Susan Bordo Never Just Pictures Analysis

Throughout their lives, women of all ages are constantly being bombarded with advertisements convincing them they must meet an ideal of the perfect body image. This is all thanks to companies that share a common goal to influence the mainstream population into believing they need to purchase certain products in order to compare to the impossible standards set by the beauty industry. In Dave Barry’s “Beauty and the Beast” he displays that it is planted in young girls minds that they need to look, dress, feel, and even act a certain way. However, men aren’t as affected by these capitalistic marketing schemes. In short, the media has affected the way women think of themselves.

There are no questions to whether the media has influenced the self-consciousness people have on their body or not. Whether it is the front of a magazine cover or in a film or television show, the selection of models or actors are primarily thin or fit leading readers and viewers to worry or want to change the way their body looks. Body image is the way one sees oneself and imagine how one looks. Having a positive body image means that most of the time someone sees themselves accurately, and feels comfortable in their body; negative body image, what the media exemplifies for the majority of the time, is just the opposite. The media uses unrealistic standards of beauty and bodily perfection to drive ordinary people to be dissatisfied with their body image which can result in the search to obtain these unreachable goals.

In recent decades, acquiring the body image and figure popularized by mass media and popular culture is becoming a rising and prevalent concern amongst people. Apparent increases in the efforts to achieve, match, and maintain the ideal body gathers attention and worry that it might impact perceptions on what sort of body stature is acceptable or not. Even some youths are beginning to pick up the idea that a body type that is not ideal to the type popularly portrayed by society is unfavorable. This desire for the ideal body is becoming immensely widespread that some people have even come to sign it as a priority, making this matter as an issue of concern. Susan Bordo expands and discusses in her essay “Never Just Pictures,” the development of

“Never Just Pictures” by Susan Bordo, is about how today’s society is influenced by the mass medias unrealistic ideas of how they are supposed to look. In this essay, the author breaks down the images being showcased by today’s culture concerning the aesthetics of the female body. Bordo also talks about how what was considered ‘beautiful’ or ‘perfect’ before has changed. Lately, the world has been on a craze to look like the air brushed model in the picture. Bordo explains how a lot of people are becoming more obsessed with their physique, and depending on looking thin to make them happy, instead of focusing on being happy and healthy.

In Susan Bordo’s article entitled, “Never Just Pictures,” Bordo explores the driving forces behind the ever-intensifying, pervasive, and obsessive behaviors related to perceptions of and adherence to “acceptable” dictates regarding body image. Bordo’s insightful observations, examples, historical development, and logic shed light on how these dictates developed and from where they currently emanate, including the self-appointed societal, cultural, philosophical, and psychological “gatekeepers” of beauty in today’s society.

The article Never Just Pictures, written by Susan Bordo, is about how the media’s usage of images of beautiful people with no body fat or imperfections cause the youth to develop eating disorders, and feel insecure about their own image. Susan begins by telling us about how the media targeted the nineteen year old star of Clueless, Alicia Silverstone, when she attended an award show a little bit heavier then the public was used to. She says that we are led to believe that “fat is the devil” and that having any excess fat is bad. She claims commercials and ads staring people with ideal bodies embed the idea that being fat is bad in our minds. One way she proves this is she uses a study that asked ten and eleven

In Susan Bordo’s article “Never Just Pictures,” she expresses her understanding of how images in the media alter the way our society sees itself. She starts off addressing how critical society has become about the weight of those in the spot light. This cruelty has emerged from critics comparing those in the media such as, athletes, actors, news castors, etc. to super models who are expected to remain at an extremely low weight percentage for fashion shows and photo shoots. In just about every magazine, there are advertisements for a weight loss products or promises, or show models glamorized while they look to be on the verge of starvation. She implies that magazine editors only care about selling products and do not consider the effect the

The increasing and widespread use of media, as well as it tremendous ability to influence its audience, has raised various concerns over the effects the media has on its viewers. One of the fields of increasing concerns is the idea that the media portrays unrealistic body images and that these portrayals have negative consequences on their viewers, especially so for women. Women have always been associated with ideals of beauty and a particular body image. The question arises as to how far the media further perpetuate these models and body images, and what are the consequences of these effects? When the media works to perpetuate such ideals of beauty and body image, the majority of the female population, who do not conform to such ideals and body type, fall prey to psychological issues resulting from body dissatisfaction such as depression, self-hate, negative moods, and emotions, particularly for the younger women. Such negative emotions, when evoked, can lead to negative consequences and actions for the affected female population, which include drastic, harmful steps such as crash diets, self-harm, or cosmetic surgery.

