Blogs I recomend

The first I recommend Vitek's blog about humor in advertising. His blog contains interesting points of view on this problematic. Not all humor is so funny...

http://funnyorannoying.blogspot.com/

The second I recommend Nikolaj's blog about Emo. This blog though me something new, I didn't even know such thing existed. It is very interesting and quite shocking.

http://emosic.blogspot.com/

The third, I recommend Adela's blog about women in media. I liked this one a lot. My blog is on similar theme but from slightly different angle. I am interested in this problematic. It gave me new information.

http://adelaunyp.wordpress.com/

The fourth blog I enjoyed was Katerine's Children and video game. It is a serious problem these days and it deserves attention.

http://childrenmedia-ekaterine.blogspot.com/

The fifth blog I recommend is Rustam's Female in Cartoons. It is an interesting view of what kids are watching these days and what shapes their perception of reality.

http://fadc09.blogspot.com/

In our society, media has become an extremely powerful force that is driving and shaping our lives and our expectation. We are gradually trying to keep up with what is called the media ‘ideal’. This concerns the life style, beauty and perfection of fake lives we can see in media. It is damaging the idea of diverse standards of beauty and shapes our minds to single stream ‘perfect’ body type. Especially for women, if this body type can’t be achieved, they feel something is wrong with them. Extreme cases lead to the feeling of worthlessness and problems such as anorexia and bulimia. Media portrays women in many ways, but mostly they have one in common: thin is beautiful, thin is perfect. The amount of airbrushing and similar processes is not considered by an ordinary woman when she is bombarded with these images every day. It is important to look more closely at this problem to see the effects and possible dangers.

However, some of the world’s most famous fashion nations such as France or Spain are beginning to take an action against overly thin models. They are concerned about the health consequences for the models, which in the end have an effect on ordinary woman as well. The trend of extreme thinness has greatly increased over past decades, and the average weight of a model is getting still lower. Just to illustrate this, normal model size in the 1950s was 8 to 10, whereas today it is 0 to 2. It is going so rapidly down, it can’t go anywhere anymore. The results of this are cases where models are starving themselves almost to death and are fainting during fashion shows. The age of the girls went rapidly down as well, and today we can see 13 years old models. As a reaction to all this, overly thin models were banned from certain fashion shows. Just recently, in 2008, France being one of the top fashion countries created guidelines promoting body diversity. This is basically the attempt to get rid of the pictures of overly thin models, which are so widespread these days. This is only an attempt to make rules; it doesn’t go as far as passing the law banning models with certain BMI (body mass index) from fashion shows. As the president of the French Fashion Federation said, he wants to educate the public. The question is: is this going to help at all? Business is business. At least, France has certain regulations for girls under 16, for example to get regular heath checkups.

For the first time in history, a plus sized model won the prestigious fashion show “America’s Next Top Model”. Maybe the world’s look on overly thin models is really about to change. It is one win, and it certainly doesn’t change the standard view of ‘perfect’ woman’s body but it is certainly a step in a different direction. Whitney Thompson made it somewhere, where only extra thin models did before. Although she is not fat, for the real woman standard, she is size 10. The comparison with today’s size 0 models is extreme. She herself believes that she can change something in the fashion world by showing that healthy weight is much better than the anorexia of models that is so common these days. It is certainly better than cases resulting to death, which for example the death of model Luisel Ramos who died during the fashion show after months of starving herself. Models like Whitney Thomson certainly have a better effect on real women, who have been bombarded for years with the fact that only thin and nothing else is beautiful. Body diversity in the fashion world is almost non-existent. I am not saying that fashion shows should be flooded with overweight people, but it is good to have some diversity. It is true that some designers and fashion shows are banning overly thin models from their shows, which in many cases, I believe, can even save many people’s lives. Tyra Banks, the host of “America’s Next Top Model”, who used to be a top model for many years herself, is leading campaigns for normal women to accept their own bodies the way they are and is fighting against the spread of anorexia among women and models. The fact that Whitney Thomson won that kind of competition shows that beauty is diverse and people in the fashion industry can and want to do something with the dangerous size 0 craziness.

