This blog began with criticizing the media for setting standards for women and beauty in our society. Although all fingers can't be pointed to the media, it has definitely used its broad outreach to impact and influence the definition of female beauty all over the world. However, we can change these standards. YOU can change these standards.
In Vineet Nayer's article, "What Leaders Can Learn From Children," he says that unlike children, adults essentially become comfortable with boundaries. It's time that we go back to a society where women are not bounded by standards of beauty continuously defined by the media. The child in the video above delivers a strong message: Why do we allow the media to define whether or not women are beautiful? Why do women feel the need to look like someone else? Why? The question has been asked many a times. It's time to get answers.
Campaign for True Beauty or Another Beauty Standard?
Nivea has followed Dove in promoting true beauty and campaigning against the standards set for women in our society to look/feel beautiful. Here's one of their commercials...featuring Giselle Bundchen.
Is this a campaign promoting true beauty or is it one setting another standard for beauty?
Is this a campaign promoting true beauty or is it one setting another standard for beauty?
Positive Media...Should We Still Be Critical?
Of course the media has had many positive influences on women as well. The Dove Campaign for "real beauty" is one of them:
However, recall the first youTube video posted on the very first blog post. As you have seen throughout, Dove has created its image as one promoting the "true beauty" of women--one that eliminates the standards set by the media. But did you know that Dove's mother company--Unilever--also owns Axe/Lynx body spray? Watch the following video.
Two differing stances on beauty and the media industry--so what's the media's true agenda?
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Exploiting Media's Ideological Fallacies
The media has essentially propagated the standards of female "beauty" in our society--exploiting its global hegemony to manipulate society's dominant ideologies of beauty.
How will the media standardize the ideals of the female beauty and body next?]
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Media’s Ploy for Profit: Diet Fads and Fashion Ads
The media as mass communication or mass manipulation? Marketing diet fads or endorsing eating disorders--the media's ploy for profit and advertising as its money-making machine.
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- Media is Fueling Eating Disorders
- Skin Deep
- Causes of Teen Eating Disorders: Society & Media Influence
The Media's "Hypodermic Needle" Solution: Achieving Ideal Beauty
Nip. Tucked. Trimmed...How much are you willing to pay for "cutting edge" beauty?
The rate of cosmetic and plastic surgery, not specific to health-threatening issues, across women all over the world has been exponential in the last decade, with the levels being mind-blowing among certain races of women.
So why are women going to such lengths to "enhance" their physical attributes?
So why are women going to such lengths to "enhance" their physical attributes?
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The Culture of Beauty
Media conglomerates have achieved much of their global hegemonic influence through their success in niche marketing. Let us look into the media's "culture niche"--in which female beauty is defined and "sold" differently within individual cultures. A definition differing in meaning across time and location? How can we believe in something so...undefined?
So how does the media affect women in these various "culture niches" across the world? How can a woman be beautiful in one place or culture but not across the global society?
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Once Values, Now Myths: The Media's Reign Over Society
"Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder"...or so society once told us.
But now society's values have become nothing more than yesterday's myths and the media's distorted concepts of beauty now form the image of a beautiful woman. So perhaps the phrase should now be "Beauty is in the Eye of the Media".
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Modern Beauty: A "Sexy" Upgrade
"Sex Sells".
The media has objectified women throughout time--however, in today's day and age, this objectification has come to represent the standard for beauty.
Does a woman have to be sexy to be considered beautiful by society? How has the "sexy" phenomenon affected women's beauty, body, and self image?
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Beauty Redefined Through The Ages
People have tried to define beauty for as long as time has allowed. Pythagoras and Euclid ascribed human beauty to the geometry of the Golden Ratio in 570 B.C... Francis Galton discovered what he thought to be the "ideal" human image b…whether through math, art, or other sciences and forms of judgment, people have spent lifetimes trying to define beauty.
A demand for which there is no supply. A product for which the components are unknown. The most lucrative concept to exist. And the media was there to exploit it.
What Is The Definition Of Beauty? Who Decides The Standards? The Media.
The media has been setting standards for female beauty for quite a long time. What’s worse--our society has continued to accept those standards without question.
So, I ask you. Does the media have any influence on our definition of a beautiful woman? And what is that definition anyway? Can beauty be defined?
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