The Danger of Beauty Standards in Society Today.

Dalia Garcia
SOCI100WF19
Published in
4 min readDec 2, 2019

During the human history of any nation around the world women have always face the shadow of patriarchy. A clear example is looking at the histor y of the United States. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries women was seen as a property and responsible for the house work and family. Another factor that made women (and until these days) is the influence that religion implement around the families around the world. Religion with its beliefs, morals, values and ideas of how women should be, has perpetuated a false idea of the perfect woman in our society. In addition to this women bodys is also a divine property. Religions dictate women is born to be faithful to a white god until she marries a man then she becomes the property of an immortal man. Until women realized that the personal is political women has being fighting for their rights in the front lines against these misogynistic ideas. After long fights against all these systems of oppression against women, women gained the right to vote and have access to education. But every time that seems women win a fight another obstacle is waiting. Since then women haven’t stop to continuously face the limitation of sexist institutions. Women’s bodies and their sexuality is not any less trouble for women before and today’s social standards. Today we have the struggle of the beauty standards and how affect the perform and liberty of their sexuality of people and particularly women of all races are affected by it. Society can’t distinguish sexual liberation from prostitution because the religion beliefs and the political system are embedded.

Even though today women can reach education, money, power, and be part of the government women still struggle with misogynist in any aspect of our society.

Media

Since the era of technology we have easy access to media and propaganda. Technology advances like TV, computers and the internet were invented corporation haven’t stop to profit for anything they can think of. Human body is not the exception. Like everything in our society could be sale the idea of beauty is also very profitable. The objectification of the human body. “Media and other socio-cultural influences bombard women with messages that place great value on physical appearance and, in particular, thin and slender female body types (e.g., Malkin et al. 1999).” Beauty corporation use media as a tool to promote western beauty standards. Affecting all women in a negative way not matter the race or culture. Particularly women bodies have become one the most profitably body in the market. Beauty corporation has being dictated how women should look like to have the privilege to own their happiness. A great example in the popular mass media are the Hollywood movies promoting white beauty standards. Also TV shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians witch combine the promotion of fake beauty standards and at the same time profit from it and become billionaire. These are just two big examples but in right now mass media is build by these type of shows; “Our economic systems shape how we see our bodies and the bodies of others, and they ultimately inform what we are compelled to do and buy based on that reflection. Profit-greedy industries work with media outlets to offer us a distorted perception of ourselves and then use that distorted self-image to sell us remedies for the distortion.” (Taylor) These has become a social control for people because not matter the gender, race and the age people are worry in the daily basis about their “beauty”. We learned from history that women has always try to satisfy male demands

Sources

Koskina, N., & Giovazolias, T. (2010). The Effect of Attachment Insecurity in the Development of Eating Disturbances across Gender: The Role of Body Dissatisfaction. The Journal of Psychology, 144(5), 449–471.

Mercurio, A., & Rima, B. (2011). Watching My Weight: Self-Weighing, Body Surveillance, and Body Dissatisfaction. Sex Roles, 65(1), 47–55.

Cole, B., Davidson, P., & Gervais, M. (2013). Body Surveillance and Body Shame in

College Men: Are Men Who Self-Objectify Less Hopeful? Sex Roles, 69(1), 29–41.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-013-0282-3

Seal, B., Bradford, N., & Meston, A. (2009). The Association Between Body Esteem and Sexual Desire Among College Women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(5), 866–872.

Dosch, A., Ghisletta, P., & Van Der Linden, M. (2016). Body Image in Dyadic and Solitary Sexual Desire: The Role of Encoding Style and Distracting Thoughts. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(9), 1193–1206.

Taylor, S. (2018). The body is not an apology: The power of radical self-love (First ed., BK life book).

Wolf, N. (2002). The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women (First Perennial ed.).

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Dalia Garcia
SOCI100WF19

I’m a student from San Jose S.U, my major is Sociology. I would like to become an Academic Adviser someday to help other students in their education journey.