Oppression To Women

6 Pages 1488 Words

Barbie as the Epitome of Beauty

1. Prompt
(See Picture) Pictures like this really remind me of the negative body images that the media puts on women. There is no reason that they couldn’t have gotten real people to be in these ads. Instead of putting real women with real flaws in these adds, they put a real person’s head on a perfectly constructed body, or just make the person entirely cartoon like with large breasts, big hips, and a unrealistically skinny waist that if it were a real person could not fit her internal organs inside her body. These images remind me of one childhood toy - Barbie
I believe this represents a form of oppression. Some people think that this only oppresses women with image problems. I disagree. Do you know how many women have eating disorders of one sort or the other? There are women that starve their bodies of essential nutrients. There are women that eat everything that they want, and then feel guilty for feeling that full and purge everything, causing extreme harm to their bodies. Then there are the girls who hate themselves for eating, and that makes them depressed, which makes them eat even more and hate themselves more. All of this is because of the idea that the media puts forth that if you do not look like that images in the magazines then you are not beautiful.


2. Research Question
What effects do images of women in the media have on women developing eating disorders?

3. Discussion
Short skirts, tiny waists, large breasts, and flawless airbrushed smiling faces. These are the images of womanhood that I have seen while I was growing up. I see them on the television, on the sides of buses, on billboards, magazines, and everywhere else. And I wonder why so many female adolescents have self-image and weight issues?
Add these limited images of feminine beauty a little baby pink, blond hair, blue eyes, and what do we have? I would have to guess the beloved plastic childhood toy that sm...