Blog Assignment 7: Editorial

The idea that being super thin makes a woman beautiful, happy, and successful has become a staple in American culture and other western-influenced cultures. Even with the recent push to promote average women as the new definition of beauty, many media agencies continue to hold onto the old idea of “thin is in.” A prime example of a form of media presenting such narrow-minded, old-fashioned ideas is models.com. All of the models exhibited on this website are the stereotypical stick-skinny models that we are all used to seeing on the covers of magazines, on television, and on billboards. I think that it is time that we stop thinking with such a shallow mindset and change the definition of beauty to a more realistic concept.
For too long, young girls have been subjected to and forced to believe the idea that they can only be considered beautiful, liked, and useful if they are perfect---super tall, super thin, long hair, big boobs, young, and tan-colored skin. It has long been the impression that if you are anything other than these things you are not beautiful or worthy of being represented in the media. Every year, thousands of young girls go to unthinkable extremes to try to obtain the body image that the media portrays as “perfect.” These extremes include everything from excessive dieting and exercise to anorexia and bulimia. This is not to even mention the increasing number every year of young women under the age of twenty-one that are getting plastic surgery to try to achieve this “perfect” body image. Millions of dollars are spent each year in America alone by women of all ages who are trying to gain the ideal “Barbie-doll” body.
I firmly believe that it is time that we unite to take a stand against succumbing to the belief that beauty is only defined by what we see in magazines and on television. We should do it for all of the young girls and women who have ever succumbed to the pressures of such media images and harmed themselves trying to gain “perfection.” There is no one definition of beauty, and I think that we should reinforce this idea in every young girl to ensure that they do not grow up believing the same outdated, unobtainable idea of what beauty is that so many of us have grown up believing.


*Reasons for Rhetorical Situations Used in This Editorial
I chose to address the issue of thin being the only idea of beauty in America and other western-influenced countries because I believe that this is always a relevant issue as thousands of young girls each year are subjecting themselves to extremes in order to obtain this idea of beauty. Even though there seems to be a new push to portray average women in a positive and beautiful light in the media today, it still seems that whenever you turn on a television or open a magazine there are model-thin women dominating the screen and pages. I also felt that people all over the country would be able to relate to this topic since it is such a widespread epidemic in America. I really tried to write to an audience of people, mainly other young women, who are just as tired as I am of the portrayal of women in the media. I tried to use words like “we” in order to make the editorial more personal and try to unite readers in my cause. I also tried to use descriptions like “perfect” and “Barbie-doll” to show how ridiculous the common idea of thin being beautiful is. Furthermore, I tried to use roughly estimated statistics to draw on the readers’ emotions and further spark their enrage over the issue. Also, I believed that these estimated statistics would resonate with readers who like hard evidence and figures.
http://www.models.com/