Imagine someone saying something negative about you, they said it to you 300 times a day, it was unrelenting. The person who said it to you followed you everywhere, called you at home, called you at work, called you on your cell phone, and told all your friends and loved ones to say those things to you too. It would be pretty hard to forget how those words made you feel, they would be everywhere, so you couldnt find any comfort from them. It might seem hard to imagine someone infiltrating your life to that point, but unfortunately its already occurred. Daily you watch your television, watch a movie, read a magazine or a newspaper, pass a billboard, watch a bus or a taxi pass by; all of these occurrences are somehow media related and stacked up to ensure that you are buying a message, or getting a message. You see theses messages 400-600 times A DAY! They are negative images, of unattainable bodies, unreasonable requests and nature promises that fill you with a need and want for something that will always be out of your reach, thus making you always want more.
Its scary to think that advertisers and out to use and abuse the consumer. They want you to depend on the products and trust them so that you are loyal to them. The only way advertisers have devised to keep the consumer consuming is if they are never satisfied, the only way to keep the consumer unsatisfied is to create unrealistic ideals for them. The way that advertisers have kept consumers unsatisfied is through the body image that they sell in their ads. The number one consumers are women. They are targeted through make-up and beauty ads that ensure results. One out of every eleven commercials is about beauty (Silverstein, Peterson, Perdue & Kelly, 1986). The media has began circulating ideas of false body images beginning with toys, most girls have a Barbie Doll by the time that they are three years old. Barbies body type is completely unattainable for the human woman. Now weve invented diets that attack womens natural eating habits, weve got major surgeries that will inflate the body parts that you want bigger and deflate the parts you want smaller. They can cut and snip at you until you are completely unrecognizable.
The reason there are surgeries and starvation is because most women arent naturally supposed to be stick thin, everyones body has a natural state that it was made to be, and that is based on genetics. Women are supposed to be round, they are supposed to have at least 5% more body fat than men, because their bodies are made to prepare housing a baby and keeping it warm. The surgeries that women and some men go through to get their bodies to resemble what they are seeing in the media are atrocious. There are surgeries that actually staple your stomach in half so that you will eat half of what you are accustomed to, if this surgery somehow dysfunctions the lining of your esophagus can close over your stomach, not allowing anything at all to go in. This can cause death due to starvation. There are surgeries where women put a pouch of foreign substance into their breasts to enhance their appearance. The breast implants can rupture causing poison to get into the blood stream and be fatal. Of course this doesnt happen as a result in every case, but the longer the implants are in your body, the possibility of catastrophe increases.
Its hard to believe that some of our wants and needs are based on the images presented to us. The messages that are being received by me when I watch television are simple, if I am thin, white, and beautiful, then I will get whatever I want. About 69% of female television characters are thin, only 5% are overweight (Silverstein, Peterson, Perdue & Kelly, 1986), there are subliminal messages that television sends that most people dont realize they are being effected by. When you look at a magazine like Cosmopolitan, you see beautiful white women, with all their jewelry and beautiful clothes, and the articles that are featured about what styles are in and what men like to see. I used to thin that the reason that magazines made suggestions to women was to help them catch and keep a man, but that isnt all there is to life. If all of the articles carry the same subjects about what men want what does that say to the women and girls that read them Men dont want you, because there are no generalizations that can be made about what men want or what women can be. Somehow the media has become obsessed with making everything a cookie cutter image. So if you dont fall into this mold, than you can change yourself physically and mentally. It seems like women are getting away from appreciating themselves as individuals, that you are supposed to be the same as everyone. If everyone looked the same, where would the flare and interest in this world be? It seems like all media is working together to get women to hate themselves and their bodies, so they provide resources to get away from what theyve been taught is ugly. Whats really underhanded is the fact that not only have the resources been created, but so has the problem.
Im sure that there are healthier ways to communicate to women whats in style without making them slaves to stores and labels. If they operated on an honor system that treated women as equals, and not as consumers, and looked to raise the standard of the way people think about themselves, that would cure the disease of beautiful. These things are far-fetched, but I am sure that they arent impossible. The bad thing about giving people all of the information on the products that they are receiving, is the risk that is run that the consumer will not buy the product based on the facts, and thats not good enough for the producers, because an informed customer does not ensure a paycheck.
If we could start from scratch and stop making the consumer a victim to their image, it could bring a whole new idealism to the world around us. It would be so hard to tear down a system that has been built on lies and manipulation, I can only hope that little by little it will slowly be washed away, beginning with the education of women, and watching that spread like wildfire.
This article contributed by Samantha Judge.
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