First, it was the invention of motion picture. Then there was the arrival of television, and now with social media available for 24 hours, there is
At least 1.5 pages of your Critical Review Draft #1. This draft should include all parts of the paper with a reference page
Media Influence on Beauty Standards
First, it was the invention of motion picture. Then there was the arrival of television, and now with social media available for 24 hours, there is no shortage of extraordinarily beautiful people setting beauty standards for not-so extra ordinarily people. Despite that human history has been strewn with struggles after struggles to secure one’s freedom and way of life, people have never been completely free of the influence from the media that is ceaselessly reinventing itself. As the influence of media is ever so present in people’s lives, the beauty trends in the media have also been dictating what people should look like and shouldn’t. Both Hao in Hello Peril: The in-betweens of Asian American Body Image (2019) and Hahn in Toxicity of Beauty Standards (2019) deal with this very aspect of media manipulating people to subscribe to unreachable beauty standards. Hao focuses on how Asian American women are trapped in two competing cultural beauty standards, both of which pressure them to be thin as the global success of popular K-pop singing groups who practice an extreme diet to look thin. In the same vein, Hahn discusses the dangers of following the beauty standards with blind faith by illustrating the current beauty trends from diets to plastic procedures. While both articles shed light on the toxic nature of media’s playing such a huge role in shaping people’s perception of beauty, Hahn’s article (2019) is more convincing in two aspects: first, in Hahn’s article, are there not only more examples and statistical data, but also those examples were published by reputable organizations with clear in-text citation; whereas, Hao’s article (2019) provides s no data ; second, the tone of Hahn’s article (2019) is much more objective and informative, whereas, Hao’s tone is subjective and skeptical.
Looking at the number of examples and data that help illustrate the influence of media on beauty standards, Hahn’s article (2019) is filled with a wide array of examples from reputable institutes such as Eating Recovery Center and Los Angeles Times. Compared to Hahn’s article, Hao’s article (2019) lacks examples since there is only one example which is about K-pop singers’ practice of extreme diet. Even the example of K-pop singers does not come with any citation, but the author’s own commentary about it. Given that the main idea of Han’s article (2019) is more specific on the manipulative nature of media in people’s lives, it might not be a surprising discovery that Hao’s article (2019) which mainly discusses the duality of life Asian American women must deal with in terms of how they should look. Hahn, on the other hand, specifically addresses that people are dictated by what they are exposed to daily. Those daily influencers come in the forms of ad campaigns, T.V personalities, movie characters, and social media. Hahn does not stop at identifying the culprits who do everything in their power to persuade viewers to buy them and imitate them. She also provides statistically alarming numbers of people of all ages taking extreme measures to look like beautiful people on these media platforms. For instance, she quotes an article titled, “Body images and Eating Disorder” that talks about that “40-60% of elementary school aged girls are concerned about their weight” (“Body images”, 2019, cited in Hanh, 2019, para.3). Hahn points out that the article also states that over half of teenage girls tend to resort to potentially dangerous practices of skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and even taking laxatives to control their weight. Hahn also provides the popular trends in the effort to stay thin. This point is further explored in the article when Hahn starts to talk about girls’ trying to bank on their attractive looks and become an ‘Instagram model’. She points out how social media has been the number one driving forcing behind the popular image of beauty by providing another telling result of a survey conducted by the brand Dove. According to the result, out of 1, 027 women between the ages of 18 and 64, 25% answered that social media is the major player in shaping “their conception of beauty” (Dove, 2019, citied in Hahn, 2019, para.4). However, 78% of the respondents said that the way women are depicted on social media platforms is not at all close to what real women look like.
Another aspect that makes Han’s article (2019) more convincing on the influence of the media, is how the article is told, in other words, its tone. Due to that the tone of Hahn’s article is much more objective and straightforward, it is easier to see the issue at hand without having to try to extract the purpose of the article. The tone is informative and objective as she provides a slew of examples and statistical numbers that clearly reveal the power of the media. This tone allows the readers to see the problem and be able to relate to the people introduced in the article. Compared to Hahn’s article (2019), Hao’s article (2019) is much more nuanced than less informative. The readers are forced to read between the lines. Hao’s being an Asian American woman seems to have been deeply affected by the problem she raises in her article. That is probably why her tone is much more personal and resentful of what is being done to Asian American women. Because of this personal nature of her writing, it leaves little room for the readers to process her claim themselves and accept it. In addition, Hao’s subjective tone does not sound very persuasive talking about Asian American women struggling to satisfy both their parents’ culture, which believes that thin women are beautiful and western culture, which now perceives that beautiful Asian woman must be thin. This claim of Hao’s may make its readers pause and think if there is even one place where thinness is not celebrated in this society. If thinness were not celebrated all over the nation-perhaps all around the world, no companies would never be praised for their use of plus size models and adding plus sizes in their clothing lines.
