Beauty Standards
Many females feel a pressure that they must
achieve a “perfect figure”, Unfortunately, the beauty
industry promotes unrealistic beauty to young women and
girls everywhere everyday. The media portrays women as
flawless with reshaped bodies and a standard that is
impossible to meet. People will do almost anything to
enhance their looks. The society throughout the world is
so obsessed with looks that some people choose pain and
expensive routes to be gorgeous, such as surgery or
injections. However, these transformations do come with
dangerous consequences. For example, according to
author Stacy Malkan, promoting unrealistic beauty can
misconcept your mind of what physical beauty is and plays
a major role in our lives. Although many of the problems
Stacy claims are pressing. She argues to understand the
underlying causes of false perfection we desire to have.
SK-II is a whitening cream product contained with
heavy metals that chinese authorities have discovered.
Malkan quickly expresses the anger of customers who
demanded refunds due to the toxic metals. “Hundreds of
chinese women have taken to the streets of Shanghai
demanding refunds for US-japanese cosmetics after
authorities detected to banned chemicals in some of the
products”(1). Malkan argues her statement carefully by
describing the type of chemicals resulting with the different
causes of facial reaction if used. This caused the sales to
be suspended across China.
The author states that airbrushing fashion photos
promotes insecurity and a sense of low self worth. To
make this argument’s claim reasonable, Malkan provides
evidence by mentioning an award-winning documentary
film called Wet Dreams and False Images. In the film, Ken
Harris who is a digital photo retoucher demonstrates the
reshpaed bodies and changes the skin color. “The central
point of retouching is to enforce an unrealizable standard
of beauty. I suspect of myself some sort of convert
obscure misogyny, because i am really screwing with
people’s sense of identity” (2). This evidence supports the
claim by describing the photographs as being “mechanical
and inhumane” (3). Which negatively bring our standards
to a whole other level of perfection.
Malkan additionally adds skin whitening as a way
to misconcept our mind of real beauty. In Asian countries
specifica...
