Children Learning @ a Young Age

The hit television show, Toddlers and Tiaras, made it's debut in 2009 on TLC. This TV show is of girls that are involved in beauty pageants that start as young as six months old. Beauty pageants to begin with are very controversial and this show brings it to another level because on a local, national, and global scale it is a known fact that they can affect a child's self esteem. Toddlers and Tiaras an entirely different level because these girls are being taught to play into the media and how to lose their self esteem that they don’t even have yet.

This issue shouldn’t be entertained because moms on show go through extreme measures to make their daughters to look “perfect”. Making them go spray tanning, wear flappers which are fake teeth, and they also put on pounds of makeup to make them not even look like a the little girl that they are. These women are living lives vicariously through daughters and not instilling proper values for when they enter school. This can be an issue because the young girls are being taught to look a certain way since they're born basically. In school it's a known fact that young girls will start to have self esteem issues beginning in the sixth grade and up.

Although people think that it's just fun and games it will put a toll on these young girls. The most saddening part about it is that they don't even have a choice to do it or not. On this show you continuously see the girls throwing fits and not wanting to go through with what their mother's are telling them to do but in reality they have no choice since they're so young they technically can't back talk their parents. Overall in my opinion Toddlers and Tiaras is a sickening show that plays into what the media wants and without this being brought to these mothers' attentions about how damaging it can be for their daughters nothing will change to help self esteem issues.

Music Videos vs. Women

In the music industry is where you see women being exploited the most. The saying, "beauty is more than just skin deep," isn't a known fact in the music industry. This is because if you've ever listened to a popular rap song all they talk about are women's body parts. It's as if our society only is able to think about sex 24/7. For example, the popular song at the moment is "Ass" by Big Sean. The chorus of that song literally is just the word ass in repetition which points out that our culture clearly only is able to think of one think which is a woman's back area.

The worst part about music videos is that you will rarely ever see what society considers "heavy" in them. The only type of girl you will see is a half naked woman most likely begging for the man and doing all sorts of sexual dances that are beyond bizarre. I realized this after viewing a website that listed the "Top 10 Sexiest Music Videos." These videos made me so uncomfortable as if I was watching porn except less explicit.

The fact that male singers are not the only people to be exploiting women in their videos is mind boggling to me. For example, the song "I'm A Slave 4 U" by Britney Spears talks all about how Britney is willing to do anything for a man. One of the lines in the song itself is "I really wanna do whatcha wanna do" which there proves that she has no respect for herself. Also in the video below you can tell just by all of the remarks and sexual innuendos that Britney is playing into the media. Mind you this video was published in 2001, this shows that these ideal figures and sexual minds that society has going on has been occurring for over a decade now. The worst part about it is that a lot of people want women to be equal to men but if we have women, such as Britney, playing into this role that women aren't equal to men then there will be no change in society as a whole.

Love is Love

The television show, Mike and Molly, premiered on September 20, 2010 and caused a huge up roar in Hollywood. On one hand, it's nice to see a romantic comedy about a couple that doesn't fit the usual gorgeous-youngsters mold. Since it's apparent that both Mike and Molly are over weight the director has them end up meeting at Over-eaters Anonymous. Also the other change up that is apparent is the fact that it's a romantic comedy and they're not in their twenties. They're in their forties which also doesn't fit the mold that the media portrays as normal.

After the show came out Hollywood didn't really know how to think of it. The automatic thing for most people to do was criticize what the main characters looked like. Note to Hollywood: Even though you don't agree that there should be a show about an overweight couple, the actors still preforming it are allowed to still be human beings and should be treated like a human being. You would never walk up to someone and start criticizing the way they looked because you didn't like it because that's rude and heartless. The sad thing is, is that Hollywood recognizes this as a downfall in their entertainment when the pros are that you're adding new characters to the main screen and you're letting everyone know that it's okay to be different than everyone else. As long as you're happy that's all that's going to matter in the long run. The show itself is also well thought out with great actors.

Even though Hollywood and some personal reviews didn't appreciate the heavy couple getting close and comfortable with one another the show, Mike and Molly, was nominated for two awards in 2011. One of those awards was for 'Favorite New TV Comedy' by the people at the People's Choice Awards. The other award was for Melissa McCarthy who plays Molly ended up winning the Emmy for 'Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.' So overall, even if the media doesn't appreciate the show and is shallow about how the characters are portrayed at least we have proof of those awards that Americans still are able to have an open mind to new ideas.

Price of Beauty

Thanks to a classmate this show was brought to my attention. Jessica Simpson's The Price of Beauty is a show that follows her and two of her friends around the world trying to figure out what makes each woman beautiful in various cultures. Jessica and her friends tackle topics revolving around fashion, fitness, diet and ridiculous spa treatments. It's not all about fun when going to different countries to find out what their definition of beautiful. At few things that occur during some of the episodes include: drinking cow urine in India, being buried up to their necks in Tokyo, and drinking gourds of ghee in a fattening hut in Uganda.

This show is eye opening not only for Jessica, Ken Paves, and CaCee Cobb but also for its viewers because it proves that there is not one standard to beauty. The show brings up interesting extremes that women go through to be their culture's standard of beauty. For example, there was a mother in Rio who couldn't afford electricity, but was secretly saving for butt implants. The Price of Beauty is an awesome show that many women and girls can relate to because of how they've felt towards wanting to fit in to be beautiful and it shows that they're not the only ones that want that desire or that are willing to make it happen.

