Conclusion
A Right Body?
All of this talk about bodies and sizes brings up the question of if there's such a thing as a right body?
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The models for Victoria's Secret are naturally tall and slender - no amount of dieting or working out can give you what genes naturally do. Further, they work extremely hard to maintain their incredible physiques. No, they don't represent the general population, but does that mean their bodies aren't naturally beautiful? Double-standards are dangerous.
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However, like mentioned earlier, it is also dangerous to portray beautiful only by employing certain body types, like those of Victoria's Secret models. The lack of variety of body size and shape in advertisement and entertainment media have had great influence on disorders linked to poor body image, like anorexia and bulimia.
Luckily, some forms of entertainment and advertisement media are moving in the right direction. For example, France recently placed a ban on extremely thin models. In France, anorexia affects around 30,000 to 40,000 people, with 90% of those being women. This new law ensures the safety of women are put before their appearance, which is monumental in the modeling industry and in advertisement media.
Focus on Physical
The discussion up to this point has focused on physical aspects of beauty, whether that be body shape, body size, hair length, skin color, and more. But, if we only focus on physical beauty, what other types of beauty are we missing?
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Can being intelligent be considered beautiful? Or could being determined? Being strong? Goal-oriented? Kind? Loving? Unique?
Is beauty only physical?
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My answer is no. Instead, I would argue we must not reduce beauty to only physical characteristics. Instead, we must remember that beauty can be of the mind, the heart, the soul. As this Odyssey article states,
"Beauty is not a duty."
We cannot change the false representations displayed in advertisement and entertainment media overnight, but each small step (like France's ban mentioned above) is a step in the right direction.
What we can do, however, is remind ourselves and one another that beauty can be more than physical. It is important that women and men everywhere know their value does not lay in their size, shape, skin tone, hair color, makeup choice, or other physical characteristics.
In an April 2013 piece, Ann Friedman wrote:
These ads still uphold the notion that, when it comes to evaluating ourselves and other women, beauty is paramount. The goal shouldn’t be to get women to focus on how we are all gorgeous in our own way. It should be to get women to do for ourselves what we wish the broader culture would do: judge each other based on intelligence and wit and ethical sensibility, not just our faces and bodies.
A video reminding others they are beautiful, regardless of their physical appearance.