Discovering the solution to changing the perception of beauty in the media
Part 1: Abstract
Beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, which pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Every day mass media portrays beauty as something specific and tells women if they want to be beautiful, they have to look just like the girl on the television. The definition of what is beautiful is something that is constantly debated. Every day mass media shows what is acceptable to be called beauty. Society make women who do not fit the television standard of beauty believe that they are not beautiful. How does the misrepresentation of beauty affect the way women view themselves and how they are viewed by society? What are the roles that society takes in encouraging this view of beauty? What are the steps that are being taken to change the views that are being presented? This research will answer this question by analyzing how women were portrayed in the media back then to how beauty was viewed in the media in the back in the day to now in the present day how beauty is viewed and how the definition of beauty has changed over time. This research gives a proposal to how we can fix the definition of beauty.
Part 2: Presentation of Findings
Background on Beauty
The media has been the main source of many influences on the society, among which is the misrepresentation of beauty. The media has changed the way beauty is viewed; certain ads and tv shows have caused viewers to acquire a similar minded definition of what beauty is. “The word beauty is such a controversial word,” says Hardison. “I think that the more that there’s exposure (of different kinds of looks), and as long as you expose them consistently, you give people a chance to see what could also be beautiful besides what came before.” (CNN). Hardison is saying if we expose people to different kinds of looks, we will allow them to see what is also beautiful, but this is opposite of what media does. The media only shows certain looks which cause viewers to believe that those looks are the only ones that considered beautiful and everything else is not .”The unreasonable standards of beauty for women intersect majorly with race. Women shown in the media are often white, or are given white features. Skin lightening is often used. One famous example of that is in a L’oreal ad that Beyonce did, where her skin was drastically lightened. L’oreal denies the claim that they lightened her skin, but the photo shows a definite difference. Often, if a woman of color with very dark skin is shown, she is portrayed to be “wild” or overly sexual. Latino and Asian women are also often presented in ways that make them appear to be white and not their true ethnicity.”(MOW) This evidence proves how beauty is distorted by the media. Lightening the skin color of dark skin women shows how they view the Afro-American women’s beauty. When the speakers say, “ wild” and “overly sexual” it emphasizes the views that people have on being dark skin, showing the media bring their distorted of what it means to be beautiful onto the viewers.
2. Where did this Perception of women first start?
In the 1950s women were just considered to be housewives and nothing else “By the late 19th century, commercial beauty preparations had become more readily available, leading to new beauty industry technological developments in the early 20th century. Beauty salons and the wider availability of cosmetics revolutionized the way women saw themselves”(Ribeir: facing beauty). The concept of defining what beauty was happened around the time in which, access to things like cosmetics were surfacing onto the scene. Women were now able to use the new developments created in the beauty industry to shape their views of what beauty was now becoming. These views that were shaped are ones that were not positives. It definitely did not help in representing the beauty of all women, it caused women to develop the mindset that, to look beautiful they had to use these cosmetics to configure the way how they looked to meet the set standard created by the media to look beautiful and that was not true at all to be beautiful meant to accept your true natural self.
3. The effect on women
The media has affected the way in which women look at how they look at what beautiful and what is not. “Beauty salons and the wider availability of cosmetics revolutionized the way women saw themselves.”
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Unfinished paper.