Unrealistic Beauty Standards In The Media

What shapes our perception of beauty? When we answer that question we tend to think about models with unattainable standards of perfection. Why is that?

Earlier this month 19 year old australian model Essena O’Neill had released a video called “Why I REALLY Quit Social Media” In the video she talks about how all the photos in her instagram are not ‘candid’ and how it was not real life. She goes on to talk about how she had an unhealthy obsession with looking perfect and ‘beautiful’ when the beauty standards in the media are so unrealistic. “I was measuring my self worth by the number of likes and followers I had, I was measuring my own self worth on someone else's opinion” She said in the video.

Young adults and the media are obsessed with looking a certain way or being a certain weight to be considered beautiful or pretty. This is unhealthy and pressures people, especially young girls to look like all the unrealistic beauty standards. The media tells us that this is what an average girl should look like.

This impacts a lot of young girls self esteem and feeling of self worth. Lexie Cohen, only 9 years old would ask on a daily basis “What’s wrong with me? Am I too fat? Am I too skinny? She is easily influenced and not very confident. It’s heart breaking because she is only 9 years old and she is already obsessed with what others think of her. When we were 9 years old we would go play outside all day and hang out with our friends, we were not always behind a screen looking at models and movie stars that have ‘perfect bodies’ and think to ourselves ‘why don’t I look like that?”

Every day we see ads and models on magazines that have been photoshopped or had gone through hours of hair and makeup to look the way they look. Kids are being affected by social media at very young ages. Society makes you think that you must look like models to be confident and love yourself.

“Unrealistic beauty standards are getting out of control, they are pressuring girls everywhere to be a certain weight or to fit a certain size.” says Kimaya Shahi grade 8 student at UWC east, she continues to say “This is unhealthy because some girls are going on dangerous diets or starve themselves to be ‘pretty’” Over the past couple years, a new beauty trend has been to have a thigh gap. Media has claimed that if you have a thigh gap you are healthy and fit, but this is not actually the case.

There have been a lot of extremely dangerous diets circulating that claim that these diets will help you lose a lot of weight in a short period of time. A lot of people that have tried these diets have been hospitalized because they were starving themselves and/or over exercised, Just two examples of these diets are ‘Purging’ and the ‘K-E diet’.

Purging includes making yourself vomit, chewing food and spitting it out, and abusing laxatives. “These unhealthy and unsafe behaviors are not uncommon on college campuses, pose serious health problems, and are the first step in the development of eating disorders,” says Connie Diekman, RD, the director of nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also counsels students who have eating disorders. Regular vomiting or abuse of laxatives also causes fluid loss that can cause serious dehydration.

One of the more physically repulsive diets that has become popular recently is the ‘K-E diet’. This diet involves sticking a tube up your nose and ingesting your food through the tube. The fluid drip that must be left for 10 days to work and has protein, fat and water. It constantly drips through the nose. These are a lot of dangers with this outrageous diet, having no physical energy, kidney troubles and sometimes kidney failure, in serious cases this diet has caused death. But anything to lose a few pounds, right?

Sadly there are a lot of people that do go on these stupidly dangerous diets just to shed pounds. Is losing weight that important to risk your life?

A shocking example the unrealistic standards of beauty is Abercrombie and fitch CEO Michael Jeffries, he had said that he only wants ‘cool and popular kids’ to shop at his stores, which is why he refused to stock anything above an AU size 14. Imagine being a young kid going into a store and not being able to buy anything because you are ‘too big’. That would hurt your self esteem and make you feel like you have to be a certain weight or size to be able to fit in or love yourself and how you look?

“There are always going to be people that judge you and everyone will have to deal with it in life all the time so there is no point in obsessing about what others think of you, you will be a lot happier if you learn to love yourself and be happy with who you are.” says 13 year old Jee Jee, a grade 8 student at UWC

The media is emphasizing that to be happy you need others approval, because that's all that matters, not your happiness, not your personality, but the number that tells you if you are worth it or not.