When you pick up a magazine what does a girl between the age of 14-21 see? Usually, stick thin, blond, perfect skinned white girl. Just about every teen magazine out here doesn't really give much attention to realistic looking girls especially ones of other ethnic backgrounds. They generally tailor everything from advice to clothes for white girls. In the video “Killing Us Softly” this was a program that was originally aired on PBS and has been shown in many Sociology, Women's Studies and Social Science classes dealing with the media and women. It was interesting how many girls they interviewed on the program said that they wanted to look like the girls in the magazines since they wanted to impress boys.
This is where a lot of young girls get an unrealistic view in their minds about they should look and this is where their self-esteem goes downhill because many of these girls are trying to achieve an unrealistic look. We see a high number of girls and eating disorders and other issues especially on the emotional and psychological end. Jean Kilborne the author of Killing Us Softly, is an internationally-known and award winning lecturer who created this series talking to high school, college, and university students in America and across the world across two generations. Kilborne released the original Killing Us Softly:The Advertising's Image of Women program in 1979 and then Still Killing Us Softly is released in 1987, and Killing Us Softly 3 was released in 2000.
Anyone who is a Sociology major will have seen these videos and had done research papers on the detrimental effect of the media on women. Most of what Dr. Kilborne discusses in her lectures are things that are in fact truths that most people don't want to admit to. Much of the print advertisement show rail thin white girls and you almost never see any models of other ethnicities and if you do they're never seen in Vogue or other fashion magazines since the 1980s thin was considered sexy and to this day it's still in the mentality and vocabulary of many casting and modeling agents. Most of the models today have admitted to having some kind of eating disorder or have abused drugs in order to continue working. You have well known Hollywood actresses who are thin and claim that this is how they are when in fact it's not. For example in a recent article British actress Kiera Knightley said that she is naturally thin when in fact she's not if anyone saw her movie Bend it Like Beckham she appears to look a little more on the heavy side and had curves now when you see her she's pretty much skin and bones. Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham is another one who is entirely too skinny because she too says she eats and works out….looks to those who see her that she's exercising a bit too much and not eating enough. Someone who is naturally thin isn't to the point of looking emaciated and malnourished.
A lot of female stars won't admit they have some kind of eating disorder to avoid the heavy scrutiny in the media for how they're looking. This is serious because the majority of women who suffer eating disorders are usually upper class to middle class white females. The percentage of other ethnic groups dealing with anorexia and bulimia is very small, but historically white females have been groomed and expected to look a certain way to make them sexually desireable and marriageable. It's to the extreme you have men who base their idea of how a woman looks through the media such as beer commericials and even now with commercials for topical creams used for maintaining an errection. Most of the women seen in these commericials are thin, bikini clad, blond-haired, blue eyed white women.
Teenage boys are now getting selective with how they view women by the media pushing a certain look and saying to girls that if they look like this they'll be considered good enough to date. High school is a hard place to find yourself since you got a lot of girls who don't have a high level of self-esteem and it doesn't help when a boy tells them they're too fat or too skinny and find dating cheerleaders acceptable because of how they look. It's where you start to wonder what are they putting in these teen and adult magazines that has girls thinking this is the only way I'll get a boy if I look like this. It also contributes to the surge in consulting with plastic surgeons to work on girls who want to fix themselves when there's nothing to fix probably due to the fact that some boy or young man told them that they're too fat and would look good skinny when they're average looking or something on them isn't right and has them believing that it makes them look ugly. This is why so many eating disorders are prevalent among white girls because they're busy trying to live up to an unrealistic image of themselves through what the media and some guy tells them. Black females aren't in any major print ads unless it's to promote hair care products, make up, and or food and Hispanic women are in advertisements where they promote cleaning products and or food.
The print media is rather racist to a certain extent since the original detergent commercials back in the day were white women, typical housewives June Cleaver types who wore the shirt waisted dresses and heels. Only time you saw them was during the airing of soap operas since they were only 15 minutes long versus the time now which is one hour every day and all the detergent commercials feature white women you don't see a lot of commercials with women of other ethnicities if you do it's for cleaning supplies and food since African-American women back during slavery and the time into the new century and throughout the Civil Rights Era worked cleaning the homes of prominent white women and their husbands. The media today which is a multi-billion dollar industry tailor most of the advertisements towards specific groups. As a consumer we have to realize that women who are being portrayed as thin and attractive are telling you that whatever product they're promoting and endorsing will make you sexy.
To be frank it won't make you any sexier than the person standing next to you. This kind of madness has to start with the consumer not supporting products that portray women in a way that influences young women to think that if they look a certain way they'll be attractive. They always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
