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Mayra Moran
Professor Corri Ditch
English 114A
6 December 2014
The Expectation of Unreachable Beauty

With the amount of media consumption in contemporary American society, there has
been a socially constructed definition of beauty in the female appearance advertised everywhere
from magazines, billboards, television, and the internet. Many forms of advertisements involving
women in it, contain women that are either tall, skinny, tanned, or all of the above. Victorias
Secret is one of the largest companies in America that has consistently advertised the idea of a
womens perfect body as skinny, tan, and physically toned. The unrealistic super models
portrayed in these advertisements possibly correlate femininity with unrealistic body figures and
this could be crippling for many women. Companies like Victorias Secret , should take into
consideration other forms of advertisements that empower the variation of womens beauty
because the gender roles the media are socially constructing are unrealistic and potentially lead to
women changing their self-forms and dealing with self-esteem issues due to the pressure to meet
these expectations.
Victorias Secret is one of the many companies whose advertisements culturally defines
womens beauty and create guidelines for feminine gender performances. Many of the Victorias
Secrets ads, imply that femininity is about having societys definition of the perfect body, a
skinny, tall, tan, and physically toned body. Aaron Devor says in, Becoming Member of
Society, femininity must be expressed through modes of dress, movement, speech, and action
(40). Present studies made to examine the effect media had on womens self-objectification

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demonstrate that, although these forms of advertisements may not directly demand young women
to be or want to be like Victorias Secret super models, they are still displayed everywhere in the
media and do have an effect on women emotionally (Harper, 2007). With the amount of output
the media has in modern society, these advertisements make a huge impact on the reinforcement
of gender expectations. As Ruth Hubbard said in her article, Rethinking Womens Biology,
Our concept of ourselves is socially constructed and political because our societys
interpretation of what is and is not normal and natural affects what we do (Hubbard 47). In other
words, the knowledge western society obtains from the media prescribes the gender performance
they are expected to perform. According to Devor, in order to become a member of society
people uses femininity and masculinity to communicate their membership to their chosen gender.
In this case of Victorias Secret, the feminine gender performance portrayed indicates that
women must be tall, skinny, sculpted-like, and sexy in order to meet the socially constructed
gender standards ( Devor 38).
Many Victorias Secrets ads demonstrate the companys emphasis on a womans perfect
body and this is problematic because it is very limiting to the expectations of womens physical
appearance. A recent form of advertisement from Victorias Secret is an ad promoting the
companys One Body campaign. The image displays a collage of six different young women
posing confidently wearing different underwear and bras from the undergarment clothing line.
The ad is split into six different rectangular boxes, and each women is in one of the boxes posing
and promoting their undergarments. Although the women in each rectangular box seem to all
have different ethnicities, they are all have very similar body figures. The whole image is
combined together by a pink heart in the center of the ad with big black bold words inside of it.
The words inside the hearts say, A BODY FOR EVERYBODY VICTORIAS SECRET. The

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ads mentions a body for everybody, however the only type of body figure represented is a tall,
skinny, and physically toned body; this is problematic because it categorizes all the other types of
womens body figures as anomalous.

According to this image femininity is related with having a physically toned body and
looking confident in it. The ads that companies like Victorias Secret are creating seem more
focused on promoting the models perfect bodies than their actual underwear garments and this
could be an issue because it is creating a standard feminine image for women. This comes from
the pressure from society to perform proper gender markers; if a person does not fall within the
margins of the proper look the social construction will not hesitate to call that person out and
ridicule them. Aaron Devor says, society demands different gender performances from us and
rewards, tolerates, or punishes us differently for conformity to, or digression from social norms
( Devor 35).
The message the ads displays, A body for everybody implies that these models are
meant to be a representation of the various types of body figures women could have. However,
the ad fails to demonstrate a variety of different womens body figures, and instead helps
prescribe a social ideology of what most women should like, which in this case happens to be
hour-glass body figure with a 0.7 waist to hip ratio (Tovee 2005). This could be limiting to all the
young women who look at these advertisements with extremely thin models and possibly see
them as potential standards. Results from studies made to investigate the effects on women with
exposure to thin model images, suggest that exposure to these images, have a small but
consistent effect in producing declines in mood and body satisfaction and in an increases in
weight anxiety (Harper and Tiggemann, 2007). With the amount of output the media has, this
problem becomes a greater issue because it is almost impossible for young women to not come

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across these forms of advertisement. The social construction is so powerful that most women are
not even aware that it has an effect on them, but studies from Harper and Tiggermans show that
these ads do inexplicitly have an effect on women. This could a major part of the reason why so
many women in current Western society are turning to unsafe surgical procedures in order to
meet the standards.
When young women comes across advertisements like the ones in Victorias Secrets
industry, they are not only exposed to potential physical expectations, but they are also exposed
to feminine gender markers. Through the PINK clothing line, the company has made a big
impact on constructing gender markers for young teenage girls by promoting young women to
like the color pink and act fun and girly; if a young girl does meet these standards then she is not
performing in a feminine way and might be ridiculed. According to Judith Lorber in the article,
Night to His Day, this is due to the social order [that] constructs and holds individuals to
strongly gendered norms and expectations (255). Part of the reason why women may look up to
the supermodels in these images is because they are displaying the current feminine gender
markers that the media is demanding from young women in Western society.

