essay about beautiful woman portrayed by media

The Idea Of A Beautiful Woman Essay

A Concept Paper on The Idea of a Beautiful Woman as Portrayed by Media A Beautiful Woman as Portrayed by Media, Oxford Dictionary defines beauty as a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Beauty truly takes place in a person’s line of sight but no matter how others will look to a person it will never change the fact that they are beautiful in their own way. According to Plato, “ Beauty lies in the Eyes of the Beholder.” The definition of beauty has different kinds and forms it’s always in the eyes that holds it. Woman ’s beauty evolves throughout the years and generation by generation had seen their own kind of beauty. As the world unravels a new journey through technology, Media had been a major factor to what the world knows as a beautiful woman. Media is a form of eyes in this world through news, phones, magazine, television and advertisement. Oxford Dictionary defines …show more content…

Looks can be deceiving and not all what is good to look at can be real. Media works like these, media persuade, deceive and corrupt a person’s mind on what is good and what can be bad. People need to see that beauty comes from within and only few see what others cannot. Queen Frostine, 2008 once said that beauty is “Something that the human race has forgotten. Beautiful is often used synonymously with hot or sexy. This is not the case. Nobody fat and inhumanly large breast does not make a girl beautiful. Beauty is a pure, non-sexual thing. It comes from the right combination of personality, confidence, and (of course) physical attraction.” Every human deserves to be called beautiful because they are unique and talented in their own ways. Beauty is a label that meant for everyone no matter any flaws a human have they are beautiful nobody else can change that

Tina Fey's I Want A Famous Face

It’s an argument we’ve all heard before and there are more than a few books that have tackled the subject. But what’s different from even the last three years is just how widespread the media has become. Today’s teens spend an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes absorbing media in just one day, which includes the amount of time spent watching TV, listening to music, watching movies, reading magazines and using the internet. This is a generation that’s been raised watching reality TV – observing bodies transformed on Extreme Makeover; faces taken apart and pieced back together on I Want a Famous Face. They are, as Tina Fey puts it, bombarded by "a laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.”

An Analysis Of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes

In Ray Bradbury’s, Something Wicked This Way Comes, the book focuses on many different topics. Good v Evil, Fear, ect. Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway go on a dark and twisted adventure to stop the evil carnival. They grow up, faster than you can say wicked. The author uses the innocence of thirteen year old boys to teach the lesson of inner vs. outer beauty with, expectations, reality, and truth.

Susan Bordo Never Just Pictures Summary

As guest editor of Star Telegram newspaper, I did what was asked of me and reviewed the article written by Susan Bordo “Never Just Pictures”. Bordo focuses on body image and our perception of beauty and how we are “supposed” to look according to the media. “Never Just Pictures” should be published because Susan Bordo has factual evidence to back up her reasoning to her claim about body disorders, the role that different types of media have on society, and how it is creating a false image of what true beauty really is. In this article, Bordos central claim is for the readers to get an understanding of today’s obsession with body image, and how we are no longer accepted for just our personality and our good traits but for the physique of the human body.

Anxiety Disorders In Uglies By Scott Westerfeld

Some people don’t realize that and try to live up to the unrealistic standards that we have created in our heads of what is really pretty. In that same article it describes beauty standards as features that are considered “pretty” in today's society. “They determine what is “beautiful”, from body shape, to facial proportions, to height and weight.” (Povey) This shows that the issue of beauty standards is a problem we face today because we can’t change the way we look.

Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure Sparknotes

In the book “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure” by Dorothy Allison the theme of beauty is brought to light in a way that is intersectional and develops the story to new heights. Beauty is discussed throughout the book and is one of the main themes. Allison talks about beauty when referencing her family and herself, and the idea of what it means to be beautiful in her mind based on how she grew up and where she came from. Normatively, beauty is associated with outward appearance and one’s identity, however beauty should be recognized as intersectional and include everyone, based not only on their outwards appearance but based on the beauty of their personality and thoughts because every human is beautiful in their own way. Dorothy Alison transforms

Sidney Katz Beauty

Beauty Comes With Benefits The general argument made by Sidney Katz in his work, “The Importance of Being Beautiful,” is that someone’s physical appearance affects all aspects of their life. Katz reports that people judge others by their appearance other than their intelligence, therefore beautiful people have a shortcut through life. This is called the halo and horn effect. Katz himself wrote, “The halo and horns effect come into play beginning with birth and continues throughout the various stages of life.”

