My Body & Society Essay

Submitted By adicityy
Words: 763
Pages: 4
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In today’s society our bodies and physical attributes are scrutinized all the time and it seems that humans are getting harsher in their judgements of each other. Everyone has heard the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but most of us disregard this phrase and pass judgement entirely on our bodies or ‘cover’. The world is revolving around split-second judgements on our appearance, and this is becoming more evident in our schools, and at much younger ages which should be very alarming as kids are segregating themselves from each other based on colour, creed, and even clothing. Usually, kids who come from wealthier families are usually the more popular ones and they are the ones from where the segregation starts. the media affects how we are judged and convinces us to emulate a specific model to become more socially acceptable in our society. This model is simple yet very complicated at the same time, with the outline of skinny being beautiful, fat being ugly, and wearing designer clothes and accessories means being classified as “popular” and thus, socially accepted. The bombardment of messages about beauty, dieting, and slimness tells "ordinary" women and men that they are always in need of adjustment, and that our bodies are something that can be perfected. Our world is littered with idealized images of men and women. These fake photos are the model of what a woman or man should look like, but the dilemma is that we cannot achieve that kind of body, and the more differences between us and that model, the more scrutiny we receive from judgements. Also, countless teen movies depict high school by cliques, usually divided into the jocks, preps, nerds, druggies, Asians, Blacks, etc. When we see a movie like this, we classify ourselves or others in one of those categories, and this is purely based on our bodies, how we look, dress, speak, weigh, and what our hobbies are. Even though these movies could be intended to be viewed as parodies, we, as teens, take them very seriously and it affects our appearance and self esteem greatly. Another influence of media would be reality television shows, such as Jersey Shore, The Real World, etc, where we view these 20-something reality T.V. stars who go out partying every night, abusing alcohol, waking up the next morning and heading to the gym. Men strive to get the muscular physique through the so-called “G.T.L” lifestyle, but cannot get there if we abuse the biomedical risk factors, such as drinking and smoking. The mass media, in my opinion, is the biggest factor in how we are judged, and why we are judged. Either through idealistic advertisements, teen movies, or reality T.V shows such as Jersey Shore, mass media defines the socially acceptable way on how we should look, act, and behave. We should be embracing our differences, instead, we are doing the opposite, of
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