A Womans Beauty by Susan Sontag - Essay Example

“A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source?” by Susan Sontag The modern society is characterized by active feminist movement. During many years feminists did their best to change the position of women in the society. Their efforts brought many positive results as now there are many laws, which support and defend women from men’s suppression. However, the position of women in the modern society still can’t be called advantageous. The given paper will prove this fact and reveal the main reasons of negative attitude towards women. “A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source?” by Susan Sontag is a work which reminds us that the work of feminists should continue. The author investigates the present state of the issue and reveals that even the advantages, which women have in comparison to men, for example, their beauty an sex appeal, do not bring any visible benefits to the representatives of fair sex. “For close to two centuries it has become a convention to attribute beauty to only one of the two sexes: the sex which however fair is always second. Associating beauty with women has put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.” (Sontag 154) The first essential factor that was addressed by feminists is sexualization. The author emphasizes the role of mass media that actively promotes the image of a sexy woman is considered to be the one of the main factors, which contributes to the attitude towards women as towards the toys, which are created specially to have sex with men. The nude woman’s body can be seen everywhere: in the advertising, newspapers, in video clips. Beauty competitions also contribute to the formation of the attitude towards women as towards objects. Women want to be sexy, but their sexuality finally turns to be a problem for them, a something they can be blamed for. To have sex is still a shame for women and normal for men. “Hence, when we are discussing women, we are generally discussing the sex interest common to both men and women, and this disturbs our point of view. The fact is that sex interest is a common possession that the unit in human life, even more than among lower animals, is always a male and a female bound together by love. Just as a body can function in sleep or under the influence of a narcotic, for a time seemingly independent of the mind, so a man or a woman can live for a time in seeming independence of the opposite sex; but from any biological point of view, such a separate existence of male and female is only a transient effort” (Barnes 3). The images of slim female bodies with a perfect look are everywhere: on TV, in printed media etc. These lucrative body shapes are able to sell anything they advertise, whether it is a perfume, mobile phone, a car or even an after-shave. However, this growing trend of portraying skinny models as icons of fashion creates an unusual predisposition in common women to seek for the popular image of ultra-thin American woman. The ultra thin female bodies have haunted the entire media. While going through the pages of a womans magazines, whether it is Vogue or Womens Day or Good Housekeeping, or McCalls, one can easily see long articles emphasizing the need and ways to lose weight in order to have a great life. This frequent and excessive portrayal of ultra thin women leads to a number of unhealthy and fatal emotional and biological impacts on female readers. The impact of these a magazine on self esteem of young women, as they compare their body shapes with the “perfect” ones of models, seriously needs to be denounced. The myth about beauty will be broken by revealing the real benefits media enjoy by impacting the values of women. The paper also focuses on identifying ways through which this insecurity can be prevented or remedied (Cohan, 2003). Sontag remains that in our past the idea of female beauty was closely linked to her realistically voluptuous body. In the early 20th century, the culture of fashion underwent a shift from the chubby female figure to a thinner fragile look. However, this thinner new female ideal was not really misleading and made women to think about taking care of their health. This description of female figure initially created a healthy trend in common people as they started to incorporate sports activities in their free time to make their bodies healthier and more active. However, with the development of digital imaging techniques, the beauty ideal presented today to young women is more unrealistic and unattainable than ever before. The recent hype for promoting the thin beauty is increasing towards unattainable thin figures, most of the time being artificially “perfect” which is facilitated by digital tools and computer. In this way media can be held responsible for creating stereotyped notions of beauty, being linked with skinny, ultra slim and very female bodies (Cohan, 2003). Media are very tough in the sense that they manage to create an illusion about beauty that is important for them in order to earn money which results in a difficult dilemma. Mandel, a teacher at Arizona State University, believes that the entire idea behind using ultra-thin models is to develop complexes in the minds of women and force them to seek inspiration from these beauties. In this way, advertising seeks to increase the consumer ship of the products like beauty boxes or diet pills. First a problem is given, and then a solution is offered (Abramson). The author states that it is an obligation for a woman to be beautiful and follow the standards offered by media. “It is also a duty. It is her work. If a woman does real work-and even if she has clambered up to a leading position in politics, law, medicine, business, or whatever-she is