Beauty Evolution to Body-Image

I think this clip says it all.

When people, especially women, see models on billboards or other types of media, they are cut down by the expectations of beauty that are placed in front of them. I can speak from experience that these images flood my mind and subconsciously create a physical perfection that I am told to obtain. As a society, we are bombarded with images of expectations that we desire to fulfill. It does not matter how confident a person is about his or her self/body- image, advertisements strike at our self-confidence in ways we do not always realize. I consider myself to be fairly confident with who I am. However, when my media class discussed the distortion of beauty I found myself deeply disturbed at the end of the session. Even though we tended to bash physical perfection, I felt this weight of imperfection bare down on me. I left class with a burden that was not there in the beginning. The area of body-image is such a touchy and difficult subject to grapple with no matter how much you accept your body. (This may not be true for every single person, but I believe it is a fair statement for the majority).

Going back to the dove clip, my first impression of the woman was that she looked like me. There was nothing terribly glamorous about her. I did not feel threatened or challenged to look like her. However, as she was going through the "changes," I found myself grimacing at my own appearance. When the hair and make-up artists were finished, I felt a strong desire to explore my cosmetic bag. Then when I saw her appearance being computer generated to make her neck longer, shoulders thinner, and eyes larger I was defeated. There was no way I could compete with a perfected computer image. This is just one example of how media distorts and harms the self-image of men and women.