In today’s society, everything changes in a second. Popular trends, ideas, and fads come and go quicker than ever, and so does those concepts surrounding femininity. Women must conform and change their ways in order to fit the mold that society, primarily American society, creates. Pressure to be skinny, skinnier, the skinniest is becoming more prevalent in the ads today. In a place where everyone places so much pressure on self-image to the point where it continues to make the individual, namely the woman, feel increasingly more insufficient, it feeds the cycle. It’s a vicious circle of destruction, with the woman always feeling more and more inadequate. This, in turn, fuels the industry and those who have the power to make decisions regarding social norms. This, too, is how the cycle for anorexia works with females. It mirrors the basic needs that women feel in order to fit into society. Individuals have been socialized to believe in the norm and today, the norm is thin. Today the norm tells you that anything else is unhealthy whether it be too skinny or too fat. Humans crave the ability to fit in and belong, which causes everything to flow in the same pattern with each social movement. Everything is a cycle between those who start the trend and those who are forced to follow it based on social norms. Today, healthy does not equal too skinny. But advertisements tell a different story in which everyone must have the same body shape as the one pictured in order to be considered “normal.” So women are forced to find that middle ground, whereas in previous years, different body shapes were deemed to be “normal.” The need to wear the right makeup and clothes can be directly reflected in the way in which people exercise and diet. It is all in the name of self-image that people subject themselves to these practices, and although people are well aware of the messages the media is trying to send, they allow themselves to get manipulated by everything in the process. It is because of the obvious human desire to belong that practices can change and people can change, just as society does every second.
I think you kind of touched on an interesting topic in here- the discrepancy of what society tells us is pretty and what it shows us as pretty. Maybe being brought up with this makes us feel MORE inadequate, because there is so much variety with what is "pretty" and, since you can't be every kind of pretty, any other human you look at will bring up jealousy or the feeling of inadequacy.
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