Women and young girls are constantly bombarded with "Barbie Doll-like" images. By presenting an ideal that is so difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. It's no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. The message we're hearing is either "all women need to lose weight" or that the natural aging process is a "disastrous" fate.
Images of female success and fashion portray the ideal woman as smart, popular, successful, beautiful and very thin (the average fashion model weights 25 percent less than the average woman). Pressure to measure up is great, and is constantly reinforced by family and friends, as well as advertising and popular media. Women still are taught that their looks will determine their success, and that thin equals beautiful.
Girls and women aren't the only ones with body image issues. Surveys show that increasing numbers of men and boys are also feeling unhappy with their bodies.
The ideal male look today, as shown on TV, in movies and in advertising, has become increasingly lean and muscular. Even the proportions of G.I. Joe and other action figures have changed dramatically over the years, from more normal male proportions to a physique far bigger and unrealistic.
Over the past two decades, the gender gap in media objectification has closed. Every bit as unattainable as Barbie-doll proportions and the heroin chic look are the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, fat-free, and muscle-sheathed male physiques littering today’s media.
What can we do to change this?
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