Let’s turn on your TV and pick up one channel. Then have a sit and wait until the advertisements appear on your screen. Look! Did you see a beautiful woman with a skinny body, a big breast, shiny hair and full lips? YES! These women appear on the screen and wear nice-sexy dress. Do we call these women are beautiful? YES! Why? Because they said these women are beautiful. Who are they? They are media.
How could the Media change our perception of beauty? As I have stated in beginning, the perception of beautiful women has been established by using advertisements and also movies, mini series, or video clips. Women in these type of media are illustrated with a skinny body, big breast, shinny hair, tall, long feet, and full lips. Even these criteria also appear in animation, comics and toys for kids. Many example of these promotions around us, let’s pick one; a beauty pageant contest. We can see 'beautiful' women walk on the stage and have a body which agreed as a sexy, beautiful and ideal body.
Then how about women who do not have these criteria? Can we group them as beautiful women as well? I have a doubt about that because the media has created the perception of beautiful women and by the time public perceptions have been established for accepting what a beautiful woman is. The perception, actually, has been built since we were a kid. Let’s see our kids’s comics or dolls. Do the women appearances look like criteria that I mentioned above? YES! So, this stuff also helps to establish a perception about beautiful woman.
Media has established public perceptions for something. Even some idealists said that having control into media means having control into the world. The proof can be seen from the changing of beautiful perception. If we read a history or classic literature, we will realize hundreds years ago, beautiful women were not slim but categorized as ‘fat’ by using today’s perception. So, the perception of beautiful has been changed and media has big contribution on it. No matter people realize or not, pictures, texts, or figures that are promoting by media stay in their mind and established a perception of beauty.
This perception also leads to bad consequences for women who are not grouped into this type. Although some women are smart, kind, helpful, and friendly or can be called as women with inner beauty, but they are still not accepted as beautiful women. Here, the media has created a beautiful women is a woman who is physically perfect. This new perception gives advantages to producer of cosmetics, drugs, plastic surgery experts and beauticians. Women who feel they are not perfect physically will try to change their appearances by using these products or services.
I pick an example from Asian countries. Many Asian young girls commit plastic surgery to change their appearance for example by doing implant to their breasts and plant silicon for having full-lips. They use, sometimes, chemical stuffs to make their skin fairy. They dye their hair because they want to have Blondie hair. Eat diet pills to have a slim body. Ironically, some of them are not successful even get sick or injured themselves.
Those are because of the changes of the beautiful’s perception. Inner beauty has been forgotten, outer beauty is the most important. Although media has commercial side but they also has moral responsibilities for altering readers and audience perception of something. Here, the media should provide balance information of what is the meaning of beauty and give the rest to the readers or audience to decide by them.