Never Too Young for Perfection- Girls and the Unattainable Reality

Body image, everyone has one. Body image is "how one defines what his or her body means personally" (Cash 2002). This is formed through expectations and opinions as wells as verbal and nonverbal communications conveyed through family, friends and peers and even strangers. Body image is often based off of how well someone believes their body matches the social standards of physical beauty. All of this seems to be logical but the standards of physical beauty in today's world are based off of a fallacy. With all the technology out there the images of the bodies we see in the media are not what those bodies look like in real life, because they go through a series of editing that makes them more physically appealing.Sometimes those bodies don't even exist with in real life, they are created from computer software. Not only are these images fake and unattainable they are often hyper-sexualized and focus on disemembering women into few body parts such as butt and breasts all to display this artificial ideal of what is physically attractive.

Shockingly this ad is selling jewelry, not breast implants. 

With the standards of society being so high and unattainable we set people up for failure. Young girls who are influenced heavily by such images are shown to have to problems finding their body image acceptable. Sexualization, — "turning someone into “eye candy” — is linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression in girls and women" (Warner 2007). When adopting these sexual images seen in the media girls suffer negative consequences such as hindering their ability to develop sexually. 

Child pageants are no exception to the unattainable standards of society, girls as young as infants parade in often skimpy outfits to be judged on their "beauty", which is of course the product of fake tans, teeth, hair, lashes and eye color. Not only does this reinforce the stereotypes of beauty in the media to keep women in their place as objects of men  but also little girls dressed as miniature women "mark a deep sexual disturbance in society" (Camille Paglia)  which finds school girls and pig tails sexy and where women have to portray virginal innocence to attract men.