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Pop Culture is Destroying True Beauty
Pop Culture is Destroying True Beauty
By Rachel Drevno
The Spectator
Online, October
11, 2001
Our society affects us everyday. In
simple ways, it makes us aware of new products or calls our attention to new
movies. Or it can affect us more deeply by suggesting we aren’t good enough
because we don’t look a certain way. Billboards, magazine ads, and TV
commercials portray ideal images of people as skinny, beautiful, and sexy,
frequently playing on the general public’s vulnerability about their bodies. These
messages generally go unnoticed until people reach a point where they dislike
everything about themselves.
Everywhere you look you will find
images of women and men who typify what our society considers “beautiful.” More
often than not the women have visible ribs, hipbones that jut out, and
emaciated faces. Men are portrayed as sculptures chiseled out of granite, with
rock hard abs and strong shoulders. Rarely do advertisers use someone with a
little meat on their bones to sell their product, unless
of course they are pitching some newfangled weight-loss product. Open a
magazine, closely watch a movie or TV show, and you can’t help but be inundated
with images of “perfect people.”
In countless movies, characters who at
first appear quiet, nerdy, or unfashionably dressed are overlooked until they
receive a makeover and then suddenly to our surprise become hot commodities.
But such rapid makeovers (usually set to lively music) do not yield the same
results in real life. Every year men and women spend absurd amounts of money on
products that promise to make them beautiful, skinny, or physically enhanced in
some way. Slap a pretty face on a box, add a so-called “guarantee,” and people
will flock to buy it.