Jane Martin's Play Beauty Analysis

Imagine being told as a female in today’s world you must look or act a ¬¬certain way in order to be accepted. Being what you want to be is not allowed and changes have to be made in order to be included. They say “pain is beauty, and beauty is pain” as they way a woman looks today are completely different from ten or even fifty years ago. In this paper, the reader will understand the mind of a woman in today’s society and the difficulties to be not only accepted but being her own person as well. Not only has the appearance of a woman changed but also role titles and job descriptions as well.

The Purity Myth Analysis

One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

Women In The Great Gatsby

Each woman is considered beautiful by the parameters of her own societal class. Daisy

What Is Beauty In Frankenstein

When one first meet her, one has to admit, first thing they notice is her looks. Right? “wow she have it all” or maybe the opposite. Beauty for women may be easier for them, like getting out of an officer giving them a ticket or walking into a restaurant without a reservation. Beautiful women could get more smiles, more handsome men, and better treatment sometimes.

The Nature Of Racialised Beauty In The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

Claudia recognizes that if we conform to the Western standard of beauty, we may gain beauty but only at the expense of others. However, Claudia learns to love Shirley Temple; Claudia “learned much later to worship her” (Morrison, page 16) This suggests that the idea of beauty is something that is learned and not natural or

Essay On Technology And Beauty

Does technology help shape society’s standard of beauty? By: Allegra Sudarto Introduction: The world we live in today is a world of technology; the advancements in technology has been greatly integrated in our lives, and it is readily available and accessible. Technology has evolved it is not so much of magazines, newspapers, or posters, but technology has made the availability more at ease through smartphones.

Beauty In The Media's Unrealistic Standards For Beauty

The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).

Modern Feminism Essay

First, we should define feminism. Basically, feminism is a philosophy that advocates equal rights for women and men. The more feminists seek to overthrow any sign of male dominance in our society, to the point where they disapprove the biblical roles of husbands and wives, defending abortion, and so on. Modern feminism is a forged solution to the real issue of the inequality of women. Feminism assumes to itself the right to demand respect and equality in every aspect of life.

Cultural Self Reflection Report

If I were to praise this concept of beauty, this would be like saying that everybody should have surgeries and as such to make themselves beautiful. This is what people would understand from my opinions about the concept of beauty. Everybody has their own definition of beauty. It is a concept that varies with place to place or even time to time.

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• Human physical appearance
• Physical attractiveness
• Advertising

The Media's Effect on Women's Body Image

by Alexandra Ossola '10

September 1, 2010

Women's Studies

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While women have made significant strides in the past decades, the culture at large continues to place a great emphasis on how women look. These beauty standards, largely proliferated through the media, have drastic impacts on young women and their body images. Arielle Cutler ’11, through a Levitt grant , spent the summer evaluating the efficacy of media literacy programs as a remedy to this vicious cycle.

Put simply, the beauty ideal in American culture is: thin. “Large populations of ‘average’ girls do not demonstrate clinically diagnosable eating disorders—pathologies that the culture marks as extreme and unhealthy—but rather an entirely normative obsession with body shape and size,” Cutler said. “This ongoing concern is accepted as a completely normal and even inevitable part of being a modern girl. I think we need to change that.”

Anyone who is familiar with American culture knows that many of these cultural standards are established in the media. “We are constantly surrounded by all sorts of media and we construct our identities in part through media images we see,” Cutler remarked. And the more girls are exposed to thin-ideal kinds of media, the more they are dissatisfied with their bodies and with themselves overall.

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The correlation between media image and body image has been proven; in one study, among European American and African American girls ages 7 - 12, greater overall television exposure predicted both a thinner ideal adult body shape and a higher level of disordered eating one year later.

Adolescent girls are the most strongly affected demographic.

