Blog Post Week 5
Oct. 7, 2025
In a social culture where bodies must be perfect, hair must be voluminous and lips must be kissable, beauty has become less about self-expression and now about self-surveillance. The readings this week and Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 do a great job at uncovering how ads and media have created unattainable beauty standards, but also how they have weaponized them, turning insecurity into dollars.
As Kilbourne expounds on how beauty standards aren’t natural in Killing Us Softly 4, we start to unravel the money side of our beauty standards. These standards are made by advertisers to sell products and keep a hand on social control. These ideas were born decades ago, the marketing that linked thinness, youth, and perfection to women and their worth. The “perfect woman” you see in ads are just that: an advertisement. Her body is digitally manufactured and airbrushed so there isn’t a pore to breathe, her skin is lightened shades above what it is naturally and her identity is reduced to what is on screen.
This isn’t just vanity, it’s power. When young girls are taught to value their looks over their smarts or individuality, it teaches them to not love their uniqueness and quirks. Instead, it keeps them insecure, easier to influence and hinders their self-expression. We see this in The More You Subtract, The More You Add (p. 131-136) Lind reading.
The effects of these controlled advertisements go way further than looking in the mirror. Girls today internalize these beauty standards, going as far as restricting their food and editing their pictures. We read about this in Body Image and Adolescent Girls’ Selfie Posting, Editing, and Investment (p. 30-35). These constant self-comparison is the perfect foundation for anxiety, low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, eating disorders and sometimes much worse.
This harm isn’t just tailored to women and girls. Men and young boys are affected by the patriarchal idea of strength, dominance and emotional repression. These pressures lead to body-image struggles and emotional disregulation. People of color face even more harm: beauty standards stemming from whiteness diminish darker skin representation, textured hair and non-European derived features.
The 2025 Super Bowl Carl’s Jr. “Hangover Burger” ad featuring TikTok and Instagram influencer Alix Earle proves how little beauty standards have changed. Despite the growing awareness and demand for representation, advertisers and companies still exploit sex appeal for views and attention. To change this harmful cycle, we have to push advertising “big leagues” to embrace ethical representation- use real, diverse bodies and genders, stop digital manipulation and shift the focus from appearance to authenticity.
If ads can sell insecurity, it can 100% sell empowerment and truth. The industry has so much power, and it’s time we push the industry to use that power for good. We can redefine the way beauty is sold- as confidence, individuality and self-acceptance. Media literacy isn’t just about understanding a message, it’s about reclaiming the narrative. Beauty doesn’t need to be filtered- it just needs to be real.