I disagree. I think that beneath the fad diets and the tabloid pregnancy speculations lies a much deadlier message, and it is one that permeates more of Western society than standards for beauty: women are inferior and they exist to serve. I've mentioned before that eating disorders are almost never about the food, and they're not about weight loss either, not really. If they were truly about being beautiful, eating disorders wouldn't have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness; people wouldn't continue with disordered behaviors after their hair started coming out in clumps and their teeth started yellowing; people's confidence would rise with weight loss instead of plummeting. But eating disorders are not about being beautiful; they are about being perfect, and from our first day forward women in particular receive the message that the only way to be perfect is to disappear. With the continuing ubiquitousness of the media and its imagery, eating disorders have become an efficient way to express the shame that comes from occupying space one feels they do not deserve to fill. The narrow expressions of acceptable beauty, then, are extremely destructive, but they are the most deeply so when they interact with other messages telling women they ought not to exist except for when men desire them. But even when they are objects of desire, our standards for desirability are such caricatures of reality that they are essentially unattainable— which only redoubles the conviction that we commit a crime by simply being. And if we feel unjustified in our existence, we could never have the audacity to demand a voice to which others pay attention, so we no longer pose a threat to patriarchy because we do not have a place in it. The only thing the media has done is package ideals of nonexistence in a pretty bow of two-dimensional cartoon ideals of beauty. If we wish to truly address the issue at its heart, we would have to examine the very structure of our society and eradicate all those parts (and there are so, so many) which have hatred mixed into their cement.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the eating disorders. However, I think it's both. I think that beauty and other bigger factors go into play. I wasn't trying to say that eating disorders is what we get from these images. I meant that eating disorders and other things are happening and we need to act now to stop this from continuing.
DeleteI think that you make a great point here and I agree that things like Instagram are playing a heavy roll in skewing our views of what women "should" look like. We constantly are picking on which different filters we should use or how to edit the lighting to try to make ourselves look to this "ideal" that society holds. I think that the movie Miss Representation did a great job at showing how young girls are affected by things like this and how important it is that we stop it. No one is perfect, and we need to own our imperfections instead of editing them out.
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