 “More and more 12-year-old girls are going on diets because they believe what you weigh determines your worth,” Cutler observed. “When all you see is a body type that only two percent of the population has, it’s difficult to remember what’s real and what’s reasonable to expect of yourself and everyone else.”

As women have become increasingly aware of the effect of media on their body images, they have started media literacy programs to make women and girls more aware of the messages they are inadvertently consuming. “Media literacy programs promote an understanding of the effect media has on individual consumers and society at large. These programs aim to reveal the ideologies and messages embedded in the media images that we encounter on a daily basis,” Cutler said.

Advertising, she asserts, draws on people’s insecurities to convince them to buy a product, and few populations are as insecure overall as adolescent girls—which is why media literacy programs are so important for them. In programs such as that designed by national organization Girls, Inc., girls learn how to look behind the scenes and messages that advertisements are producing in order to reconcile their own bodies with the view of “perfection” presented by the media.

The programs already in place have been found to be very effective; “College-age women have been the main focus, but 10-11 year-old girls are the most important target so that they can have these [critical] processes going on before internalizations of messages have really started,” Cutler explained.

Arielle Cutler ’11

Major: English Language & Literature Hometown: Wilton, Conn.

But what sorts of standards do the media portray for women who are not white and not upper class, and how does this affect the body images of women in these groups? This question, Cutler has found, is one that is not always well addressed in the scholarly material she has read. “I realized at some point in my research that I had been universalizing the experience of a particular set of girls privileged by their race and, even more so, socioeconomic background. It did not help that this blind-spot was reflected back to me in some of my research,” Cutler said.

While she asserts that certain standards of beauty are universal throughout the country and across all demographics, Cutler believes that media literacy programs should take racial and socioeconomic backgrounds more into consideration. Different groups have different issues and concerns, she said. For example, overeating is a real issue as an eating disorder, especially for lower-class women. How does this fact change women’s relationship to the beauty ideal?

Cutler is reading studies about the body image problem among women in the U.S. as well as evaluations of media literacy programs. She recommends greater sensitivity to the concerns of non-white, non-upper-class groups in order to increase the effectiveness of media literacy programs.

Related News

There’s that Body Image Story ... Again 

Week after week, year after year, The Media’s Effect on Women’s Body Image, a story written and published on Hamilton’s news site in 2010, remains at the top of those most read. On its 10th anniversary, we contacted the author, Alex Ossola ’10, and the researcher, Arielle Cutler ’11, for their reactions.

Schneck ’23 Research Examines Prison System Injustices 

Lena Schneck ’23 looking further into American prisons, specifically in relation to inadequate healthcare treatment, through a Levitt Center-funded project.

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Media Representations of women

The media have historically under-represented women, something Tuchman referred to as ‘symbolic annihilation’; women have also been misrepresented through stereotyping and subject to the ‘male gaze’. However, in recent years representations of women are more common and more postive.

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Table of Contents

Last Updated on August 10, 2024 by Karl Thompson

Women have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented in stereotypical roles within mainstream media.

This post focuses on symbolic annihilation, the cult of femininity and the male gaze as examples of this, and then looks at whether things have changed in recent decades.

Under-representation and symbolic annihilation

Gaye Tuchman (1978) developed the concept of Symbolic Annihilation to refer to the under-representation of women in a narrow range of social roles, while men were represented in a full range of social and occupational roles.

Tuchman also argued that women’s achievements were often not reported or trivialised and often seen as less important than things like their looks

According to Tuchman, women were often represented in roles linked to gender stereotypes, particularly those related to housework and motherhood – a good example of this being washing powder advertisements in which mothers and small daughters are working together, while men and boys are the ones covered in mud. This post has some excellent examples of such stereotypes.

Ferguson (1980) conducted a content analysis of women’s magazines from the end of WWII to 1980 and found that representations were organised around what she called the cult of femininity, based on traditional, stereotypical female roles and values: caring for others, family, marriage, and concern for appearance.

Ferguson noted that teenage magazines aimed at girls did offer a broader range of female representations, but there was still a focus on him, home and looking good for him.

