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Tara Wend-Barbour Psychology 100 Professor Toussaint May 31, 2012

Unattainable Beauty
PART 1: When you look at yourself in the mirror, who do you see? Do you see your outer image for what it is? Can you embrace who you really are and see the beauty that stares back at you? Or do you see an image that doesnt match up to what you see in the media and is convinced is the image of beauty? The issue addressed in the short documentary, Killing Us SoftlyAdvertisings Image of Women featuring Jean Kilbourne, is an issue that runs deep within the subconscious part of our minds and effects self-esteem and body-image in young and old alike. This documentary brings to light the influence of media on body image specifically on young girls and women. Jane shines light on the impact of sexualizing and objectifying womens bodies in the media and marketing campaigns. Hot bodies sell. Sex sells. Violence sells. When you combine the three, you can sell almost anything from beauty and body products, clothing, cars, video games, energy drinks, alcohol, tobacco and anything else that has a price tag on it. The film starts with a powerful introduction where Kilbourne provides advertising images dating back to the 50s and 60s up until now. A 1950s or 60s ad for weight loss says, It sure is a load off Roy since I lost 59lbs, as if losing weight was the glue holding her marriage together. Another one Kilbourne showed was a Pantene Pro-V shampoo ad stating, If your hair isnt beautiful the rest hardly

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matters, which speaks volumes all on its own. An even better ad showing how subliminal messaging gets in our heads and dictates the way we think of ourselves had a gorgeous blonde model stating ever so confidently, My boyfriend told me he loved me for my mind. I was never so insulted in my life. These are humorous advertisements and would most likely make a person roll their eyes and chuckle. However they are bold statements of how advertisements dictate how women feel about themselves and the way they should look and behave in our culture. This is the 4th edition of Killing Us Softly, the first was published back in 1979 and Kilbourne mentions in this latest edition of how in the forty years since she started bringing awareness to the influence and the portrayal of what beauty is supposed to look like, that things have not improved but only gotten worse. In the United States, advertising is a $250 billion a year industry. This means that the average American is exposed to over 3000 ads a day and will spend two years or more watching TV commercials. No wonder there is a bumper sticker that says Kill Your TV. Yet, its obvious from the statistics that killing your television will not protect you from being influenced, in one way or another, by media. A lot of people think ads dont affect them. They believe there is no influence. They dont know that the powers of these messages are processed in the sub-conscious. Rance Crain, a former senior editor for Advertising Age stated, Only eight percent of an ads message is received by the conscious mind. The rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain. Kilbourne emphasizes that it is impossible to achieve the ideal image and states that we live in a toxic cultural environment. Since the ideal image is based on absolute flawlessness, it makes it completely impossible to achieve. It is extremely difficult to be healthy mentally (and

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physically) in an environment that bombards us with unhealthy images. It affects our sense of well-being, health, and self-esteem. Awareness is the key to resisting this unhealthy influence since it doesnt seem like it will change anytime soon. With the use of computers they resurface and alter images so the model is absolutely flawless. A surprising piece of information is that now days, it is not out of the ordinary for an image in a beauty magazine to contain four or five women who are put together to create one woman. By piecing together so-called perfect body parts, they touch and retouch the image until they get what they call a perfect to death image. This leads into some other glaring statistics that are directly related to this image of perfectness. Ninety-one percent of cosmetic procedures are performed on women. In ten years (1997-2007) the number of cosmetic procedures went from 2.1 million to 11.7 million per year. This was a 457 percent increase and includes a 754 percent increase in non-surgical procedures such as laser treatments and Botox. In actual surgeries, it was an increase of 114 percent. Kilbourne points out that the consequence of big artificial breasts is that girls learn early on that their breasts will never measure up. In the late 1980s or early 90s, D.E.P hair products used this information to convince women to buy their products. In simplified terms, they sent the message saying that your breasts will never measure up but if you use their products, you can at least have hair that will measure up. Kilbourne explains that young girls feel O.K. about themselves between seven and ten years of age, but as soon as they hit puberty they start taking note of the impossible perfect image and their self-esteem/image starts to crumble. No wonder there is an eating disorder epidemic in our country. Current statistics state there are ten million women who suffer from some kind of eating disorder. Super models weigh 80-90 lbs. and are told they are fat when

they weigh 100 lbs. These are the women who are strutting up and down the aisle wearing the

