Media's Perpetuation of Gender Constructs and Beauty Standards

  While the advertisements we looked at in class were certainly troubling, they honestly reminded me of a lot of the tactics that are still used today in modern merchandising. Ads today may not show the present gender constructs as clearly as the post cold war ads, however they are still highly targeted and feed into people's insecurities. This is especially prevalent in products that are targeted towards women.  Many of the beauty standards that are intertwined with the concept of femininity originate from companies finding ways to profit off of women. Things like the perfect skin, perfect body, perfect nose, are all concepts that were made up in order for companies to gain more money from making women believe they needed their product in order to be “beautiful.” It also interested me the way that the magazines used a lifestyle in order to advertise their products. In this case, we see the American ideal as a small suburban family. Today I feel as though companies still do this alot, however the lifestyle they are trying to sell has changed. Companies like Hollister and Abercombie took off in the 2000’s, mainly due to their branding which made costumers believe that they could be the cool beachy teens they always wanted to be simply by wearing the companies clothes. Although a very early form of media, newspapers and magazines were the first mainstream media to perpetuate beauty standards in such an intense way.