My overall topic was that in magazines and advertisements, especially in women’s fitness magazines, it seems as though there is a need to achieve “perfection” and the ideal body image. This implies that women are not already “perfect” or content with the way they are, so they “need” to change. It is actually very sad to me that society wants everyone to be “perfect” and look a certain way, rather than just being happy with the way that they were born. Boots make up has a whole line of make up called “Stay Perfect.” The advertisement I’m using is for their Stay Perfect Eye Shadow – as if the woman wasn’t already perfect before she used their product. It is crazy to me that companies can use the word “perfect” for their product.
Even though Fejes’ article was about the lesbian and gay identity, I also thought it was about the impossible image young people feel they have to match. All media and advertisements show the idea of “perfection.” Since gay and lesbian advertisements have just recently appeared in magazines and such, they also feel the pressure to achieve this perfect image. No matter their race, sexual orientation, or age, the media projects an idea of the ideal image that many desire to reach.
Another reading that seemed to go along with my topic was Ghosh’s article. The fact that minority groups are often put in the background, especially in media and advertisements, screams that our society deems them “not good enough” to appear. For example, Indians have been “systematically written out, erased, silenced, and marginalized in any mainstream picture of America” (275). This proves to me that society only wants to see a certain type of person in the media – not a multicultural person. I think it’s actually very sad that we can’t accept others in the media for their different qualities. Just because they don’t fit the “criteria” for America’s “ideal image,” doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve to contribute to the media.
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