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clothes that are hanging in teenage girls closets all over the country. It is extremely disturbing to know these women literally have to starve themselves to keep their jobs and that they are the role models for younger women. Kilbourne does not undermine the obesity and diabetes epidemic that is in in our country either. One third of adult Americans are overweight. Obesity is a very complicated problem and she believes the solution to both obesity and the deadly desire to be thin are related. For a change to occur, a need to transform our attitudes about food and the way we eat is at the top of the priority list. The more awareness the better, and through the darkness of advertisements influence, there shines a little light. One company in particular, Dove, began a campaign in 2004 after a study brought to light that only two percent of females around the world thought of themselves as beautiful. Dove realized there needed to be a revolution in bringing on change and widening the limiting beliefs of what beauty is. The campaign is called, The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. It allows women to embrace themselves, flaws and all and to attach love and high esteem instead of anxiety, to the word beauty. PART 2: In terms of psychology the topics of gender roles and identity, motivation, and selfesteem can be applied to the discussion of the medias influence on self-image. In the book, Psychology in Everyday Life by David G. Meyers, gender roles are explained as the expectations for men and women that are created through the culture we live in (106-7). Although there has been a slight shift in masculine and feminine roles in American households over the decades, the role of a man and woman are still known to be that of which the woman

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takes care of the children and the home and men go to work to bring home the bacon and financially support the family. Social learning theory says that children learn about behaviors and their identity through observation and acting out what they see (107). They are also influenced by rewards and punishment for behaving in a certain way. If a little girl is seen playing with toy trucks and a little boy is seen playing with dolls, they may be told by their parents that how they are playing is not right. They need to change their behavior in order to mold what is the right behavior in our society. Media has a huge influence on how people behave. The portrayal of a man is to be strong, forceful, macho, and emotionless. Women are portrayed as being soft and motherly, yet at the same time sexy, virginal, and experienced. These roles are difficult to achieve and not realistic. Men are not robots, they are human beings whom have emotions and most men do not have bulging rock hard muscles unless they live in the gym. Women can be sexy, motherly and soft, but there is confusion that comes from the subliminal messages of advertisements. How can a woman be motherly and virginal at the same time? Realistically, to be a mother means you are soft and warm so you can love and comfort your baby and obviously you are not a virgin if you gave birth. The drive to look good is motivated by the images that are portrayed in the media. Motivation is a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior (235). Maslows hierarchy of needs starts with physiological needs which are hunger and thirst, then the need to feel safe and sheltered. Once those needs are met you move up the ladder to the need for love and acceptance, then up one more rung to the need for self-esteem (235-6). Motivation plays a role in each rung of Maslows ladder and once a person is able to focus on building self-esteem the motivation to look and feel good become a priority. Marketers play off this need for physical

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and emotional satisfaction by creating advertisements telling people that all they need is to buy a certain product and it will give you the emotional satisfaction and physical appearance that you desire. Since everywhere we look and listen, we see and hear this unattainable level of beauty that we are somehow supposed to achieve. Media makes us think we need to be thin in order to have esteem and be excepted and since ads tell us that the most important factor in life is our appearance no wonder eating disorders are so prevalent. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect mostly teens and young adults. The starvation and binge-purge episodes start from an extreme desire and motivation to be thin and feel accepted (241). Everywhere these young and influential people turn, they see images of skinny, flawless models on TV advertisements and magazines. These images hang out in the sub-conscious and affect ones view of his or her self. This will happen more so in an individual who is lacking a healthy self-image. Also, there is usually a lack of understanding that beauty and esteem are a source of self-confidence which comes from inside a person (306). There are many facets and layers to the issue of medias influence on the unattainable image of beauty. These are only a few ideas as to what lies beneath the surface. Doves campaign for a healthier body image is an inspiring step in teaching young women and men about embracing the beauty of each and every person no matter the body type. Using sex and bodies to sell things is not going to change. This is why its extremely important to implement programs that build confidence and healthy self-image and esteem in children and young adults that focus on the strengths and inner beauty that is held within each person.