The transition the company made to focus on younger teenage girls demonstrates how
much gender performances are enforced at an early age and how much pressure the media puts
on young women to conform to these norms. In the film Miss Representation, Senior Scholar
Jean Kilbourne mentions how, Girls get the message from very early on that whats most
important is how they look, that their value, their worth depends on that. The gender
performance these forms of advertisements are demanding are problematic because many young
women possibly see them as potential standards and are willing to change their physical form to
meet these standards. Studies aimed to investigate the effect influences from the media, family

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and peer pressure have on attitudes toward plastic surgery, suggest that these variables are,
significantly related to womens interest in plastic surgery( Nerini Matera and Stefanile 2014).
This is an issue because many of these undergoing surgical procedures, like breast implantation
and liposuction tend to be dangerous and have certain risk factors. In the article, Infection in
Breast Implants, studies show that, Although breast implants have not been associated with an
increased risk of breast cancer, they may interfere with routine mammography; therefore, women
with breast augmentation may be more likely to be diagnosed with advanced diseases (Pitteta
and Montandona 2005). Lorber mentions in her article that, In Western societies, women
augment their breast size with silicone and reconstruct their faces with cosmetic surgery to
conform to cultural ideas of feminine beauty (Lorber 24). This quote demonstrates how the
cultural idea of feminine beauty the media is displaying is leading women to change their
physically body figures.

The socially constructed feminine gender performances that are being promoted by the
media are crippling and unrealistic for many young women and potentially lead to women
dealing with self-esteem issues and even changing their physical self-forms through surgical
procedures (Harper and Tiggemann 2007). Victorias Secret super models, also referred to the
company as Angels, are portrayed by the media as some of the most beautiful women in the
world and represent the epitome of what femininity is supposed to look like. Women who
struggle with body image or weight issues might look at these images and feel discouraged
because they are not performing in the way society is demanding from them. Studies made to
invest the connection between cosmetic surgery and images portrayed in the media suggest that,
there is a greater desire to have cosmetic surgery among women who perceive media messages
as informative about physical appearance and who internalize those messages (Swami 2009).

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This evidence supports how forms of advertisements like Victorias Secret ads, socially construct
the definition of beauty in Western society and could possibly have some negative consequences.
Although many of the supermodels in these advertisements contain physical traits that are
uncommon, I can definitely see how women who meet do meet the current cultural definition of
feminine beauty see this movement as empowering being that in the past the women in the
social media tended to be curvier and thicker than most models in present time. Overtime this has
changed and now the standards are being set so high that even supermodels themselves often go
through extreme measures to meet these expectations. Supermodels like Brazilian model, Ana
Carolina Reston, have died as a result of complication of anorexia. Reston was living of a poor
diet because of fashion official comments saying she was too fat (Soltis 2009). This is just one
of the many cases where models have died due to issues related with eating disorders. The
change that has been made in the modeling industry is not enough and these images are still
objectifying to women. The media should explore forms of advertisement that empower the
variation of womens beauty instead of setting up unrealistic standards.

The socially constructed definition of beauty that has been created in modern society can
lead to many problems in women like eating disorders or advocate the urge to have surgical
procedures to fix physical appearances. The femininity being portrayed in these ads are not only
crippling to women, but they are also limiting to the ways women perform gender. The gender
roles that the media promotes are constructed through society itself, so transgression can only
occur when society as whole decides to transgress against these norms. We need to take a step
back and look at society as a whole to reflect on the limiting gender role expectations that have
been created in modern society because only then can true progressive changes be made.

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Works Cited

Devor Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender."

Composing Gender. Groner, Rachael, and John F. O' Hara Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,

2013. Print

Harper, Brit, and Tiggemann, Marika "The Effect of Thin Ideal Media Images on Womens Self
Objectification, Mood, and Body Image." Sex roles 58.9/10 (2008):649-657. Print.

Hubbard, Ruth. "Rethinking Women's Biology. Composing Gender. Groner, Rachel, and John
F. O' Hara. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.

Lorber, Judith. "Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender. Composing Gender.

Groner, Rachel, and John F. O' Hara. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.

Matera, Camilla, Nerini, Amanda, and Stefanile, Cristina. Psychosocial Predictors in

Consideration of Cosmetic Surgery Among Women. Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 38.2
(2014): 461-466. Print.

Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Perf. Jean Kilbourne, Chritina Aguilara.
Girls Club Entertainment, 2014. Film.

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Pittet, Didier, Brigitte Pittet, and Denys Montandon. "Infection in Breast Implants." The Lancet
Infectious Diseases, 5.2 (2005): 94-106.

Soltis, Cassandra A. Dying to be a Supermodel: Can Requiring a Healthy BMI Be

Fashionable. 26 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol'y 49 (2009): 49. Print

Swami, Viren. Body appreciation, media influence, and weight status predict consideration of
cosmetic surgery among female undergraduates. Body Image 6.4 (2009): 315- 317.
Tove, Martin J, Mason , Suzanne M, Emery, Joanne L, McCluskey, Esther ,Sara E M CohenTove, Supermodels: stick insects or hourglasses?, The Lancet, Volume 350, Issue 9089,
15 November 1997, Pages 1474-1475.Web.