A teenage girl walks through the halls of her high school passing skinny girl after skinny girl, she passes girls putting on tons of makeup, girls fixing their hair, girls gossiping and complaining to each other. The girl makes it through her film class where she watches "beautiful women play different roles, makes it through her music class where she saw videos of gorgeous singers, and makes it through her fashion design class where she watches super skinny models look good in clothes she would never. She then drives home passing billboard after billboard picturing perfect skinny girls modeling overly expensive clothes. When she gets home she logs onto Facebook seeing all her friends and peers overly edited, "beautiful" profile pictures and ads on the side of the screen promoting different beauty products. She finally turns on the TV and sees hundreds of commercials for makeup, diet pills, and plastic surgery, all claiming to really work and make you more "beautiful".
The average person sees about 8,000 advertisements each day, with almost half of them having to do with self-editing. Thanks to the media girls today have become extremely self-conscious and insecure. You will constantly hear teenage girls saying things like "I'm ugly", "I'm not pretty enough for this", "My skin is too pale", "My hair is too curly", "My nose is too big", and other degrading remarks. Girls everywhere are looking up to the media for what is beautiful when the truth is all the beauty the media portrays is a fake. It is impossible to get to that picture perfect state naturally. Movies will only cast skinny women, models must be tall and skinny, and magazines show pictures of girls with flawless skin, large eyes with long eyelashes and plump lips. None of these attributes are attainable to girls unless they go out their way to edit themselves.
The media is sending out the message that in order to get anywhere in today's world you must alter yourself to fit the picture they are portraying. This is not the message we should be sending the female youth of our world. The saddest part is that most of the ads out there portraying "beauty" are not to give society a message but however simply to sell expensive products or promote expensive procedures such as makeup, anti-aging creams, and plastic surgery. Self-editing adds have not only become an interest but it has become a hude part of our economy. The media should really change their ways of promoting products because what they are doing has a much larger affect than assumed.
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Not only does the media and society around us make girls want to edit their faces, but their bodies as well. In today's society being "big" is supposedly a bad thing. Models have to be so thin that it is nearly impossible for girls to become them unless they purposely alter their bodies. Larger or heavier people are viewed as ugly, and the bullying that occurs because of that can be devastating. So many girls will look in the mirror and instead of seeing the beauty they are they think, "I look fat, I need to lose weight". Even girls who are already thin will think they aren't skinny enough for the attention they crave. They will go to extremes to get to the weight they believe is more beautiful. Girls today will starve themselves or throw up their food, and can wind up hospitalized or even dead. Eating disorders are becoming more and more common every day. Because of the media girls are constantly pressured by the world around them to be thinner and they think it will make them more beautiful. If something doesn't change soon there is going to be a huge social issue on our hands.
Although eating disorders are on the rise, so is the awareness of this occurrence. Many people are working towards this cause creating, support groups, studies, campaigns, and organizations to help boost the self-esteem of girls around the world. For example, Dove has recently started a campaign and the "self-esteem movement" to help show the world what the media is doing to girls everywhere. The dove self-esteem movement is out there to show girls how to survive in a world where you are pressured to change to be beautiful. We also see the rise of support from blogging websites such as Tumblr, on this website people of any age can share pictures and quotes.
Most people who have a Tumblr are out there to convince people that they are beautiful. I do have a Tumblr and I know that on people's blogs you will constantly see messages of people talking to strangers telling them that they are beautiful. It is a miraculous thing what those teenagers are doing and it is amazing that we are able to help each other that way. If this social blogging continues there could be a big change in a lot of people perspective. All that people are doing is simply being kind, inspiring, and spreading the word. Could simply teenager to teenager blogging be the answer that some people are striving for to help the world's self-esteem?
To anyone who may come across this paper, I want to tell you that you are beautiful. You don't need to be thin, have straight blonde hair, big blue eyes, and a small nose. You don't need all that makeup you put on to cover up the real you, and you certainly don't to listen to people who tell you otherwise. Don't let the media or for that matter any part of society tell you that something is wrong with you because you are perfect exactly the way you are. Once a group of us comes to realize that true beauty shouldn't be artificial we can work together to convince all the girls out there that they don't need to change, we can work together to build up the self-confidence of the girls in our society so they can truly believe that they are beautiful.
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An Analysis of an Expository Essay on a Teenage Girl. (2023, Feb 17). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/an-analysis-of-an-expository-essay-on-a-teenage-girl/
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