Women In The Media

Women in the media

A quick glance into the latest women's magazine will instantly reveal new ways to look younger, thinner, and prettier. An article written by Michael F. Jacobson and Laurie Anne Mazure entitled "The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women" sheds light on the excessive attention paid to a woman's appearance. The article states that "women have always been measured against cultural ideas of beauty but advertising has joined forces with sexism to make images of the beauty ideal more pervasive, and more unattainable, than ever before" (Jacobson and Mazur 211). The ideal image of women portrayed by advertisements is unrealistic, yet it sets standards that many women feel they must alter their appearance in order to attain.

It is difficult to look through a woman's magazine without seeing at least one article about "trimming down" or "shaping up". Weight is perhaps the most imperative aspect of the ideal image of women, referred to by Jacobson and Mazur as "The Iron Maiden". The majority of women's magazines feature some sort of weight management article on the front cover. Headlines like "The Easiest Way to Lose Weight" and "Lose 8 lbs. by Thanksgiving!" are common when glancing up and down the grocery store magazine aisle. So much emphasis in articles and advertisements is put on being slim and fit that little room is left for women of different shapes. A diet program called Medifast asks its readers to "Picture themselves in a new wardrobe, dropping dress sizes every month, enjoying shopping for clothes, turning heads, feeling good again." This advertisement, like many others, promotes the false impression that happiness comes from being thin. Skinniness as happiness can be as subtle as before and after pictures that show a person noticeably happier after losing weight. The idea is clearly asserted in other advertisements such as a Mary Kay article that states "My skin. My eyes. My smile. Suddenly, everything feels so right. That's the beauty I want for my life and I get ii from Mary Kay". Articles such as these wrongly associate happiness with emulating the iron maiden. Yet as more and more women continue to soak up the idea that skinny equals perfection, companies will continue to put it out there in hopes of attracting women who want to know more and who will buy their products.

Those who do not fit the iron maiden image of "5'10", 120 lb" often feel the pressure to change (Jacobson and Mazur 211). With so many alternatives out there, a woman is bound to find one she likes. Diet pills are one option that more and more women are choosing. According to Jacobson and Mazur, a survey done by Glamour Magazine revealed that "50 percent of respondents used diet pills" (214). Though extremely high, this percentage does not seem out of reach considering the number of advertisements promoting diet pills as a good form of weightloss. Women's World magazine denotes two entire pages to an article entitled "Everybody Wants to Lose Weight, But Which diet pill is right for you?" (52). The article features eight different diet pills, all which claim to get rid of a woman's unwanted fat. The concept of the Iron Maiden is clearly exemplified in just the first sentence of the article. It states that "There are two things we all know for sure, you can't be too rich or too thin" (Women's World 52) While it seems like an easy alternative, diet pills are extremely unhealthy. According to somethingfishy.com, a website on eating disorders, diet pills can cause "nervousness, restlessness, insomnia, high blood pressure, fatigue and hyperactivity, heart arrhythmias and palpitations, congestive heart failure or heart attack, stroke, headaches, dry mouth, vomiting and diarrhea or constipation, intestinal disturbances, tightness in chest, tingling in extremities, excessive perspiration, dizziness, disruption in menstrual cycle, change in sex drive, hair loss, blurred vision, fever and urinary tract problems. Overdoses can cause tremors, confusion, hallucinations, shallow breathing, renal failure, heart attack and convulsions" (Brown np). While the side effects of diet pills can be enough to kill its consumers, these consequences are unfortunately not enough to kill this "$30-billion-a-year business" (Women's World 52). They are not enough to keep women from risking their health, and lives, to achieve the image of the iron maiden.

Along with the perfect-sized body, society also demands that women have flawless-skin. Jacobson and Mazur claim that the Iron Maiden 'has no wrinkles, blemishes--or even pores, for that matter" (212). Women in advertising are fault-free, yet in real life, fault-free does not exist. Companies use make-up artists and photo retouching to promote their models as perfect-skinned and blemish-free. This false portrayal of woman's skin, however, leads those outside of the advertising world to strive for that perfect look. Countless make up advertisements declare their products to be a means to perfection. One L'Oreal advertisement claims that its makeup is a "flawless transformation in a single sweep" and gives "skin-perfecting" coverage. The natural facial marks we are born with are seen by companies as beauty-faults in need of concealing. Women across the globe use these products to appear prettier and younger in the eyes of the iron maiden

Youthfulness is becoming an increasingly large part of a woman's appearance with each new age-defying product. "In just four weeks, see even the deepest wrinkles start to fill in" states an advertisement in Self Magazine for Neutrogena anti-wrinkle cream. With so many products on the market that make a woman appear younger, more and more women feel as though they are inadequate the way they are. Jacobson and Mazur's image of the perfect woman, known as the Iron Maiden, is a "Seventeen year old professional model" (211). The thought of someone over the age of seventeen being too old is