Toyin Kareem: The media and its unrealistic beauty stereotype (Y! Superblogger)

Toyin Kareem Superblogger

The real tragedy is that many women internalize these stereotypes, and judge themselves by the beauty industry’s standards that are too unrealistic in its flawlessness.

Women (and men) come in an endless array of shapes, sizes and colour, but one would never know it from looking at most adverts. “Physically attractive” and “sexually desirable” is almost synonymous with “flawless” and “thin.” Men are usually portrayed with perfect six packs abs while women are shown as slender which is a stark contrast to the rounder curves of most women’s bodies. The current ‘beauty ideal’ smiles at us from the pages of fashion magazines. She is a seventeen-year old professional model, weighing just 120 pounds on a slim 5‘10” frame. Her teeth is pearly white, she has no wrinkles, blemishes or even pores. This flawlessness is, in fact, an illusion created by makeup artists, photographers and photo retouchers (HelloPhotoshop).

Most of the images we see in the media have been nipped and tucked, trimmed and filled out, flattened and rounded, down to the last detail. Each image is meticulously worked over: teeth and eyeballs are bleached white; blemishes, wrinkles, and stray hairs are airbrushed away. In some cases, a picture is actually a combination of body parts of several different models; a mouth from this one, arms from that one, and legs from a third. In the end, we see a reflection of someone not even the model can claim as her own. Egyptian milk, Botox, fake tan, coloured contact lenses, hair extensions, boob jobs, the list is endless. The problem is, that standard is unattainable, even for those held up as examples. It is one thing to live up to a certain standard and quite another to try to live up to somebody else’s fantasy. As an adaptation to the physical demands of childbearing, women’s bodies typically have a fat content of around 25 percent, as opposed to 15 percent in men. Fattening, which in some African cultures is perceived to bring out the best in the African woman is almost a taboo. In the Eastern part of Nigeria, some tribes send bride-to-be’s to the “fattening room” before the wedding to make sure the bride looks well fed and healthy for her wedding.

The world has however shrunk cultural borders with the rapid growth in social media where brands are sold worldwide. Global advertising campaigns that display ‘Beauty Myth’ type models are produced and the western ideal of beauty which is mostly held up as evidence of beauty is the thin, long legged, long neck, long finger-nails and long free flowing hair (Brazilian anyone?) The overwhelming presence of media images of painfully thin and flawless women mean that real women’s bodies have become invisible in the mass media.

It is worrisome that female beauty images on media are unattainable for all but a very small number of women (less than 5%) consequently; many women are dissatisfied with their seemingly imperfect selves when they compare their reality with the airbrushed perfection. It is really sad that there are sensitive/impressionable young girls with self esteem issues that are magnified significantly by the fake perfection that is shoved down our throats via airbrushed ads, magazines, catalogs, TV shows, movies, billboards, etc. Since the media molds expectations, opinions, and attitudes; the audience of these adverts may accept the way women are depicted as reality. The real tragedy is that many women internalize these stereotypes, and judge themselves by the beauty industry’s standards that are too unrealistic in its flawlessness. The adverse consequences from feelings of insecurity and body dissatisfaction include eating disorders, low self esteem, unnecessary, expensive, and painful plastic surgery, depression and all can lead to death.

Thankfully, there have been some moves to buck this trend. There is a Dove Campaign for Real Beauty launched by Dove which was established to inspire and educate females about a wider definition of beauty. The Campaign Fund continues to create thought-provoking adverts and confidence-building programs that embrace all definitions of beauty. Tyra Banks’ also launched campaign called “So What?” to promote positive body images for women and eradicate low self-esteem. This was in response to a magazine article that called her “fat”. Thankfully, curvier/fuller figured celebrities and models like Omotola, Toolz, Michelle Obama, Tyra Banks, Octavia Spencer, Beyonce, and Kim Kardashian, are being acknowledged for their beauty as displayed on magazine covers.

You can work out to keep fit and maintain a good Body Mass Index but please don’t obsess. We may not have control over what and how the media decides to represent us, but we certainly have the power to change how we react. Until adverts depict women in more realistic ways, women will persistently measure themselves against impossible standards of beauty. Until we embrace reality, women will continue to seek commercial remedies for imaginary flaws. It is up to the women in particular and society at large, to think more critically when they look at that Victoria’s Secret spread and less critically when they look in the mirror.

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Toyin Kareem loves to laugh and likes to love, but most of all;I love to inspire. She blogs at www.toinlicious.blogspot.com and tweets from @toinlicious

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Comments (2)

  1. @ally, under which rock have you been hibernating? Maybe the Nigeria of yesteryears was like that. Agreed, the pressure in Nigeria isnt as much/intense as the one in the West, but the assertion that it doesnt exist is not true

  2. Whoever wrote this article must be obsessed with the liffestyle of the West. There is absolutely no pressure from Nigerian media for any woman to be a certain shape or size. I have seen very successful ample sized women strut their stufff down the red carpets in Naija and not a single mention of their weight. As a matter of fact,they are always praised for looking smashing. Mr,Pls leave yóur fake adopted ideology at the door,we don’t need that kind of negative brainwashing here in Naija.

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