The Impossible Standards The Media Sets on Beauty

In our society we are constantly compared and critiqued by our own selves, by others, and by the media. Day by day we see in the media how women and men should look like. Either it be that you should be skinny, tall, beautiful or wear Cover Girl makeup, the media is telling you how to look. It proposes images and ideals for what what we should look like, even though that is not a norm in any way, shape, or form. In America the average height for a women in 2014 is 5 feet 4 inches, and a healthy weight for that height is between 120 and 140 lbs (Rush Hospital). Yet the media shows us, women who are 6 feet tall and 100 lbs as being perfect and ideal, which is not healthy or normal. Since the media is constantly showing us these unhealthy and and unnatural photos, our society has made an abnormal standard for ourselves. Many children even grow up with this abnormal standard for body weight, when playing with dolls, not even knowing that Barbie is an unnatural and impossible standard to set yourself to. Even though most children probably don't realize the ideology that is being set early in their childhood, does not mean its not there. What the media is portraying to us as a norm is not true, and we need to acknowledge that the standards set by the media are unnatural and untrue.