Demi Lovato once said, “I’m not going to sacrifice my mental health to have the perfect body.” However, today we find that many individuals are doing the completely opposite. In Susan Bordo’s, “Globalization of Eating Disorders” essay, they fall into the media trap, the self-image trap, where they are concerned of what people may think about them. Americans nowadays have pageants, modeling, and media to thank for this absurd notion. Fit women, along with strong men give this motivation to others to want to be like them. Most people should be comfortable with their own bodies. Americans are mesmerized with media and enthralled by one’s body image, and ,as a result, face ramifications like eating disorders and anorexia.

Images in the media change almost constantly, but in the last 30-40 years, models and actresses have been getting increasingly thinner as time goes on. Recently, research has shone a light on EDs and their possible connection to the media as anorexia and bulimia rate increased during the 1970s, questioning whether the media was the cause of this increase (Driscoll and Campbell 2). This research has brought the possible connection between images in the media and body image to the attention of the public. The attention brought to the topic has sparked the controversy as people jump to either defend or berate the media for their portrayals of people’s bodies. As previously stated, media ideals change all the time. Since the turn of the century, the ideal female form has fluctuated between voluptuous and curvy, such as Marilyn Monroe, and thin and boyish, such as the flappers of the 1920s, but since Twiggy’s debut in the ‘70s, the standards have focused on thinness (Chittom and Finley 2). Even with the constant change and fluctuation, there has, historically, been an equilibrium in what body shape or size is “beautiful.” Twiggy’s debut, which started the skinny trend in the media, lines up with when the increase in EDs reportedly began, furthering the question as to what effect mass media has on women’s self-esteem and body

Body image has become a primary focus for individuals and in some instances is resulting into an obsession, especially in women. Media instills in men and women an ideal body standard causing unrealistic expectations, some resulting to the extremes to obtain the perfect body that is being perceived in order to conform. More and more people are aspiring to become media’s “ideal body image” to be considered attractive. The American media is becoming detrimental to individuals as it is negatively influencing the perception people have of themselves and their bodies.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

In today’s society, high standards have been imposed on the men and women in America. While men have the standard of being muscled and fit, women have created the idea of being thin and petite. Even though, there is a new movement of larger sized models being publicly distributed, there is still a large stigma on the ideal body size and shape. People in today’s society have become obsessed with their physical image to the point that it is unhealthy Public companies supplying goods for mass production, media, and modern trends have forced men and women to become ashamed of their bodies.

Whether it is a simple filter used for an Instagram picture, or airbrushing away the noticeable pores on a model’s nose and trimming down their stomach size for a magazine cover, photos are almost always edited and retouched to fit society’s standards as to what is acceptable. In a generalized sea of low self-esteem, leg cellulite and blemishes are deemed as “ugly,” whereas thigh gaps and collarbones are praised and epitomized as the standards for a woman’s body. On a similar note, the same can be said for men, as they are expected to have muscular bodies that are chiseled to perfection to reinforce their masculinity. Knowing the harms of being underweight, we still blindly glamorize anorexia within entertainment and the media, creating a correlation between false image beauty standards and the source that causes disordered eating. Due to its exerting influence, the media makes plus-sized women and short, scrawny men believe they are unattractive and undesirable, leading to unhealthy choices to “better” themselves. A disclaimer should always be required whenever the figure and appearance of people in any form of media is altered or enhanced, because disclaimers create ethical beauty standards for society which can affect the human psyche, and lessen the frequency of eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder.

In today’s society we let the media decide everything in our lives from what clothes we should wear, music we should listen to, and how we should look. One of the biggest problems that both men and women face is body shaming, because the media sets standards for young kids and young adults., they often times try and fit the description of “perfect” which leads these people to either be depressed because they do not look like people want them to look or harm themselves in order to achieve the desired look. The most common ways the media shames both men and women are by celebrities and how they are the “perfect” body, publishing magazines of what is the ideal man and woman, and by the people who believe being “too” fat is bad and being “too” skinny is bad.