Hao (2019) and Hahn (2019) bring the ugly truth of the manipulative nature of the media in what seems to be the most vulnerable aspect in human lives: how attractive do I look? This being the focal point of the two articles, Hahn’s endeavor to delineate how strong of a hold the media has on people by providing a variety of realistic examples readers can easily relate while Hao provides a personalized account of what K-pop singers do to stay thin with no specific source cited. Hahn’s tone in the article comes through as an informative voice which allows its readers to see what is truly going on for themselves, while Hao takes a deeply scathing tone for the cultural pressure that deepens the inner conflict of Asian American women between the two sets of beauty standards. It was disturbing to read about how deeply school aged girls are impacted by social media platforms and the list of the things they do to their bodies was cringe worth information.
Hanh’s article (2019) does a great job painting a realistic picture of that the influence of the media spares no one. The two articles being web-based articles do not provide more in-depth analysis of the role of the media. Particularly, with Hao’s article being more as an op-ed than a news article, it forces an agreement on its readers. However, since a thin body has been celebrated as the most distinct features of an attractive individual, the argument that Asian American women are conflicted between their ancestral culture and western culture is not as convincing as all women feeling pressured to look thin regardless of their races. Overall, it is Hahn’s article that successfully informs and warns its readers of how dangerous it is to follow the beauty standards the media have concocted and made people ingest the dose of it regularly. Therefore, I recommend that Han’s article (2021) for readers who are looking to learn more about what the influence of the media with clear examples and data.
References
Barroso, A., & Brown, A. (2021a, May 25). Gender pay gap in U.S. held steady in 2020. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/25/gender-pay-gap-facts/
Hahn, E. (2019, November 15). The toxicity of beauty standards. The Catalyst. Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://millardwestcatalyst.com/10919/opinion/the-toxicity-of-beauty-standards/
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Hello Peril: The in-betweens of Asian-American body image
By Hillary Hao (November 13, 2019)
Here is the link to the website: https://dailyfreepress.com/2019/11/13/hello-peril-the-in-
betweens-of-asian-american-body-image/
I have talked a lot about the struggles that diasporic Asians face, but it’s time we initiate a
discussion around how these binds metaphorically and literally shape a racialized body. There is
a constant, unrelieved pressure to possess certain physical traits which have an astonishing
amount of worth assigned to them to the point that Asian American women begin to weigh in on
them in girlhood.
The importance of a thin female figure is a harmful pattern in many societies, but for those who
are “in-between” cultures, there’s an unspoken burden of straddling multiple cultural lines. To
resist markers of difference on a racialized body in order to fit in, we must conform to Western
beauty standards. Yet we must also balance them against eastern beauty standards to feel
accepted by our parents and relatives.
This process is incredibly disempowering. As Kalea Martin, a student at Mount Holyoke, said,
“when you’re Asian in America, you find yourself in a lot of situations where you stand out. And
when you’re surrounded by a bunch of people that don’t look like you, you’ll inevitably be
heavily influenced by the beauty standards they set.” These patterns strip the individual of the
ability to negotiate body-image on their own terms.
Though, I would be doing violence to the truth if I said that a white power structure was entirely
to blame. Eastern beauty standards are just as demanding and bodies are constricted by
traditional patriarchal structures.
Korean pop singers are the perfect case study for this. It is well-known that management
companies oblige their singers to diet in preparation for debut or a new release; the rationale
behind these otherwise unjust practices is the universal palatability and value of thinness — and
the singers wholeheartedly accept this.
Their highly publicized, “new and improved” bodies become even more cause for concern when
you consider that these singers are described as “idols.” The label’s air of superiority and
aspiration elevates these young women and their thinness to the highest level of class and as a
result, the value of thinness is artificially inflated.
One can imagine the repercussions of this for Asian-American women. We are already exposed
to this body image by virtue of being a part of the community, but our understanding of thinness’
importance is further distorted by Korean pop’s explosive popularity in the U.S. Since it has
been accepted by a multicultural society, the false universalness of the appeal of thinness is
further perpetuated.
Additionally, both the East and West reify the stereotype that Asian women are naturally slim.
For those of us that don’t fit neatly into that norm and internalize it, we are made to feel like
freaks of nature. This alienation makes it difficult for Asian American women to situate
ourselves into body-positive mentalities.
It leads to thoughts that, although not explicitly in tandem with eating disorders, create an
entirely unhealthy relationship between food consumption and body image. If women feel they
need to lose weight, many will begin right away by reducing portions, sometimes to dangerously
small amounts. We feel as though we have no choice but to squeeze and contort our bodies into
these increasingly narrow and unrealistic confines.
What begins as a dietary exercise can escalate into an eating disorder and an unsound
relationship with food. We keep trying to force our diverse range of bodies into a supposedly
natural size 00 which makes failures hit harder than they should. And for those of us that
successfully diet and then participate in policing others’ bodies, we are participating in our peers’
oppression.
We are in an era of heightened body positivity and we ought to partake in it. I understand that we
live in a world of thin privilege, but we don’t need to explain our bodies. It is our private
domain; whatever you decide to look like ought to be your own choice.
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