Young Writers Society

For the past century, the women of this country have been persecuted. Not by laws or people with biased ideas, but by the media and the people who use it as a standard of normalcy. According to today’s media, a woman is not beautiful unless she has a narrow waist, an ample chest, a round firm butt, and a weight and height that put together puts women and their BMI’s at underweight. Little girls are molded from a young age with Barbie and actresses and models, to consider beautiful as anything but what they are. They have been trained to judge and criticize not only any woman they see, but the woman they see when they look in the mirrors. Media today, portrays the female body in all the wrong types of proportions. It lies to young women, older women, and little girls about what they should look like. It lies to young boys, older men, and little boys about what the ideal woman should look like without her clothes. But that is not what a real woman looks like.

Models are pushed to look their thinnest by their sponsors and clients, and even still they are airbrushed, and their pictures altered by photo editing to look their utmost. This means, perfectly flawless skin, a narrow waist, and perky breasts. Female characters in comic books, video games, cartoons, and dolls, portray a woman’s body as very thin, and very curvy with breasts past the normal sizes a woman could naturally possess, and a backside to match. Halloween costumes and bikinis push women to look even thinner and leaner than they normally do, simply to look good with as little clothing on their bodies as possible. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons website, “Cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures increased 6 percent, with more than 13 million procedures in 2012.” But that is not a real woman. A real woman is not altered by doctors. A real woman is not the female characters boys see in video games. They are not the females looking back at readers in glossy magazines. They are not even the actresses seen on TV. So how do we get this false idea of womanhood? What makes us think that this image of the female body is what it should look like? Why does this image drive women into permanently altering their bodies with procedures, just to look like this? How did it get like this? Has ultra-thin, always been the ideal?

The truth is it hasn’t been. The ideal woman was not always ultra-thin with big breasts. At one point a plump woman was considered the most beautiful. During the Renaissance women were considered beautiful and attractive by their bigger bodies. If a woman was plump and round she was sought after, because she was well fed. Being on the plump side, meant you had the money for a lot of food, so it was a statement of status. But is also meant that she had the nutrients and fat needed to properly feed and nurture a developing child within her body. She would be a good mother. It is amazing how that has changed to rail thin women with ample curves. Statistics show that women who are rail thin are birthing unhealthy children, premature children, or are in general having trouble conceiving because of the lack of fat or “meat” on their bones. The female body will stop releasing eggs when she reaches a certain weight. If she is too thin, her body will not release an egg. This is because she does not have enough fat on her body to keep herself alive and nourished as well as a developing baby.

In the 1950’s the television was brought into every home under the impression of creating the American Dream. And with the television came a more hands-on, visual media. This new media needed stars, and women like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, were broadcasted into every American home. Monroe and Kelly were both very shapely and very beautiful women. They were voluptuous and curvy with large breasts, and wide hips. The perfect hourglass figure. During this time, women were told that their only goal in life was to start a family. And to do so, they needed a man. With the media telling them that Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly were the ideal women, they believed that that was what a woman should look like in order to gain a husband and start a family. If they didn’t look like that, they wouldn’t attract a husband, they wouldn’t have children, and they wouldn’t fit into society.

However, that image didn’t last. By the 1960’s the ideal woman had changed with the era of hippies, the up rise of models, and the most famous model of all; Twiggy. Women in this time became obsessed with being rail thin and tall. This era contrasted dramatically with the 1950 image of womanhood, that the people became confused with what was beautiful and what was not. Every decade prior to the 60’s consisted of women being conscious of their weight and the size of their waist. But they were also conscious of the fact that males liked the curves possessed by Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. This caused media to combine both styles into the ideal woman. They took actresses like Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie and put them on pedestals. They were thin, but shapely. The media also began creating video games with the women in them being too shapely to be real, and dolls like Barbie to come out in Toy Stores everywhere as the ideal woman.

It is because of this confusion between the dramatic shift from Marilyn Monroe to Twiggy, that the women today have no idea what is beautiful and what is not. It is impossible for a woman to be as thin as what is considered “attractive” and maintain the curve and shapes of having breasts, wide hips, and a round butt, so they resort to plastic surgery for help. It is ok to say that Monroe and Twiggy were beautiful women, they were, but it is not ok to say that they are so beautiful that combined, they are the perfect woman. Because that is not true. A woman is beautiful the way she is. Without alterations.

I asked some guys me own age about what they thought was attractive in females, if they found the ultra-thin, ample curves, attractive. Most of them said that they didn’t. “It’s not really attractive if girls are trying too hard to look good.” Dan told me in the interview. “… too skinny where you can see the bones is disgusting.” Conor says. Both girls and boys can see that this ultra-thin yet curvy ideal is unrealistic, yet still girls strive to become this ideal, and boys willingly encourage it. If seeing bones is unattractive, why can you see the bones of all the models we have today?

One boy basically summed up what should be attractive and what the media should be promoting. Erik says, “It’s definitely unattractive when I can draw a map of your skeletal system after seeing you in a swimsuit. But the perfect body is kinda dumb. If it hurts to be beautiful, then it’s not beauty. It shows. That being said, I’m also not all that into fat girls, to be quite honest. I think that there is a difference between thin and fit. Fit is attractive, the kind of curves you get from being healthy. The malnourished level of skinny isn’t attractive.” So then why isn’t the Media promoting “healthy”? Why aren’t they promoting natural bodies and realistic, obtainable thinness? Instead of idolizing narrow waists that cannot be achieved other than intense dieting and exercise regiments no real person that works, has a home and children, can do; they should idolize, average waist sizes, a chest size that doesn’t go into the triple letters, and a butt that can’t be used as a floating devise.

The media has to do more to promote natural looks, not the ones achieved by plastic surgery, airbrushed pictures, and malnutrition. And it has to be done now. Eight-six percent of females report that they showed signs of onset eating disorders by the age of 20. However that is not the worst of it; forty-three percent showed signs of eating disorders by the age of sixteen. And still that is not the worst statistic shown. Out of all those that have eating disorders, ninety-five percent of them, are between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. This is a major problem. The media cannot possibly say they are for the benefit of the people if they are what cause millions of women, to turn to starving themselves to achieve what the media says is attractive. There are companies that design jeans that instead of sizes have words that say “Beautiful” instead of “eight”. There are some people that have altered Barbie to the average sizes of women. But that is not enough. We need more average people modeling, we need more average people showing up on TV, magazines, video games, and clothing catalogs. Not every woman can be a Marilyn Monroe, a Grace Kelly, or a Twiggy. Even less can be an Angelina Jolie, a Megan Fox, or the equivalent of Barbie. So stop telling us we have to be.