The Artemisia Project

          “I wish I were taller”; “I should be thinner”; “ If only I were white”. Truth is: we are never happy with the way we look and the genes we received. Each and every one of us has insecurities about our bodies, our weight, our age, even our ethnicity. Why is that? Who has put into our heads that having a big nose or small breasts isn’t attractive enough and should be changed? Who dictates what is deemed beautiful and what is not? Today’s society puts a lot of pressure on girls and women to look and act a certain way. Through the media especially, girls are given an impossible image of what they are supposed to look like. Not conforming to the norm is subject to ridicule and judgment from others. This pressure to be perfect, led by the press, leads to low self-esteem and body issues for young girls and women that never go away.

 

            As a child I remember playing with Barbie and thinking this is what I wanted to look like when I grew up: tall, thin, blonde hair and blue eyes. That was my beauty ideal as a young girl and still is for most people. As I grew older, my dolls were replaced by fashion magazines, romantic comedies and an absurd amount of TV shows, but my conception of beauty didn’t evolve. All the models in magazines are tall and extremely skinny. All the actresses have flawless skin and perfect hair and makeup, even when they wake up in the morning, which I always find frustrating. These images surround us and have influenced us, whether we want it or not, since our childhood. How can you be expected to make your own opinion on beauty when you have been force fed preconceived ideas on attractiveness through the media, for such a long time? I know I can’t.

 

            Women, more than men, are judged on their physical appearance: we are given the impression that being thin and beautiful will bring success and happiness and girls who don’t fit the norm will be rejected, judged and mocked. In highschool for example, being pretty and dressing well gets you friends and respect, whereas wearing glasses, being overweight or having bad skin gets you ostracized even though you can’t control these things.  The beauty standards set by the media are almost impossible to attain. Impossible not only for the average women but also for the ones we look up to. As a result, a lot of models and actresses such as Portia de Rossi have struggled with eating disorders and most of them have had plastic surgery, an extreme example being television personality Heidi Montag, who underwent ten surgeries in one day, risking her life in the process. Even “perfect” Barbie wouldn’t be in very good shape if she were life-size. She would be anorexic and due to her proportions, would walk on her hands and feet according to CBS News.

 

              With an image of beauty that is so unhealthy, it comes as no surprise to learn that most girls are unhappy with their bodies or that according to a poll by People magazine, 80% of women said the images of females on TV and in movies, fashion magazines and advertising make them feel insecure about their looks. Women often try to deal with these insecurities by dieting as they are pushed to do by magazines, not knowing that in time this can lead to eating disorders and depression.

 

              It is also important to realize that the ideal beauty spread around the world by the media is a westernized ideal: tall, thin and fair skinned with western apparel. I already have trouble fitting the norm with my brown hair, brown eyes and larger than life appetite, so how are black women with curvy bodies and dark skin or Asian women with petite figures and slant eyes supposed to feel good about themselves when the only models who represent them have Caucasian features and lighter skin? In some Muslim communities, light skin has become an important beauty criterion, so much so that some girls try to lighten their skin with products such as bleach regardless of the consequences.

 

               We live in a world where the saying “One must suffer to be beautiful” has taken a whole other dimension. We need real role models, with real bodies in our magazines, movies and advertisements. Real, confident women who will make us realize that we are perfect just the way we are and that there is no need to start a diet or get plastic surgery to feel better about ourselves. That being said, the main purpose of the media is to sell dreams by creating an ideal beauty that is impossible to achieve: in an effort to be beautiful women will buy beauty products, diet related items and purchase what the media tells them to. The media is responsible for perpetuating this dysfunctional ideal and creating a society based on consumerism and physical appearance.