always under pressure to confess that she still works at being attractive"(Sontag 161)The magazines earn great money by targeting women and imposing false standards of beauty on them. Therefore, the people of media, behind the creation of false idea of beauty are extremely clever, as they know how to earn money by playing with the self-consciousness of women. The media targets women by linking ideal beauty with different products, and women been frequently evaluated on the basis of these stereotypical standards of beauty fall prey to the standards imposed to them. The magazines provide solutions in the form of advices and tips for different types of diets (Rode). However, the dieting plans promoted by these magazines are often useless or provide temporary solution resulting in regaining more weight. As a result, by presenting these unattainable solutions, they make women continually consuming their products and gaining huge profits (Rai). This kind of media hype pressurizes and imposes women to keep using the products being endorsed. The purpose of creating such unrealistic image of women is to maximize the profit as women will keep spending on the products (e.g. cosmetics) and therefore assuring their profit (Estrich). The most frequently targeted population is the youth as they have a tendency to find their ideals in these artificial images of media and start spending money on diet industry to attain an imposed criterion of beauty. The women are often affected by this illusion of beauty so much that they start comparing themselves with the so called ideal female body without realizing that they are only looking at the modified and edited images that were previously not so unreal. What is particularly disturbing about the construction of the digitally modified ideal is that many young women who compare themselves to these images do not realize all the computer work. The author of the article believe that the essential reason of gender discrimination lays in the fact that the norms of the modern civilized society are based on patriarchal views and are defined according to the masculine culture. “Several thousand years later, we are more wary of the enhancements of beauty. We not only split off with the greatest facility – the “inside” (character intellect) from the “outside” (looks); but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also, intelligent, talented, good" (Sontag 160).”Such situation was formed long ago. Such status is supported by a great number of myths, traditions, social norms. One of the strongly established myths of traditional masculine culture is, for example, the division of men and women into contrasting categories of rational and emotional. It means that not taking into account the individual features, changed social roles and many other factors, a man is primarily considered as a thinker and a woman as something that can just feel. And, certainly, the intellect is valued higher than feelings. Not considering the possible dubiosity of such priority, we come to the conclusion that the possessor of reason is the figure of primary importance and a woman, consequently, is subordinate. The third essential factor contributing to the negative attitude towards women is the blames placed upon “bad mothers” and “prostitutes”. Discussing these problems few individuals pay attention to social and economic preconditions of such mothers’ appearance and few accuse the exploiter of a prostitute. It happens because of stereotypical, patriarchal view on the roles of men and women in the modern society. We often hear: “a woman should”, “a woman must”. These verbs are already associated with a word “woman” and if “must” and “should” are applied to the word “man” they have another meaning “a man should have a rest”, “a man must have a decent meal”. It is no need to say that all these conditions should be provided by a woman. The conclusion can be made that a position of women in the modern society still can’t be called advantageous. A woman can’t be blamed for everything as she usually is since the times when Eve ate an apple. Moreover, the given fact is not scientifically proved. The efforts of feminists brought many results, but mostly to the area of legislation. The social area still needs to be addressed and addressed carefully. Sexualization of the society eliminated the problem of keeping virginity till marriage, but brought a number of other problems. Penetrating the area of employment brought many opportunities, but at the same time provided men with the opportunity not to work at all not even attempting to help about the house. Something is done wrong. The issue should be addressed. Works Cited Rhoodie, E. Discrimination against women: a global survey of the economic, educational, social, and political status of women. Publisher: Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, 1989  Abramson J. Old boys--new women: the politics of sex discrimination. Publisher: New York : Praeger, 1979. Rhode, D L. The beauty bias: the injustice of appearance in life and law. Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 2010. Rai, Shirin. Mainstreaming gender, democratizing the State? : institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women. Publisher: Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2003 Estrich, S. Sex and power. Publisher: New York: Riverhead Books, 2000. Zarchikoff, Rebecca. “Looking Through the Years at Womens Place in Advertising.” http://kafka.uvic.ca/~rzarchik/women.html Cohan, John Alan. “Towards a new paradigm in the ethics of women’s advertising.” Journal of Business Ethics. 33 (2001): 323 – 327. Barnes, Earl. Woman in Modern Society. Huebsch Printed,U.S.A, 2005 Sontag, Susan “A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source?” Web. Read More