Velazquez 1
Vanessa Velazquez
Professor Rusty
English 100
November 15, 2012
Self-Confidence vs. the World
From centuries ago to present day, society has held an unequal dispersal of rights between men and women. After many years of an unbalanced lifestyle women finally took the streets, became educated, entered trades and professions, gained legal and reproductive rights, and overturned believes on their social role. This 1970’s social era became known as the rebirth of feminism. However, many people were not fond of the idea of women power; so what does media do? They turn all female success around and objectify women. Media has found a way to keep women from aspiring to be successful individuals such as doctors, CEO’s, or lawyers by demolishing inner self-confidence; making women believe that self-value is only determined by physical beauty. Naomi Wolf states in The Beauty Myth, “The diet and skin care industries became the new cultural censors of women's intellectual space, and because of their pressure, the gaunt, youthful model supplanted the happy housewife as the arbiter of successful womanhood”
(11). Society’s ideal view on beauty is captivated by appearance through distorted and edited cosmetic advertisements, along with deceitful slenderized ads that merely serve to destroy women within, every single day.
Everyday American’s are fed over 3,000 images that work subconsciously. These images are worked into our minds distorted by airbrush, editing, and products to make it seem like that advertised girl you see on billboards daily is what you are supposed to look like. The famous
Maybelline cosmetic industry stands as a huge contributor to this issue. In 2012, Maybelline came out with a new product displayed by one of their models, Kemp Muhl. This advertisement

Velazquez 2 was prone to sell their famous Mineral Power Illuminator, a foundation with an illuminator that brightens your complexion. The ad included a close up of Muhl’s face, which if we decide to get literal, is Maybelline’s edited to perfection face. In addition to the anything but natural look, the quote “Flawless lets the real you come through beyond matching: fresh, breathing, natural” and their infamous logo “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline” are hypocritically plastered at the bottom of the advertisement page. We ask why is this so bad, it is just a company trying to sell their items, right? False; not only is this image taken by a professional photographer, but it is taken into photo shop where the first image is completely distorted. The digitally enhanced photo changes everything; the skin is now perfectly smooth, to the point where pores are completely vanished, the lines around her eyes and lips are removed, the bags under her eyes are gone, and her hair and eyes have been color saturated. This ad tells women that this is how one is supposed to look, but how is this something realistic enough for woman to woman comparison? How is this look something you can naturally be born with? Truth is, it is not real, nor will it ever be. “Women's identity must be premised upon our "beauty" so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air” (Wolf 14). Sadly, society found a way to keep women tied down by worrying them about what they “should” look like every morning instead of what is really important; they successfully drilled this impossible scheme of the ideal woman into millions of minds.
Evidently, both the cosmetic and the beauty industry spend over $2.2 billion on advertising. Due to media’s emphasize on “physical issues” in women’s appearance, the US has more performed plastic surgeries than any other country. As said in The Beauty Myth, “During the past decade…cosmetic surgery became the fastest growing medical specialty” (Wolf 10). In
2010 more than 13.1 million cosmetic surgeries were performed on women. “91% of surgeries

Velazquez 3 are performed on women and 210,000 surgeries on girls from ages 13-19” (Simone & Schuster
56). Women of all ages have found the need to take extreme measures to please the ideals of media. However, surgeries are never one hundred percent effectual, nor are they a hundred percent risk-free. Plastic surgeries do not make one happier either; if they did why is it that so many customers repeat and repeat the same process? Not only is media the foundation for an extremely high rate of plastic surgery, but it is also responsible for low self-esteem, depression, and homicide. Confidence Coalition states that only 2% of women actually think they are beautiful. Undeniably, we have society to thank for all these endless issues that come from stressors of perfection.
Nevertheless, mass media does not only attack facial beauty, but it also attacks physique perfection. “And the unconscious hallucination grows ever more influential and pervasive because of what is now conscious market manipulation: powerful industries-the $33-billion-ayear diet industry” (Wolf 17). On top of the flawless face stressors, women face every day body critiques, and spend hundreds on diet plans that are prone to fail or be detrimental to health. A prime example of this is the popular Seventeen magazines; it includes monthly ads that help the reader go through new dietary processes. One of the 2012 articles published, “The #1 Secret to
Diet Success” shows a female model in a tank top and shorts leaning into the refrigerator as she cheats on her “diet.” Ironically, the model that is shown to be striving for weight loss is in no position to want to lose weight. There is no ounce of fat seen on her body; from her thin, wellshaped legs, to her completely flat abdomen, to her formed biceps, the model is in a perfectly healthy state and society is still criticizing her figure. What does this show our women? “Thirtythree thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal” (Wolf 10). It tells women that even if you are healthy and

Velazquez 4 you look like the model shown, you still need to lose weight. It tells females that one needs to strive to be that six foot, one hundred pound model, and that only then you will be beautiful.
Society’s twisted ideals have formed a ridiculous and unreasonable goal that many women are sadly striving for.
Consequently, this has had an emotional, physical, and mental effect on our women. The
Beauty Myth explains that, “during the past decade…eating disorders rose exponentially” (Wolf
10). Society knows this and so does the media. Media knows it is slowly deteriorating personal health and no alteration is done, nothing is done to stop it. If this was not such an important instance then why is it that, “78% of females are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of 17”
(Simon & Schuster 64)? If this is not a strong enough reason for media to reevaluate their concepts, then let’s look at averages. USA News states that, out of 78% of females that believe they are overweight, only 11% are actually overheavy; women between 15 and 24 years old, approximately 1 out of every 200 suffers from anorexia nervosa, while about 1 in 50 is bulimic.
Eating disorders have consumed female minds by making them believe that by taking these actions their bodies will be beautiful. Nonetheless, the eating disorders that many women have taken up on can cause shrunken organs, bone mineral loss, osteoporosis, low body temperature, low blood pressure, slowed metabolism and reflexes, and irregular heartbeat, which can lead to cardiac arrest and death. This no longer is a personal problem, it is a health problem. So why does media keep correlating skinny and unhealthy as beautiful, why has society made it so hard to accept women of all figures?
If societies “Beauty Myth,” was not so critical, then we would not have so many women dying and hurting themselves in the hopes of becoming the ideal woman. “It is no accident that so many potential powerful women feel this way. We are in the midst of a violent backlash

Velazquez 5 against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against woman advancement” (Wolf 10). If this is the media’s way on holding women back from success by attacking feminism and targeting female insecurities, then ask yourself, what kind of cruel world do we really live in?

Velazquez 6
Works Cited
Confidence Coalition. "Statistics." Just for Women . Kappa Delta Sorority, Inc., 2010. Web.
<http://www.confidencecoalition.org/statistics-women>.
"Eating Disorders." US News . U.S.News & World Report, 2012. Web.
<http://health.usnews.com/health-conditions/mental-health/eating-disorders>.
Schuster. "Body Image." Our Bodies, Ourselves . By Simon. Vol. 10. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2011. 44-71. Print.
Wolf, Naomi. The Body Image . New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.