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.
4 comments:
Wow. This is perhaps one of the best ways to illustrate that the concept of beauty was not always a standard on women the way it is now as it is conceptualized by the media! In regards to the media's exploitation of beauty, how would you say the media "exploited" it--since it's a concept and not a material thing?
Hey Tara--
Thank you for your question. When I say that the media was there to exploit the "product" that is essentially what beauty is to it, I mean that the media set out to advertise the beauty, weight-loss, modeling, etc. industries and much more by creating a definition for beauty in our society--and it exploited these false measures to profit and further construct its hegemonic power. Basically, our society, having such a curiosity for finding some sort of concrete definition for beauty (in addition to other things like gender roles, etc.), was the perfect target market for the media in terms of the fact that it took it upon itself to impose definitions of beauty for us since there was no evidence to tell them they were wrong. The media used the demand for defining beauty to supply society with the measures of a beautiful woman--therein comes the "lucrative" aspect of it--society accepted these standards and allowed them to become dominant ideologies because people finally had some answers from "trusted sources" (the media) and they were willing to accept media's standards right away. The media essentially set up a mass strategy to use their own standards of beauty to sell products and other things to women and society so that they can attain those standards. This is the genius of the media and its standardization of female beauty.
Definitely a valid point. And at this point, the media (or at least the people who control them), govern our society and thus any other "definition" or argument against the media's standards are never prevalent in the mainstream.
yea--what happened to having real women like marilyn monroe being seen as beautiful? it seems like the "ideal woman" has become thinner and thinner in terms of the major change--and I'm wondering what point has to be reached for us as a society to say "okay--the media is nothing but manipulation" in respect to setting standards for female beauty ideologies.
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