The down fall of this show I believe is the fact that they're going all around the world to experiment new cultural ways to be beautiful but they're only proving to the United States that there's one standard of beauty everywhere. This one standard shouldn't be a standard at all because not everyone is going to look the same in one culture. I feel that everyone should accept everyone for their idiosyncrasies and their looks.

Are ads going too far?

This group that produced this video couldn't have found a better way to show you how the advertisements are taking it too far and in some ways much too graphic. When does it stop being ads and start getting pornographic? Advertisements like these are able to be seen anywhere which is one down fall to the advertisement community because they're teaching younger girls and/or boys that looking in such ways are acceptable and giving them false hope because the women in these advertisements are mostly computerized. Due to technology today they can take up to 7 different women and make it into one "perfect" woman.

For example, there could be a 15 year old girl that may be heavier and she starts to see these advertisements all around. She then starts to recognize what is "expected" of her and she starts to resource to other ways in order to become skinner or more like the "perfect" girl in the ad. This would be happening because she's naive and is going to think there's something wrong with her if she doesn't begin to look like what is being thrown at her in every direction. As well as the fact that she doesn't even know how to fit in with her peers because they expect real humans to look like the advertisements, so they end up judging her because she doesn't look like her. What if this 15 year old girl was someone you knew? You would want to help her realize that she's beautiful and there's nothing that can tell her she's not. It's sad when people start to begin to get brain washed by the media so soon they end up having tunnel vision and they don't think of other ways to fix this problem.

The News

Watching the news recently caught my eye on how often women news anchors are wearing extremely low cut shirts and very short skirts. They're are still looking professional but you can tell that they are giving into the media. The video below shows only Fox News women in a few of their outfits that happen to be skirts.



After watching that video I did more research and found that there are a ton of websites, blogs, and magazines posting about how good looking the TV news anchor woman could be. They even have a blog on blogspot.com called http://anchorbabes.blogspot.com/ and that is just one of the many blogs. In Maxim, a typical man's article, they have the top ten TV's Sexiest News Anchors which degrades a woman's self worth because she shouldn't have to sell her looks on TV just for someone to listen to what she has to say. The only amazing fact about that article is that Suzy Kolber came in number four for one of the sexiest news anchors. This is astonishing because she isn't the typical long haired and flirtatious news anchor.

Suzy Kolber is an idol because she's made it as a veteran as a woman in sports media. After having to compete with the news casters in the video and in the magazine Suzy knew that her way to get the audiences attention was to become clever and witty. It worked and it shows that she doesn't have to disgrace her self by giving into the media wearing a tiny skirt or a low cut shirt. She can be successful and sexy and still be herself on ESPN.

Power & Still Discriminated

Brought to my attention was the fact that not only are women being put down all over the world because of their looks, the United States media is making sure that they bring down some of the most powerful women in country. Some of those women consisting of Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, and Sarah Palin. What does this say about us as a country? If we can't take some of the most powerful women in the U.S. seriously, how can we take any woman in the United States seriously?

I came across an article about Condoleezza Rice that shocked me. Since she was the first African American Woman to take position as Secretary of State this had her at a disadvantage because she was new and she was mostly surrounded by Caucasian males. She was very successful in this position and it proves that she is a very powerful woman. The downfall of our media is that even though she has a lot of great things to say, America can't seem to get passed what she looks like. The article that I read was more concerned with her "clothed all in black, she caused both fear and sexual excitement in her long, sleek, military-style coat with band collar and gold buttons, sexy short skirt, and knee-high leather boots with three-inch stiletto heels" (BongoNews1). That statement which comes straight from the article proves how shallow the media can be.

That last example was leading up to another important and powerful woman that has to go through constant fire from the media is Oprah Winfrey. As everyone knows Oprah has an apparent fluctuation of her weight but the fact that the media could careless about all that she's done for many humans around the world and more about how she looks or how much weight she needs to lose. News flash: The fact that a woman gains a little weight doesn't make her any less reliable or powerful. Even being at her biggest weight, 237, she was still being successful and continuing with her talk show and helping out everyone. Although people don't like the fact that she "can't stay skinny" and continually gains her weight back. Even the Enquirer, which is usually exaggerated stories, becomes very rude towards Oprah on one of their covers. At one point in her weight gain they even had Larry King talk to her team of fitness and health experts because America is based solely on your looks.

Lastly we have Sarah Palin who was mostly judged on her looks during her campaign with John McCain. This powerful woman was completely opposite of the ones mentioned earlier because she played into what the media wanted her to look like. It is rumor that Sarah has had dermal fillers to make her lips larger, botox done to make her look younger, and that she either had surgery for a breast augmentation to make her breast look bigger and her mid section look smaller or that she uses body shapers. The sad thing about the rumor about her getting bigger breast in order to look smaller started on a political gossip site Wonkette. The fact that Sarah plays into the media is mind blowing. The internet even has a website dedicated to Sarah Palin Jokes and there is even a section there dedicated to her appearance. One joke that specifically stuck out to me was one that Jay Leno said, "Hugh Hefner asked Sarah Palin to pose as a centerfold in Playboy. She declined, saying that at the moment, she was too busy posing as a Vice-Presidential candidate." This joke is clearly stating how Palin gave into the media and basically did anything that she thought would get her more known through the media.

Are you starting to see the pattern? In America we seem to have tunnel vision that skinny and young are the only things that are beautiful due to the media, who is willing to put anyone down. Clearly there are still women who give into the media which, unknowingly, harms how women are viewed throughout all media.