The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation in 2006 found that there was little coverage of women’s sport, but what little coverage there was had a tendency to trivialise, sexualise and devalue women’s sporting achievements. HOWEVER, this later example may be something that has changed considerably over the last decade (see below).

Misrepresentations (myths and stereotypes)

In ‘ The Mouse that Roared ’ Henry Giroux argued that women were represented in a narrow, restricted and distorted range of roles.

Supporting evidence for Giroux lies in the historical representation of female characters in Disney Films – where the typical female character is a sexualised yet delicate princess who needs to be rescued by a stronger male character.

Examples of where Disney reinforces female stereotypes include:

• Snow White – who cleans the house of the male dwarves and is eventually rescued by a male prince because she is pretty.
• Beauty and the Beast – In which Belle endures an abusive and violent beast in order to redeem him.
• Ariel – who gives up her voice to win the prince with her body.
• Mulan – who wins the war almost single handed only to return home to be romanced.

This blog post from Society Pages is well worth a read on this topic.

Laura Mulvey ‘The Male Gaze’

Laura Mulvey studied cinema films and developed the concept of the Male Gaze to describe how the camera lens eyed up the female characters for the sexual viewing pleasure of men.

The Male Gaze occurs when the camera focuses on women’s bodies, especially breasts, bums and things, and spends too long lingering on these areas when it isn’t necessary.

The male gaze of the camera puts the audience in the perspective of the heterosexual men – woman are displayed as a sexual object for both the characters in the film and the spectator – thus the man emerges as the dominant force and the woman is passive under the active (sexual) gaze of the man.

The overall effect of this is that women become objectified as sex objects, rather than being represented as whole people.

Mulvey argued that the Male Gaze occurred in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.

Video summarizing all of the above:

This is a very useful vodcast outlining the classic theories of the poor representation of women in the media historically: 

Changes to the representations of women?

The roles of women in society have changed considerably since these historical analyses of women’s representations: since the 1970s women now occupy a much wider range of roles and equality with men.

David Gauntlett in ‘Media Gender and Identity’ argues that there has been an increase in the diversity of representations and roles of women in the media since the 1970s, and a corresponding decrease in stereotypical representations, which broadly reflects wider social changes.

The representation of women in films

There have been several films in recent decades with ‘strong’ lead female characters who are fierce, tough and resourceful, and thus arguably subvert hegemonic concepts of masculinity. Arguably a watershed moment in this was the 1979 film ‘Alien’ in which the female lead character Ripley outlives her male colleagues and ultimately kills the Alien threat.

Since then a number of female heroines have featured as the lead characters in various action movies such Terminator 2, the Tomb Raider films, Kill Bill, and The Hunger Games.

However, rather than subverting hegemonic concepts of masculinity, it could be argued that such films still perpetuate the ‘beauty myth’ as all the above lead female characters are slim and attractive.

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a simple test which presents a quantitative analysis of the representation of women in relation to men in film. To pass the test a film has to pass three tests…

• It has to have at least two (named) women in it
• Who talk to each other
• Above something other than a man

The website above allows you to search for films which passed the test by year, and there is clear evidence that female characters are more visible and independent year on year, but there are still many films which do not pass this simple basic test.

The representation of women in Game of Thrones

At first glance, there seem to be a number of positive female characters in Game of Thrones – the assassin and ultimate killer of the Ice King Arya Stark being the most stand-out example, with other positive female characters including Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Sansa Stark (once she gets through her abusive relationship).

However, various feminist commentators have argued that all of these positive representations are let down by the end of series eight with Brienne falling apart emotionally because of her love for Jamie Lannister, Daenerys literally going mad, Sansa apparently being strong because of her previous abusive relationship (rather than in spite of it), and with all the anonymous women cowering in the crypt during the battle with the Ice King, while all the anonymous men are outside fighting.

A further Feminist argument is that all of these women are portrayed as strong individuals who are strong because they adopt male characteristics, and ultimately it is male violence which wins the day rather than more diverse forms of feminine power.

The representations of women in the news

  In 2015 the Global Media Monitoring group conducted quantitative content analysis of 1960 sources covering 431 announcers and reporters.

