Tall, Thin, Beautiful &…Fake?

Lexi Westenskow

Googleimages.com

BEAUTY

FLAWLESSNESS

GLAMOUR

LIES????• The photos of almost every single celebrity

and model are photo-shopped before their pictures are published and released.

• Skin blemishes are removed most frequently, hips and thighs are made smaller, and necks

are elongated while breasts are made bigger.

Ever read or skimmed a magazine like one of these?

What’s the point?

Are you a part of the 70 percent of girls who read magazines on a regular basis and use

them as a source for beauty and fitness information?

Source: Thompson and Heinberg

It’s Everywhere!

• As females we see media images of models and celebrities on a daily basis.

• Media is impossible to avoid.

• Media is included in television, music videos, billboards, magazines, and even video games.

The average supermodel?

• The “average” supermodel is hardly average.

• According to Glamour Magazine the average American woman is 164 pounds and 5'4". That's about 35 pounds heavier and six inches shorter

than the average supermodel.• While models are abnormally thin to begin with,

the technique of photo shopping makes them even more perfect in appearance.

We are constantly flooded with images like this…

When most American women look like this… And they’re still beautiful!

How do these women do it?…. Most of them don’t.

• The more we use this editing, the higher the bar goes. The media is creating things that are

physically impossible.

The Reality

• Henry Farid, a Dartmouth Professor, calls photo shopping radical digital plastic surgery.

• We’re seeing bigger breasts, tinier waists, longer legs, and wrinkles being smoothed out.

• How could we possibly keep up with that, when the models themselves don’t even look that

good?!

Fantasy vs. Reality• On the left is the real photo of Faith Hill and on the right is the photo after photo shopping.• Notice how the wrinkles under her eyes

disappear and how much smaller her arm looks.

Here’s another example…• This model’s hips in the picture on the right

are smaller than her head which is actually physically impossible. The photo on the left is

the real model.

And another…• Notice how the photo of the model on the

right, which is the one that has been photo shopped shows her hips and thighs much smaller than the actual photo on the left.

How do these unrealistic images affect our body image?

• "I think the perfect bodies we're seeing in magazines that are photo-shopped have a

terrible effect on how women feel about their own bodies," says Montana Miller, assistant

professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in

Ohio.

So what’s the problem?

• “These billions of images of women in media far outnumber the females we could ever see

eye to eye, and that reinforces a distorted idea of what we should look like.”

• “How we think about our bodies and our beauty has everything to do with how we treat

ourselves.”• Source: Beautyredefined.net

The Real Danger

• Eating disorder theorists and feminist scholars have blamed fashion magazines, movies,

television, and advertising for their influence of disordered eating. Source: Thompson and Heinberg

Is it really that serious??More than five million people have been

affected by eating disorders and about 1,000 women die per year due to anorexia.

“Media exposure leads to internalization of a slender ideal body shape, which in turn leads to body dissatisfaction and eating disordered

symptoms” Source: Thompson and Heinberg

The Connection

• “Media messages screaming that thin is in may not directly cause eating disorders but they help create the context within which

people learn to place a value on the size and shape of their body.” –National Eating

Disorder Association

To sum it up…

• The way media portrays females is unrealistic and misleading which negatively affects our

self perception.

Finally…

• Its ok to want to be healthy and take care of yourself and your body. Its not ok to deny your

own beauty and strive to achieve the impossible.

• All images from googleimages.com