How women in pop culture define what "true beauty" is.

The Merriam-Webster definition for beauty is stated as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit”. In other words, beauty is something that should be unique to each person in their own right. There should be no set criterion that defines if one is beautiful or not. Unfortunately, today’s modern society seems to have just that. A set criterion that determines if one is considered beautiful or ugly.

Influencing society’s youth from a young age, pop culture plays a substantial role in defining this criterion. According to a 2007 study done by the American Physiological Association, early exposure of women in pop culture can be extremely harmful to a young girl’s emotional and physical health. In the younger years, the brain is developing and is susceptible to impressions made by pop culture. For example, young girls usually get their first Barbie doll at around the age of three. Barbie dolls are marketed as being a skinny and curvaceous girl with a no flaws to be found. Barbie dolls have the “desirable” body, the hot boyfriend, and the successful career. Aspiring to have a successful career is an important goal to set for any young girl, but unfortunately it seems that more girls in today’s society are more focused on achieving the “perfect” body rather than working for not only a successful career, but a successful future overall. A standard Barbie doll is proportionally increased to human size (a standard Barbie doll is 11.5 inches, so increase by a 1/6^th scale), the “real-life” Barbie would stand at five feet nine inches, chest size of thirty-six inches, an eighteen inch waist, a hip size of thirty-three inches, and would weigh in at one hundred and ten pounds. The “real-life” Barbie would be roughly thirty-five pounds underweight and would most likely suffer back problems due to her not having enough strength to support her breasts. Is this what young girls should be aspiring for starting at such a young age? It does not stop with the Barbie dolls however, as young girls become teenagers, and then mature to become a woman, pop culture consistently bombards them with what the definition of beauty is.

NOTE: This is a very rough draft. I have not written it all, there is more to come!