They found that:

• The overall presence of women as sources was 28%.
• Compared to 2010 data, the number of women sources as a proportion of all sources, had decreased by 3 per cent.
• Women continued to remain largely confined to the sphere of the private, emotional and subjective, while men still dominate the sphere of the public, rational and objective.
• Women were significantly under-represented in hard news stories and in all the authoritative, professional and elite source occupational categories and are, instead, significantly over-represented as voices of the general, public (homemaker, parent, student, child) and in the occupational groups most associated with ‘women’s work’, such as health and social and childcare worker, office or service industry worker.

Looking  at the function women performed in stories, their contribution as experts (20%) and spokespeople (25%) were low,  instead, they were mostly called upon to voice popular opinion (54%) or speak from their personal experience including as eye-witnesses or speak from their own subject position.

The persistence of the Beauty Myth?

Tebbel (2000) argues that women are under more pressure than ever before to conform to the Beauty Myth. She argues that the body and faces of real women have been symbolically annihilated, replaced by computer manipulated, airbrushed, artificially images.

Killborn argues that media representations present women as ‘mannequins’ – size zero, tall and thin, and with perfect blemish-free skin.

Orbach further argues that the media continues to associate slimness with health, happiness, success and popularity

The representations of women in advertising

  Some recent evidence seems to challenge the persistence of the Beauty Myth….

There seems to have been progress in this area in recent years. In 2015, Protein World launched its ‘Beach Body Ready’ advertising campaign, and while this clearly reinforced the Beauty Myth stereotype, it prompted a significant backlash with several of the advertisements being vandalised, and many women posting images of their ordinary bodies on social media as a criticism of the overt body shaming involved with Protein World’s advert.

Since 2015, there has been an increase in the diversity of representations of women in advertising, for example:

• Dove‘s Real Beauty‘ campaign72 featured a diverse range of body shapes and ethnicities.
• Sport England has been running its successful ‘ This Girl Can ‘ campaign since 2015, which has since evolved into the ‘fit got real’ campaign:

In 2017, The Advertising Standards Authority launched new guidelines on avoiding gender stereotyping in advertising and in 2019 banned two ads from airing in the UK because they reinforced gender stereotypes.

Finally, UN women has recently launched its ‘Unstereotype Alliance‘, which challenges gender stereotypes in advertising on a global scale. Supporters of this initiative include advertising industry companies such as Unilever, P&G, WPP, Diageo, Google and Facebook.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material was produced primarily for A-level sociology students studying The Media option as their topic option, but it should also be of interest to media studies students.

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6 thoughts on “Media Representations of women”

Do you know where Ferguson (1980) came from. Need the reference for a dissertation. Thank you, very insightful work.

my paper 2 exam is in ten days is there any chance the other representations within media could be posted

Some links here… https://revisesociology.com/media-studies/

You should find links to the whole spec for media here: https://revisesociology.com/media-studies/

thank you so much for posting these notes!! i missed a lot of the media content so i find them very useful please could you post the rest of the media content also

This is the best website for last minute revision. Is there any chance the other representations within media could be posted?

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Gender Stereotypes — The Portrayal of Women in the Media: Gender Stereotypes

The Portrayal of Women in The Media: Gender Stereotypes

• Categories: Gender Stereotypes Woman

About this sample

Words: 620 |

Published: Sep 16, 2023

Words: 620 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Historical context, contemporary portrayals, impact on society, challenges and progress.

