"For women, their value is how they look."

“For women, their value is how they look.”

A few days ago, in AP Lang and Comp, our class started watching a documentary called “Miss Representation”, a film about the harmful ways women and girls are portrayed in the media. With facts and statistics about the number of hours teens spend per day on media consumption, which would include listening to music, reading magazines, watching TV and movies, or simply being online on the internet, the documentary presented a case for girls in our culture growing up with unrealistic, impossible, frustrating or demoralizing images of what they are supposed to look like. Regardless of how accurate the data is, I am sure we could all agree that girls today are exposed to a daily onslaught of messages, direct or indirect, and that these messages define our cultural ideals, set standards, and plant ideas in little girls, teens and women on how they should look, how they should act, what they should like, what to buy and wear, and how to get guys to notice. 


“For women, their value is how they look,”the documentary states. There is this idea that a woman has to be perfect. They have to be skeletally thin and six feet tall. They have to wear lots of makeup. Their hair has to be perfect. Their skin has to be flawless. Their cheekbones have to be high. Teeth must be straightened and whitened. Asian women pay to have their eyes surgically altered to look more deep set. Women are trying to attain such an appearance that is simply unattainable. Even supermodels get photo-shopped to make their waists look smaller, or their chest bigger, or to cover up blemishes.Lips are injected to swell to bee-sting proportions, but noses are supposed to be smaller, not bigger. Ears can be cut and stitched closer to the head. Where does it end? If even the supermodels are not considered perfect, who is? Why are we comparing ourselves to something so unattainable? Just because the media makes us feel terrible for not being a certain way?

From a very early age, girls learn what the “ideal” woman should look like. They play with Barbies, see pictures of women in magazines, watch TV and see what actresses in Hollywood look like—we learn very early on what society expects of us. However, pretty much nobody ever lives up to these expectations. Some fall short more than others. Girls obsess over their skin, hair, height, build, weight, face shape, everything. Pretty girls tend to be popular, and less attractive girls may be socially shunned. Those who have the money to dress up with the latest trends have more friends than the girls wearing WalMart clothes or hand-me-downs. Self esteem plummets. It’s no wonder the depression rate has increased at such a high rate, along with anxiety and other mental disorders.

For all the alarming and compelling facts this film presents, I do find one thing I find that the focus is exclusively on females, and almost nothing is ever mentioned about men and how they too might suffer from how the media presents an ideal for them to live up to. Their fashion choices and hair styles may not be as excessive, but boys and men are pressured to look and act a certain way to fit in in this society. Just take a look at stores like Abercrombie and Fitch or Hollister or even Calvin Klein. Women and girls are seen only with slender, handsome men who have six-pack abs, bulging biceps and a golden sun-tan. Teenage boys take protein powders and lift weights constantly trying to “bulk-up” and meet the standard. It is considered a bad thing for boys to be skinny. Guys are pressured to be athletic and strong and to play sports. It seems to be true in every school that it's always the football players who are the most popular with all the hottest girls.

Male or female, all of us are being pressured to fit in and look just right. Women and girls may suffer the most pressure and the most uncomfortable fashions, such as high heels with narrow toes that resemble nobody's feet, and mascara, eye shadow, lipsticks, and other expensive little things that require us to buy a purse to carry it all around in. Guys get to carry a wallet in a back packet and not have to apply make up or wobble around in high heels or worry about a run in panty hose or a loose bra strap.  Guys don’t have to update their wardrobes as often, but they do have to look trendy and cool, whether the trend is pleated pants or flat fronts, distressed denim or the new palette of colored denim.I hope the day never comes when men, too, are expected to wear makeup, straighten or curl their hair, and buy a whole new wardrobe every season. I also hope that our culture's obsession with how we look will someday relax. We should be free to wear what feels good and looks just right, and to use our wardrobes, jewelry and hair styles to express who we are, not to make us all match each other like peas in a pod. Variety is under-rated. Conformity is over-rated. People who work in the media should try harder to send a message of being happy as we are, rather than making people feel they can never be as desirable as movie stars and models.