How the media is destroying our self-image
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Amanda Verhoeve
Through My Eyes
From an extremely young age, we are exposed to media containing someone selling something that promises to make your life so much better.
Whether you’re a five-year-old watching cartoons or a 17-year-old flipping through a fashion magazine, you are being told that who you are isn’t good enough.
Although you may be convinced that you are confident in who you are, each ‘photoshopped’ model you lay eyes on degrades your self-esteem and self-image a little at a time. Cosmetic companies are aware that what they do has long-term effects on girls and young women, because that’s what they use as a marketing strategy. If they make the girls feel awful enough about themselves, they will buy whatever it is they’re trying to sell to counter it.
As a result of media’s campaign for “perfection,” women are starving themselves, getting plastic surgery and plastering their faces in hope of society accepting their body.
That’s why there are people like Nicole Clark come to the rescue of these girls. As a former model working in Los Angeles, she knows firsthand the physical effects of trying to change yourself to fit the media’s description of a perfect body. She teaches girls around the continent to pick out and analyze what the media tells us and how to become comfortable in your own skin.
With more and more people becoming aware of the media’s deception and indirect cruelty, when will the media stop what they’re consciously doing? Will they ever stop?
Unfortunately, the media doesn’t stop at women. Men have a large part of their “game” and can get sucked into it just as easy as the women. They tell men that they need to have a six-pack, a girlfriend for every day of the week, and go to the ends of the earth to impress women for sex appeal.
Although it doesn’t seem like media tailors its marketing schemes to men because women seem to be more physically and emotionally affected, men feel the pressure as well.
Once you understand what is happening in the media and are aware of where you stand with your self- confidence, picking out what’s healthy and what’s unacceptable becomes much easier.