Below is a video from Dove, it shows how much photoshop can change a persons appearance.
I find this video to be very sad yet eye opening. The fact that Americas image of beauty has become so distorted is just sick. Young girls grow up being shown that beauty is a synonym for perfection. To be beautiful one has to be tall, skinny, tan, have perfect skin, lips and eyes.
Magazines show pictures of photoshopped women next to cosmetics, claiming that a certain brand of foundation made them beautiful when in reality it was a computer.
The irony in the above picture is ridiculous. One of the first things a person sees when looking at this add are the words " Don't mask me. FIT ME". However the purpose of foundation is to mask real beauty in order to achieve the perfect ideal image of modern beauty. Not only that, but the woman in the picture probably does not even resemble herself after all of the photoshop that has been done to her.
In the beginning of this post I said that America has a culture that highly values this fake version of beauty. I'm sure that as many other countries are becoming modern their ideas of beauty are becoming just as distorted as ours. However there are a few places in which the natural and unobsessed relationship with beauty still exists.
Dr. Campbell did a study on body image in a nomadic community in northern Kenya called the Ariaal. He found that "Ariaal men are much more consistent than men in other parts of the world in their views of the average man's body [one like their own] and what they think women want [one like their own]." (Kottak, 31) The Ariaal did not have billboards or magazines, they only had one TV playing CNN. Their body image had not been ruined by the media.
I wish America could go back to a time before our image of beauty became distorted. However since we can not reverse the damage I think that it is our responsibility to educate young girls (and boys) on the powers of photoshop before their perceptions of beauty become just as distorted as the rest of ours.
References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U
http://kimgray.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screen-shot-2011-06-21-at-8.06.48-PM.png
Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity. 15th edition. New York. McGraw-Hill. 2013
Wow. That video was definitely eye- opening and a great addition to this post. As the oldest of three sisters it is heart breaking to see the stress put on young girls to be the beautiful face we see in the media. It's a shame that a country that is so ethnically diverse still falls back on the same, stereotypical definition of beauty.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this post. Beauty in our modern society has become a huge issue. From a men's standpoint, we are constantly trying to get bigger muscles or ripped six pack abs and I know it goes way beyond that for women. It's sad that so many young women fall into the idea that they are not beautiful at all. Some of those women allow this idea to become a part of them; ultimately leading them to destroy friendships, relationships, and their bodies. I agree that I don't think there is a way to undue all the damage done to the psyche's of Americans, but what we can do is provide hope for the future generations. Great post!
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