Media

The media sends the message that if we don’t look like…

This woman:

this woman:

Or this woman:

Then we should change our appearance.

And how do we do this?

Why, of course, buy purchasing the products that these models are selling..

(Makeup, clothes, perfume.)

However, realistically, using these products most likely won’t make any of us look like the models in these advertisements.

The body of a model—that which is portrayed as “attractive” in the media—occurs genetically in only 5% of our population. It almost never exists, but it’s all we see in the media. What the Body Shop says of this misrepresentation: “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.” (Killing Us Softly, Jean Kilbourne)

How has such a small percentage of the population come to dominate the media, lives, and minds of men and women?

Even more perplexing--why are we trying to ‘fix’ ourselves? We’re not broken.