Blog 3: Learning Outcome

            In today’s society, the average woman is bombarded with countless streams of advertisements concerning thousands of beauty products, diet fads, and of course also presented with the glaring perfection of stick thin models every day.  With the spotlight constantly being focused on physical appearance, women, more specifically young girls or teenagers, are consumed with the unfeasible goal of shaping themselves into becoming just like the touched-up and unrealistic models they see on the television screen and fashion magazines.  To avoid being consumed by the standards of society and the media, one has to understand the true goal of mass media.  Mass media’s primary goal is to make a profit; so naturally, by selling their audiences a goal that’s nearly impossible to successfully achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet industries reap the benefits of billions of dollars a year as girls scramble for their wallets in the hopes to buy their “beauty”.  Raking in that much money, the media would be crazy to lessen their standards of beauty with the risk of a decrease in profit. This only means that with time the standards will be raised.  For example, twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8% less than the average woman, nut now the percentage has raised to 23%.  The standards of the mass media on women and girls in America are constantly becoming harder and harder to attain, and will continue to do so as long as the fashion, diet, and beauty industries are benefitting. 

                After studying mass media throughout second semester, I conclude that by analyzing the Medias influence on society’s perception of beauty, it shows the way mass media uses language and image to persuade their targeted audience; young girls and teens.  By editing models and celebrities to erase blemishes or imperfections and altering their bodies to make them appear even thinner, the media uses their layout and use of images to deliberately manipulate the audience into believing that the edited images they’re seeing are normal and what one has to imitate to be attractive.