Body image. Role of the media. Literature & Language Essay

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Body Image
One of the roles of the media is shaping the opinion of the masses. It is a tool used by governments and business to persuade the masses to adopt a new thinking paradigm that aligns with their goals. However, often this power of the media is used to exploit the people and influence their thinking unethically. The manipulators who use the media to propagate their ideas for profits. Over the years, the media has been used to exploit the people by engraining ideals which are not necessarily true or important to the public to influence their behavior. The unethical art entails influencing the thought process of humans and manipulate it to make the people make decisions that directly or indirectly earn them more profits especially in the capitalistic economies. Advertisements are used to appeal to the people to want to consume their products. The art of advertising has evolved and incorporated various disciplines such as psychology to design advertisements that are more effective. This is the point the system broke down, and psychologists suggested new ways that are centered on primal humanistic instincts such as the need for sex to design better ads. Through these ads, a new perception and understanding of the female body changed. For example, there are car adverts which feature pictures of sexually arousing models who are skimpily dressed to advertise the car. Often, it begs the question what does the lady model have to do with the car?
These promotional images and portrayal of women and their bodies have redefined beauty standards among the public. The new definition of beauty has prompted many women to go to extreme lengths to change their bodies and match the standard definition. Additionally, the mental health of most ladies has been affected by the definition of beauty as they feel relatively not as beautiful as they ought to be. This has lowered their self-esteem and has affected their mental health. The media has defined a beautiful woman as the one who is tall and has a lean body, long hair, fair complexion preferably Caucasian and with symmetrical facial bone structure. There are a few exceptions or additions which are added to the basic figure described above to appeal to markets of different products. The variant of the afore-described standards of a beautiful woman has driven women to the verge of a mental breakdown and has pushed them to make risky choices for their bodies to match the much-publicized media definition of beauty.
There is a big problem when the media promotes certain physiological traits as perfect of beautiful and overlook the others. The media is influenced by the companies which manufacture products who dictate the content of advertisements. The content often features the ‘perfect’ definition of beauty. For those who have low self-esteem, they find themselves taking risky procedures to...