Cheyenne Jourdan
English 102
Pyramid Final Draft

A Distorted Image

When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world. --Oprah Winfrey

American people are bombarded with our society’s ideals of beauty day in and out. The National Eating Disorders Association states that more than 80 percent of Americans watch television for more than three hours a day. Our media plays a pivotal role in the way that we structure our thinking as well as our idea of normality and beauty. As Jean Kilbourne explained in her documentary “Killing Us Softly”, advertising is a “powerful educational source” and the media sells not only products, but also the ideal of what one “should” consider standard to be, do, and look like. These societal standards of feminine beauty are nearly impossible to reach though, and as the media glorification of women with unhealthy body types, unnaturally flawless faces, and perfect hair remains, so do the consequences of the desire for these things.
Corporate Profit
Corporations profit massively from American media consumerism. Advertising in media is one of the most instrumental constructs of our society. We see advertising in our faces everywhere from bus stops, cars, billboards, magazines, websites, and television. According to Kilbourne the average US citizen sees over 3500 ads per day and advertisement is a $250 billion per year industry, just in the States.ibid We also digest these advertisements subconsciously, as most people claim that they don’t affect them personally. American advertisers appeal to women’s insecurities and have sculpted a system where the thinner (and consequently considered more attractive women) sell the most products, because the consumer hopes to emulate the women selling it . This image that they’re chasing is impossible, because even the models don’t look as perfect in print after editing and Photoshop as they do in real life. This intangible standard of beauty has created a very profitable cycle for corporations. The “prettier” women are by their created standards; the more apt normal women are to continue to buy their product to try to look like the models, and the more money the company makes to create new ads that perpetuate the process once again.
Violence Against Women
Unfortunately, in the process of selling products, women become viewed as them too. Women’s bodies are used as objects like tables, video games, or just about any other random item that is being sold by the corporation. They are posed in positions that make them submissive and subservient to their male counterparts, who in turn take the role of the aggressors. Advertisements, in their biased and hyper-sexualized nature dehumanize and objectify the view of women in society. The National Organization for Men Against Sexism defines objectification as:
Portrayals of women in ways and contexts which suggest that women are objects to be looked at, ogled, even touched, or used, anonymous things or commodities perhaps to be purchased, perhaps taken - and once tired of, even discarded, often to be replaced by a newer, younger edition; certainly not treated as full human beings with equal rights and needs.
Objectifying a person is one of the first justifications to hurting them. According to Francine Rosselli, this adopted idea that women are objects “can increase men’s acceptance of rape myths, interpersonal violence, and gender role stereotyping”. Because violence and sex are so closely linked together in advertising, women are viewed by society as sex objects and victims. The more common this view of sexual violence is against women, the more acceptable it becomes. Journalist Elizabeth Plank reports that a study conducted in 2010 showed that men exposed to sexually degrading depictions of women in video games revealed a "greater likelihood to sexually harass women and a greater accessibility of a woman as sex object" and a similar study from 2008 showed that men who had been subjected to sexualized video game female characters also felt less empathetic for female victims of sexual harassment and were more likely to blame the victims.
Eating Disorders
The media’s unhealthy obsession with unhealthy women is a main contributor to the phenomena of eating disorders in young women. Women of all ages go to unhealthy and sometimes even life-threatening extents to look like the ladies in the media (who are usually on the BMI scale for anorexia) that they consider beautiful. Wendy Spettigue, M.D., claims that women’s magazines contain “10.5 times as many diet promotions as men’s magazines”. This shows that women are directly being targeted and encouraged to become thinner to be considered better looking. Plus, eating disorders tend to develop in adolescence and 83% of adolescent girls read fashion magazines for over four hours a week. So very early in their lives, very young girls are inevitably being conditioned into an American standard of beauty that’s nearly impossible to reach, and pushing their bodies close to the limit to obtain it. This incessantly digested view of an unrealistic ideal body, though, directly affects the way all women consider their shape and size. Johnathon Rader explains that 90% of women overestimate their body size and four out of five women are dissatisfied with their appearance while only 29% of them are actually overweight. Unfortunately eating disorders are a mental illness that are not easily cured and can be lethal.
Changes Women’s Values?
The Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse claims that the hyper-sexualization and objectification of women in the media drastically shifts their values and dissuades them from academic activities. The Clearinghouse also alleges that women who self-objectify are less likely to run for political office and less likely to vote. In reality, most if not all women self-objectify yet women voters outnumbered men 70.4 million to 60.7 million in the 2008 Presidential election. Dr. Stahl also reports that females tend to be able to recognize and respond negatively toward sexist advertisements more easily than men for many reasons. So, although they are being targeted by advertisements in the media, they are more aware of this fact and therefore more cognizant of its effects. Moreover, women are certainly just as capable as men and prove it day in and out by fulfilling every role in society just as effectively and impressively as their male counterparts. Advertisements have yet to deter women from earning both more Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees than men in recent years.
Where Do We Go From Here
It’s time to change the way we look at our standard of beauty. What type of society do we want to live in? One where millions of young women are dying in attempts to shrink themselves down to what they saw on the billboard above them? Women are not perfect nor product, they are people. We need to reconstruct what we allow to be sold to us by these companies, because it’s our consumer dollars that fuel the advertisements. Promoting images that perpetuate health issues and sexual violence should be frowned upon and curtail. Our global view of beauty should be one that’s healthy and all encompassing.

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[ 1 ]. Up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder (anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder) in the U.S.3