When Will I Be Good Enough?
Girls are trained to believe that they are not good enough or pretty enough through media from a young age.
Girl are taught what is considered beautiful and feminine from a young age through media and through society. When a baby girl is born she is automatically put in a pink blanket and is given pink clothes. The type of toys given to little girls are typically babies and toy houses. They are expected to play house with their other friends. We are training young girls how to be a housewife before they are even old enough to think for themselves. Young girls are put into pageants sometimes before they even able to speak. They are taught from when they are just babies that in order to beautiful you have to wear makeup, wear a pretty dress, do your hair all nice, and sometimes even have to go get spray tan. Society also trains young girls from an early age that nothing despite their physical appearance matters.
Now let’s fast forward to teenagers, on average most teenagers spends on average a least 9 hours a day on some form of media, whether that be watching TV, browsing social media or looking through magazines. In a way, we have all become robots in the way we all act and dress the way media tells us to. French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish was about how institutions have mechanized the body. They control the way we think, act, talk, play and work and society has made us into robots. The same thing is happening to young girls through media.
According to the 2011 documentary Miss Representation directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom , about 53% of thirteen year girls are unhappy with their bodies. That is a lot of thirteen years olds who are unhappy with how they look. At thirteen they should not be worrying about how they look , but when young girls are bombarded with pictures of unrealistic beauty standards it is no surprise that they do not like the way they look. Girls should not have to start worrying about how they look till they are done with their education, because that is what is most important. What is even more crazy is that by age seventeen 78% of girls are not happy with their bodies. It should come with no surprise that 65% of women and girls have an eating disorder since so many are unhappy with how they look. This fits with Foucault idea of how society is making everyone into robots. They are trying to make everyone look and think the same way.
Society starts brainwashing girls at younger and younger ages that they need to look a certain way and that they need makeup and other beauty products to be beautiful. According to the documentary Miss Representation, the average women in the U.S spends on average $12,000 to $15,000 a year on beauty products or salon services. The number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youth under 19 has more than tripled from 1997 to 2007. Girls are now getting plastic surgery younger than ever. Society is constantly telling girls how they are not good enough. Society is constantly reinforcing the idea that in order to be beautiful they need to conform to what males find beautiful.
How a girl should look like is not the only thing society has trained girls on. They have started to train girls on how they should act. Girls are given baby dolls to take care of even though they themselves are still babies. They are also given easy bake ovens and other kitchen toys. Girls are basically getting trained to be a housewife as soon as they are old enough to play with toys. Foucault would probably argue how society is trying to brainwash these girls into becoming mini robots for society to control. Foucault might even argue that schools have mechanized the body and is controlling the way girls act.
I believe what needs to change is the images of women being shown on TV and on magazines. I also think that we need to start giving girls toys that can enhance their future and not toys training them to be a housewife. I believe that Foucault would suggest changing the institutions so that they no longer are brainwashing young girls to act a certain way. I believe we as a society need to set realistic beauty standards. The beauty standards are set so high that the average women would never meet it. The average women is not and might not even be able to be as skinny as what is considered beautiful.
Schools needs to encourage young girls to achieve for more and to aspire to be more than just a house wife or a trophy wife. Young girls in school should not be more concern with how they look to the opposite sex than with their studies. I think that enforcing no makeup rules would help. We need to teach young girls how to love their bodies and that each and everyone one of them is beautiful. There is a non-profit organization called I Am B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L that has interactive learning experiences that are designed to build self-esteem and strong leadership skills in young girls and women. Their name I Am B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L has little to do with how they look but about being Brave, Energetic, Assertive, Unique, Tenacious, Important, Fabulous, Unequaled and Loved.