• Body Image and Beauty Standards: The media frequently promotes unrealistic beauty standards, leading to issues like body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and low self-esteem among women and girls.
• Sexualization: Women are often sexualized in advertisements, movies, and music videos, objectifying them and reducing their worth to their physical attractiveness.
• Gender Stereotypes: Traditional gender roles and stereotypes persist in media, portraying women as emotional, dependent, and less capable than men in various areas.
• Underrepresentation: Women, especially women of color, continue to be underrepresented in leading roles in movies, television, and other forms of media, limiting their visibility as strong, complex characters.
• Body Image and Self-Esteem: Unrealistic beauty standards in the media can lead to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and mental health issues among women and girls who feel pressured to conform to these ideals.
• Relationship Expectations: Media representations of romantic relationships can shape individuals' expectations and understanding of what healthy relationships should look like, potentially perpetuating unrealistic or harmful dynamics.
• Perpetuation of Stereotypes: Media portrayals that reinforce traditional gender roles and stereotypes can limit opportunities and expectations for women in real life.
• Empowerment vs. Objectification: Depending on how women are portrayed in media, it can either empower or objectify them, affecting their agency and self-perception.
• Media Literacy: Encouraging media literacy education to help individuals critically analyze and deconstruct media messages, understand stereotypes, and challenge harmful portrayals.
• Representation: Advocating for increased representation of women, particularly women of color, in diverse and complex roles in the media.
• Regulation: Supporting regulatory measures that encourage responsible media content and discourage harmful stereotypes and objectification.
• Supportive Narratives: Promoting media that features strong, multidimensional female characters and narratives that empower women.

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Social Media and Feminism: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

While digital activism is often celebrated as a milestone for the feminist movement, anxiety about new technologies is increasing among communities, driving public opinion in a different direction and playing a major role in influencing women’s body images.

With tremendous technological advancements, social media has become an indispensable part of our modern social life, changing the way people interact with one another. It offers also a solid platform for promoting causes and connecting with supporters, enabling female voices to be heard and represented.

While it is strongly believed that social media has been shaping a non-realistic beauty image for female audiences, one mainly characterized by thinness and sexual appeal; it has played nonetheless a major part in influencing women’s bodily images and redefining beauty standards. In order to further explore this gripping dynamic, for its eighth edition of the WOMENTUM Digital Saloon, LEED Initiative chose to shed light on the portrayal of body image in the digital media society and what it says about feminism.

Social media dimensions transcend to encompass the feminist social movement’s thoughts and beliefs. These new online platforms and media practices of digital and networked media radicalize the landscape of how feminist activists think and fight for gender equality. Indeed, the concept of ‘digital sisterhood’ highlights the complex balance between social media networks, being a central component of female-led activism, and how they should remain complementary as well. Additionally, this emerging concept allows the public to question the different levels of activism. For instance, a common assumption is that in activism, there is a need for digital networking and media technologies in order to compete on the same scales as the opposition, gain recognition and do advertisements.

An Investigation of the Portrayal of Women’s Body Image in the Media through Feminist Lenses

Even though the media’s portrayal of women focuses largely on spreading awareness about body positivity and advancing feminist efforts in advocating for gender equality; however, it falls in the trap of redefining and remodeling beauty standards. Being centered around visuals and aesthetics, body image in the media is often portrayed in a way that generates poor self-esteem and perceptions of young girls and women about how someone must look like. At the other end of the spectrum, feminist activists vehemently work to dismantle these unrealistic standards set by media outlets. Their approach is to value women’s body image in its authentic state as they truly believe that the integration of unhealthy methods to fit certain beauty standards tends to objectify women. Thus, they espouse body positivity approaches, working to challenge unrealistic perceptions and social requirements so as to ensure that women feel good in their own skin.

Furthermore, public display of the ideal female body standards on the social image can be a trigger for some women as they tend to blindly follow extreme trends and aesthetic procedures, putting their physical and mental health at risk. As a matter of fact, Instagram, the most popular platform for both millennials and Gen Z, is a great example to showcase the role social media outlets play in reinforcing certain norms and setting new standards for women and girls to “fit in” and not be an outcast. As the most popular platform for both millennials and Gen Z, statistics revealed that 60 million pictures are being shared per day on Instagram.

Social media usage is proven to have a negative impact on young women’s self-image, leading to self-objectification. Put differently, both women and girls are acculturated to internalize a third person’s perception of their bodies, resulting in body monitoring and putting a big emphasis on how they look rather than how they feel. Other implications of self-objectification include physiological and experimental consequences; namely, increased feelings of anxiety and shame and reduced mindfulness, and risks for disordered eating.

In conclusion, with these socially constructed norms and beauty standards meticulously formed under the umbrella of social media and the rise of influencers; the conventional ideology of what is agreed upon as beautiful is still deeply clamped in social media, resulting in the absence of "female consciousness".

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