My whole life I believed that if a girl was skinny, and had a beautiful face, then she was a perfect person. I thought that you had to be pretty to be the kind of woman a man would want, and that you had to be thin and skinny to be accepted and loved by your peers. Why did I believe this? Because all the of movies, the magazines, and my peers told me so. Because of this I was never quite satisfied with the way I was, and I believed that the most important thing for me to be was beautiful. I would tell myself things like, if I was just more skinny, had better hair, and my clothes looked cuter, then my life would finally be perfect. Society’s push on girls to be pretty and skinny is an important issue to learn about because it affects the health of girls, it provides unrealistic expectations for girls, and it forces girls to believe that their number one priority should be looking beautiful.
Societal pressure on girls to be skinny is causing a lot of health problems. Indianasnewscenter.com said, “Women go to the extreme and will pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to undergo harmful procedures like botox and plastic surgery to try and achieve societal ‘perfection’.” For teenage girls the need to “perfect” is causing issues with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. “More than half of teenage girls are, or think they should be, on diets. They want to lose all or some of the forty pounds that females naturally gain between 8 and 14.” (anred.com) Not only does the desire to look skinny affect the physical health of females, but the emotional health also. Not feeling “good enough” can make girls feel depressed, have self-loathing, and have little or no self-confidence.
There are photos of skinny women with flawless skin and perfect makeup strewn all over the media. Because of this, women start to believe that this is how they should look in order to be desired and accepted by the people around them. However, the media provides very impractical standards for women to live up to. Very few women in the united states actually have a “perfect” body. “The body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by only 5% of American females.” (anad.org) The media tells you you’re supposed to look a certain way, but that’s a lie. This is expressed in a quote from justsayyes.org, “They’ve bought more than a magazine; they’ve bought a lie about their own bodies.”
With society idolizing, glorifying, and idealizing the“beautiful women”, the highest priority for females becomes looking good. Women should be focusing on other things that actually matter. Females should focus on becoming educated so they can get a decent job. They should worry about personal progress and becoming a better person. They should worry about becoming a hard worker. Plus, a future partner would be more satisfied with a smart woman, than a beautiful woman. “New research suggest that men increasingly value intellect and character in a partner over a shapely figure.” (Cohen) A pretty face will only get you so far in life. But it won’t get you to anywhere that really matters.
As you can see, society is causing a lot of problems by putting pressure on women to look perfect. However, there is still a way to address this issue. The main reason that TV shows and magazines advertise skinny women, is because that’s what sells. They put out the images and the glorify the “perfect” women because that works for them. So if we want to stop these images and these ideas, let’s stop supporting them. By not buying supporting the media and speaking out about this issue, we can change the way the people around us think. When talking about issues in society, we should remember one thing; we are society.
