How have media representations of women’s body/beauty changed over your lifetime? Have the changes been empowering to women? Why or why not?

H Looking back both at my life and the lives of others around me it’s shocking how powerful media changes can be on society. Being born in the late 1980s the notion of leading women had been around for decades already. Growing up with a mother who had started and owned her own business, it didn’t faze me that women’s equality status in the business world was still an evolving issue. Now enrolled in an entrepreneurship class I recently learned that the number of women now studying the profession is still much lower than men. As a girl I was so oblivious to the real world. When it came to discussion of my future all I knew was that I wanted a red convertible like my Barbie and wanted to be a professional ice skater just like all the pretty girls in the winter Olympics. Now that I am “older” I am able to see how trends affected my way of thinking, my dreams, and in actuality the way I lived my life.
I would say media took its affect on my around the age of ten or eleven, a time where most girls are trying more to fit rather than finding themselves. My best friend was boy-crazed and I was trying to grow up way too fast. Grace, my best friend, and I began reading teen magazines, watching the bad parts of PG 13 movies, and worrying about boys. Of course every girl wants at least one boy to like them, especially around the preteen age. To accomplish this task we turned to the representation of older women to try and land a man. I remember watching Christina Aguilera and Brittany Spears gradually make more provocative videos and thinking if I could only be “sexy” like them. So I bought the makeup and the hot clothing and I got my first boyfriend. Mission accomplished. However, as I grew up the media’s latest fads did too.
Maybe I just need to hit that point in my life where I started to see the world in a more realistic way in order to finally see that the media really did have a power over me. I would say this time came around my senior year of high school. For most of the past three years I had hung around the type of girls who modeled to every type of media trend that came about. I finally realized that it was ok that I wasn’t the promiscuous teenager girls were supposed to be. Since pre-teen times the image of girls and women had become much more provocative. What was not acceptable to wear ten years ago was now considered conservative. Tan was the new pale. Bleach blonde hair was hot. And the more cuss words in the song the better. Times had definitely changed and I had finally hit the age where I could be different and be ok with it. I’m not saying I didn’t follow any trends and totally did a 180 but I didn’t want to turn into one of those girls that looked and acted just like everyone else. To me that was not cool anymore.
Now I am in college and I have more exposure with older women and women in the workforce I can see how the media affects this group as well. Today it is more common to see a woman balancing a career with family life. Twenty one years ago this fad was still growing. In addition, the number of both girls and women suffering from eating disorders has sadly increased. I blame 95% of this on the media and depiction of a thinner and thinner woman. Even as a teenage I suffered from a period where I believed I was bigger than all my friends and therefore dieted for two years. Thus, it can be said that the media has influenced women in both positive and negative ways. It all depends on the woman, and how much power she allots to the media to control her life.