Nabith 1

Ashim Nabith
Professor Ditch
English 113A
4 November 2014
Essay 2
The western media we live in use the gender expectation of women to advance a
certain product theyre selling to the people to buy. By doing so they place unrealistic
standards of beauty on girls. One example is Subway, their recent commercial shows a
young women preventing another women to eat a burger telling her that she needs to stay
thin and fit for the Halloween costumes such as a sexy Viking Princess Warrior,
Attractive Nurse, and Attractive Secretary. The last costume she tries on the ad shows the
guy who was sitting wearing a Viking King costume telling her if they could go back to
the Viking Princess Costume. The commercial states that being appealing means you
must fit into slim revealing clothes and if you cant then you must start changing yourself
and follow these unrealistic standards.
In the past Subway used famous athletes and actors to show that eating healthy
and staying fit is a good way to live life. They would show the difference between a
persons life not eating subway and ones life eating subway. Now Subway follows the
same path as Carls Junior is following, theyre both exploiting womens body in their
ads and commercials by telling women how they should look like if they want to look
appealing to others. As this continues itll soon become a normal thing for industries like
subway to exploit the womens body and place unrealistic standards of beauty to sell their
product. The western media mostly exploits womens body in the advertisements. From

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perfume, clothing, makeup, and body size this causes many women to believe that they
have to live up to standards placed by the media or else they wont be seen as appealing.
In The Impact of Sexually Objectifying Media on Negative Body Jennifer Stevens
states, that media tend to focus on the thin body ideal, the idea that women are suppose
to be thin and skinny. Televisions and other media source show that body and appearance
is the primary component of sexual desirability (Stevens). Media has an unrealistic
standard for beauty; this standard is having a lean stomach and has broad hips. These
standards can alter what women thinks the true meaning of being beautiful is. Theyll
start to try to follow these standards and exploit themselves in their own public life. The
media industry sexualized clothes so now females have to be thin and skinny to be
appealing. If a girl were unable to reach this standard she would feel self-conscious about
her weight and appearance that could force her to adopt abnormal eating behavior and
have lower self-esteem. Adopting an eating disorder can have a drastic effect on her
health and how she treats other people.
Media places standards of beauty for everyone, for women its unrealistic. Society
sees these standards as; having a lean stomach and broad hips. Having these impossible
standards pushes women to believe that they arent beautiful and appealing to the eye of
society and men. In the article Being a Body the authors Elisa Puvia and Jeroen Vaes
gives evidence that women who are motivated to look either attractive to men or to live
up to societys beauty standards are linked to dehumanize themselves as sexual
objectified targets(1). The reason why they dehumanize themselves as objects is because
theyre trying to live up to unrealistic standards placed by the western media industries. If
they cannot reach these standards then theyll resent themselves and wont see

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themselves as beautiful girls. However once they start living up to these standards the
media portrays them as nothing but sexual objects to men and they get exploited even
further. Women who start changing their appearance by eating irregularly or having
surgery want to find body peace because the western media theyve seen on TV stirred up
what is considered beautiful. In the Composing Gender book Susie Orbachs article,
Losing Bodies shows that women, perceived the way they were to be radically out of
date and in need of upgrade,(245). She states that the women who perceive the person
they are becomes out of date and is modernized by reconstructing their bodies as a sign of
living up to social standards of beauty. The women who are unable to live up to the
unrealistic standard because of physical reasons will definitely suffer from low selfesteem and adopt eating disorder to get any where close to those standards. If they are
still unable to reach these standards because of genetic reasons then they arent seen
appealing because they cannot reach the unrealistic standards of beauty placed by media.
Low self-esteem may cause them to dehumanize themselves and treat themselves even
worse. They could start hurting themselves such as cutting their wrists doing drugs or
even go as far as committing suicide. They could adopt an eating disorder if they are
unable to achieve a certain body size. Adopting an anorexic diet has great consequence to
the womens body, from muscle weakness to depression and fatal emotional health issue.
Even with unrealistic standards of beauty the media goes even further and uses
Photoshop on size 0 models to make them more appealing. These expectations media
industries have for women dont exist and never will exist in this world.
Many can argue that the purpose Subway aired the recent commercial is to show
young women that if they arent happy with they way they look then they can change by

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eating healthy in Subway. Subway isnt using gender expectation to place unrealistic
standards of beauty, they instead are showing what most women want to wear and be like
during these holidays. Its not promoting that woman would be appealing if they buy
Subway sandwiches and stay thin, instead they are motivating that if you want to feel
beautiful and change how you look then you can begin in Subway. The ad motivates
women that want to change their appearance that they can and pushes them to adopt a
healthy diet and life style. Their giving them hope to change how they view themselves
and how they feel within themselves. If they are shown that they cannot change
themselves then theyll dehumanize themselves less that what they are now. The
commercial gives them hope that so they dont have to resent themselves every time they
see other girls with body leaner or broader than theirs.
The media affects how we see things in our life. They show us what it means to
be modern. One way is how they show women to be appealing by exploiting their body
in commercials. If they are unable to achieve these goals then theyll see themselves as
less appealing and dehumanize themselves, theyll have low self esteem and adopt an
eating disorder, which can have fatal affects. The way to end is by showing that we
cannot have unrealistic standards for beauty. Not only do the media have to stop placing
unrealistic standards on women, women must stop trying to live up to these standards and
exploit themselves in their public life. Their just harming themselves and their body
physically and morally. As women are shown that they have to be more of a sexual object
to be appealing then the media is only going to further exploit them. In True Beauty the
author Sandy Fertman states that, Photoshop changes eye color and the shape of noses,
lips, necks and waists. Still, girls feel pressured to compete with these unrealistic images

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(Fertman, 1). Fertman expresses the problem that media is still placing unrealistic
standards of beauty to women. It cannot be fixed if its not confronted. The western media
needs to learn that its unacceptable to be exploiting and placing unrealistic standards of
beauty on women for its unfair and wrong.

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Bibliography
1.) Taylor, Gerren, and Sandy Fertman Ryan. "True Beauty." Girls' Life Feb 2009: 66-7.
ProQuest. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.
2.) "The Dangers of Eating Disorders." EverydayHealth.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov.
2014.
3.) Aubrey, Jennifer Stevens. "The Impact of Sexually Objectifying Media Exposure on
Negative Body Emotions and Sexual Self-Perceptions: Investigating the Mediating Role
of Body Self-Consciousness." Mass Communication & Society 10.1 (2007): 1-23.
ProQuest. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.
4.) Puvia, Elisa, and Jeroen Vaes. "Being a Body: Women's Appearance Related SelfViews and their Dehumanization of Sexually Objectified Female Targets." Sex Roles: A
Journal of Research 68.7-8 (2013): 484-95. ProQuest. Web. 6 Nov. 2014.