Beauty comes with a price
Lets talk about beauty standards
Women today are constantly being reminded by the society of what is considered beautiful.
Beauty has always been placed on top of the list when a decision is made. It can be for something professional like a job interview or a personal life choice like marriage. Advertisements and movies promote unrealistic images of women and make them flawless, which creates impossible standards of beauty that has nothing positive to offer.
This topic was explained properly by Elena Rossini, a film maker who made an informative contribution into this controversial topic through her 91-minute documentary on women’s body image and the beauty standards. She traveled to eight different countries and shot her film “The Illusionists” (2015) which gives a bigger picture of this age-old problem and also illustrates how vigorously its increasing, making life a nightmare for most women in the world. In an interview with Nyberg news on October,2016, Rossini talked about her documentary and gave her insights on how women are often given credits based on their looks and not their skills. She wants to change that perception in future so women don’t feel insecure about themselves.
In her documentary, women from eight different countries are randomly interviewed. It is heartbreaking to see that all these women think that tall, fair and slim women define beautiful. Its a sad reality that proves women are being told to look a certain way in order to be accepted by the society.Lately it has resulted in a lot of anxieties among women where they are failing to accept themselves. Rossini beautifully captures the truth about how beauty is perceived in the world and sheds light on the fact that beauty privilege exists and is a problem of not just one country, but the world. She further explains in her interview how commercials and advertising are responsible for accelerating the problem by creating an unrealistic image of women and their body standards.
Similarly, the book “Beauty Bias” written by Deborah L. Rhode illustrates this problem in details and how exactly the media plays an exclusive role in it. In this book, Rhode explains in depth the cost of being “beautiful” and the damages associated with it. She believes the price for being attractive not only shows in time and money but also in physical and psychological health.
“Although most of us learn at early ages that physical attractiveness matters, few of us realize how much.” (2011).
Rhode describes the price women have to pay for giving priority to physical attractiveness. At a young age, girls are aware how important beauty is to the world and hence they start doing things to please this beauty starved society. The problem starts when these girls fail to achieve their goals of becoming unrealistic and they go into severe depression.
I think every single day women are being reminded of what is considered beautiful and media and advertisements only make the situation worse. Social media often emphasizes on a Barbie doll type figure with small waist and big chest and bottom, which is an unrealistic stature and a blemished, smooth skin which can only be achieved by Photoshop. Advertisements show how to become beautiful according to their own standards and this creates anxiety issues in women and effect their self-confidence.This problem is knee deep and the consequences are met with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
