Girls are expected to live up to a
certain standard. This includes waking up and making sure you look pretty
before you leave the house. This includes having your naturally frizzy hair
smooth through the use of serums and straightening your hair. This includes
giving yourself the appearance of a full eight hours of sleep through the
application of concealer and blush. This includes making sure you have not an
ounce of hair on your body, besides on your head and eyes of course. According to Hannah, 13 years old, she “spent
about three hours getting ready [for the party]” (Greenfield 6). How long do
you think it takes for a young male to get ready for a party? Well, they need
to put on their outfit, maybe put some gel in their hair, and that is pretty
much it. For a girl to get ready for a party, she may do her makeup, hair,
shave, tan, get her nails done, get her eyebrows done, and more. The fact is
that if she does not do just one of these, she will be frowned upon by the vast
majority. God forbid a girl shows up to a party without makeup. Or worse! Pasty
skin. Lisa, 13 years old, states how “there is so much peer pressure... with
the fact that everybody has to look the same” (Greenfield 7). If beauty
standards didn’t exist, we would have much more diverse appearances in this
world. We say that we encourage diversity, yet we make young girls conform to a
set of arbitrary rules. Every girl needs to have long eyelashes, tan skin, and
a thin frame to be considered beautiful in the United States. If a girl is
pretty without meeting these standards, we say “she is pretty for not having
[insert a socially accepted beauty norm]”. Cindy Margolis, the worlds most
downloaded woman, talks about how women in magazines do not “look like that.
[Her] pictures are airbrushed. Everything is lighting and makeup and hair” (Greenfield
9). Many young girls in the twenty-first century look up to models on Instagram
and other modes of social media to define what’s beautiful. They idolize these
women and try to resemble them. What these young girls do not realize is that
these images are photoshopped and many of these models achieve their looks
through plastic surgery. It is unrealistic to have a waist that is twice as
small as your hips. Yet young girls see images of these tiny waists on social
media and they starve themselves because they think it is normal. In my photo,
the girl is blurred except for her legs and phone. This symbolizes how social
media influences her to shave her legs and follow other beauty standards, even
though they hurt her. She also has a huge pile of clothes lying next to her
while she takes up a small portion of the photo. This makes her seem insignificant
and ‘just another girl’ in this world full of women who look identical. Lastly,
the overall dark appearance with a faded look to the sides of the photo
represent the negative effects of beauty norms and how they are harmful to
young girls.
Works
Cited:
Greenfield,
Lauren. “Girl Culture.” GIRL CULTURE - Lauren Greenfield, 2001, www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/girlcult/index.html.
6 comments:
From: Raquel
The dark and faded appearance of the photo is what caught my attention. I have become so accustomed to most photos of women and girls being well lit and filtered, I had to stop and investigate why this did photo did not have a typical presentation. The same can be said about the blur and the subject’s distance from the camera. Both techniques led me to the author’s focus of the photo; bandaged legs and a phone.
Something else I noticed about the photo was the location. The subject is lying in a cozy, comfortable seeming bed, in her bedroom, where most of us would feel comfort and freedom to be ourselves. She could utilize the space on the bed to rest and relax, but she is not. What is on her phone seems to take up most of the space in her mind while her clothing and bandaged legs occupy most of the space on her bed. She has the freedom to feels as if she is lying on a cloud without a care in the world, but the opposite is true. As the author stated, the influence of social media has the power to govern our feelings and behavior, even when allowing it to affect us to this degree is harmful to us.
One of the most interesting things about this photo is her gaze. She is focused on the smallest and insignificant seeming object in this photo. She had to blur almost everything else in the photo to force my eye to focus on the phone. I cannot help but notice she looks so much more powerful than her phone, though she does not realize this. This is what many women and girls experience. We put an exorbitant amount of power in the smallest things that serve little purpose but to make us feel small.
From Starla: I like this essay and this image. Although the dark colors are mentioned in the essay I think that it creates a sad mood. Dark colors can symbolize things like depression and anxiety which many girls experience due to unrealistic beauty norms. I really like the idea of having the phone not blurred out although almost everything else is. This gives me the idea that social media has a great influence on the lives of young girls, they want to look their best so that they can post a new picture on social media just for something so superficial like a like or a comment. In the photo the artist did mention the pile of clothes next to her but from my view it seems like the girl isn’t centered and that the clothes are. That gives me the idea that the clothes are sending a message, like she was describing girls who go through multiple outfits for hours before leaving the house. Also, another thing that wasn’t mentioned is that the bed is unmade, and the sheets and blankets are both white. The use of colors affects the image like white meaning innocence. And the unmade bed looks hectic and it looks like there was a point for that maybe showing that the lives of young girls in this time are messy because of all of the standards they have to live up to.