I like the following article because it gives a basic information on what anorexia nervosa is, and stresses that it is also a mental, not only physical problem. We can find out basic facts that are explained by normal language, not in doctor’s terms. There are also some links for anyone that is interested in the issue more deeply. It is good to know these things, for parents or friends or women themselves that might feel they have some problems related to this. It also stresses the media’s role in the whole issue. There are videos that are attached that show some stories of real women that were suffering from this horrible disease. It is one thing to talk about a problem, and quite another to see it with one’s own eyes. I believe that such videos can help some women to ‘get scared’ before it is too late. This is the article
http://anorexia-nervosa.suite101.com/article.cfm/medias_unrealistic_body_image

The following article stresses the real reasons behind such a massive beauty industry. The reasons are economic. The fashion and beauty industries are earning a lot of money on something that is hard to achieve. They are selling dieting pills and anti-aging products to women that are constantly told that being old or overweight is bad and that it has to be reversed.
“It is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth anywhere between 40 and 100 billion US dollars a year selling temporary weight loss (90 to 95 % of dieters regain the lost weight).”
The article also mentions the danger of young girls starting at age 5 or 6 being exposed to all this. In this young age they start to think that their bodies are imperfect and develop bad habits, which creates serious problems is their later lives. It also mentions the overall effect of the absurdity of media portraits of beauty standards. It can be found on the following link.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm

The following are links to three articles regarding three countries that took action against overly thin models. Those countries are Spain, France and Italy, all of which are among main countries of world’s top fashion. The regulations will not only help to control extreme expectations from these models, they will also help ordinary woman to feel better about themselves. Seeing unhealthy, thin models and actresses over and over changes the perception about what is normal. As we can find in the article, some of the top designers and professionals in the fashion industry agree with the fact that it has gone too far and that these models don’t look like women anymore and they would prefer the change themselves. These countries agreed to take a step towards the change especially after several cases of death of models during recent years. However we can find out in these articles that some countries still refuse to accept this and continue to use these models without any regulations.
1 http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/09/13/spain.models/index.html
2 http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/March-April-08/French-Fashion-Industry-Joins-Move-to-Ban-Extremely-Thin-Models.html
3 http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/March-April-08/French-Fashion-Industry-Joins-Move-to-Ban-Extremely-Thin-Models.html

Advertising became a regular part of our lives a long time ago. Also, models and celebrities have been around for a long time. Nevertheless, it was just several years ago that people started to become so obsessed with them and when the fashion world became gradually ‘thinner and thinner’. It is impossible for this to not have an effect on ordinary women and men.
The woman portrayed in the media is no less than perfect. She has to be a good mother, successful business woman, does sports and looks beautiful in every situation. All of this in real time. Pressure on women has become very great in past years. The pressure is also on women who are not satisfied with their bodies. Famous people are becoming thinner every year and they set standards on what ‘pretty’ woman is. These sizes are mostly very hard to achieve by few selected women and almost impossible to achieve by average women. In several researches done during past years women view themselves as less attractive and heavier than men see them. Women have been fed the idea of beauty standards so much that they are losing self-esteem and are unhappy with the sizes that are within of healthy range of BMI. What is even more appalling is that young girls are starting to worry about their bodies from the shockingly young age of 5 or 6. About 70 % of young girls are unhappy with their bodies. They are also clearly shown by society that looks matter to a great extent. In media, most of the actresses are underweight and if they are overweight they are shown as unhappy characters or are even being made fun of. Thin people are more often shown to be successful.
The result of all of this is unhappiness, depression and in worst cases anorexia leading to death. The rising number of women suffering from anorexia is alarming. Not only models, but an increasing number of ordinary girls and women die from this disease, because they are being taught every day that being thin is the only right way.
Diet advertisements are a huge problem as well. It is a multi billion industry and even though most of these ‘magic pills’ never work, people keep spending money on them in a desperate desire to be thin. There have been many diet pills around, especially in last decade that were later found to be harmful and caused some permanent damage to many people.
Luckily lately there is a rising awareness of this problem and people are starting to take action against the ‘thin culture’. We can hear the talk about anorexia more often and several photographers started to take actions, for example advertising the real anorexic women for people to understand the seriousness and for girls to get scared from these images. However many women are still exposed to thin images and it leaves them with permanent depression and dissatisfaction about their body. The media developed the way that a woman should look and feel and it led to body image distortion.





Reference List
Keith, Misty, The Effects of Media on Woman’s Personal Identity, Articles Gratuits<http://www.en.articlesgratuits.com/the-effect-of-the-media-on-womens-personal-identity-id437.php>
Parbu, David, Juliann Cortese, Kaiyla Liu, Thin vs. Plus-Size Models: A Comparison of Body Image Ideas by Gender, All Academic, 2003<http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/2/0/5/pages112055/p112055-1.php>
McConnell, Marla, Media and Gender Stereotyping, Serendip, 2008<http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports03/papers/mmcconnell.html>
Hitti, Miranda, Thin Ads + Low Body Image = Stress, Web MD, 2006, <http://www.webmd.com/skin-beauty/news/20061027/thin-ads-low-body-image-stress>