Beauty and the Beast
Humans everywhere seem to be obsessed with beauty, especially here in America and other first world countries. Everyday thousands of ads and products are made to be consumed by people, and almost all of them have one thing in common. They all advertise beauty in some way shape or form; if not directly then indirectly. We flip through our People’s magazine, turn on the TV, get on social media, or look at the billboards above us on our daily commutes and we can't help being influenced by what we see. To the people that say ads should not affect us I agree, but they do. Advertising surrounds us and creates a world that we only wish existed. A world that is perfect. They focus on sending out a message that informs women what they need to do in order to become accepted by society. And society tells women that to be accepted you must be beautiful. So we have this cycle of society telling women they have to be beautiful and the media telling them how.
Even though many people would say beauty comes from the inside society and the media together have created an exterior beauty that is unattainable that most people would define their own beauty with. The definition for beauty has been twisted and the patriarchy, instead of acting like men, allow for woman to go through life in constant self-consciousness while we women do not stand up frequently enough for self love. The struggle with beauty in today’s society is a multi facetted machine. It cannot be taken apart through just one thing. It is only through a collaborative effort between men and women that we will be able to redefine beauty.
One way we see beauty being distorted is through the porn industry. This is so impacting because we live in this sex obsessed culture. Beauty is sex, and sex is beauty. Carol Platt Liebau in her book “Prude” says, “Sexiness has become the most important measuring stick for determining what is worthy of public interest” (12). And that is what makes the porn...