From: Jenny
The girl in the photo has her mouth and eyes are blurred out/covered. This blurring symbolizes the girl’s inability to speak her mind or discuss her point of view of the beauty standards set on women. The covering of her eyes shows that she is blind to the reality that these beauty standards and regimens that women follow are arbitrary. Although her eyes are covered, the audience can see that her gaze is upon her phone which house various types of social media that display outrageous beauty ideals through extreme Photoshop; she is blind to the fact that Photoshop is utilized to make models appear perfect.
The sheets of the bed are white which represent the innocence of the girl that is being overtaken by the pile of clothes on top. These clothes can symbolize the fashion industry that perpetuate images of perfection that suggest to women and girls that they must dress a certain way to be attractive. The variety of clothing can represent the illusion of choice for women. Although there are many choices within the fashion and beauty industry (different styles, colors, textures, etc.), they’re all used for one thing: to make a woman beautiful in the eyes of society.
The girl in the photo is also in the corner of the room which can symbolize a feeling of being trapped in one mindset or beauty standard. As Sydney mentions in her essay, women tend to be frowned upon by others if they do not follow a strict routine of beautifying themselves. Women seem to be trapped and caged into only one type of beauty standard; there is no choice, only the illusion of choice (symbolized by the clothing).
From: Capri
In Sydney’s photo “Am I Pretty Yet?” is a very well interpretation of the representation of beauty standards amongst females. In the photo, the girl in the photo has her faced blurred and everything else is not. Sydney used this as a symbol of how social media influences females to do certain acts like shaving legs to meet beauty standards. This blur on the girl’s face could also symbolize how the girl may feel insecure, and unhappy with her looks. In the photo shes on the a very messy bed with clothes. Another Creative element that is represented in this is the use of space. Sydney could have easily left out the clothes and the messy bed. I feel as though that the use of space in the photo was put there on purpose. The clothes and disheveled bed could symbolize the amount of stress that woman go through when trying to look “pretty” and represent a woman to the fullest. Everything is messy and unorganized to represent the many trial and errors that woman do to achieve an unrealistic beauty standard. The creative element “Gaze” is also in effect. Although you cannot see the girls face, you can get a pretty good idea that she is looking at her phone. The girl could possibly be looking on social media at other females and possibly comparing herself to the beauty standards of the woman who meet those standards judged by society. Having the phone in the photo is a very nice and relatable prop because I know that’s the #1 source for advertising such standards.
From: Lexi
Sydney’s picture stands out to me a lot. I can relate to this because when I was in high school, my friends and I always got ready together before we went out to parties. Although I was the one who never took a lot of time, it was my friends who took hours to get ready because they felt like they would be talked about or feeling “not good enough”. This is all because of society in todays world. Like Sydney mentioned, the average “pretty” girl would look tall and skinny, tan and blonde, and have fake nails and fake eyelashes. This is all because we see people like this on social media. Us girls think of the smallest things that guys really shouldn’t be worried about. If guys looked at us as “beautiful” because of our personality, we would worry less about what we look like and not worry much about having fake things such as nails and eyelashes. The part that catches my eye is that the girls face is blurred out. Her face is blurred out because everyone is worried about the little things as I mentioned in the beginning. The pile of clothes could represent the stress that she was going through when trying to find out the “perfect” outfit. I like how Sydney also mentioned that girls don’t realize that popular shopping stores photoshop the models before posting them on the website. The way the photo is taken, it is looking down on the girl, as if everyone looks down on her as well.
From Zenobia Oliver
This picture was something I can relate to a lot most people think that girl is neat, organized, and a well-rounded lady but now a days some girls don’t live up to that and I'm proud to say I am one of them. I think this stood out to me the most was because of her bedding it's all messy and when you think of a girl you would think her room is clean. it also stood out to me because most girls take forever picking out their clothes, but I basically choose what I want no matter how it looks because what's the point of dressing up if it's not something important. What I'm seeing is a girl trying her best to fit into the social norm but ends up hurting herself and realizing that she will never be able to fit because she's not skinny enough or tall enough and doesn’t have blonde hair and blue eye. She's looking down at her phone where she probably gets the idea to try to fit in more. To me the angle of the camera is making her look timid and maybe doesn’t want others to see that she's struggling to look perfect like models she sees. Since she's in the corner I would think they would want her to feel small and insignificant to take up more room than she is.
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