Messages from the media

This week was all about gender roles, and what messages the media sends to everyone about how to be a man or women. The media teaches boys to be violent, tough, and unemotional. In ads men and even little boys are depicted as strong and independent while women and little girls are depicted as weak, and as objects. From as early as we can remember we are bombarded with these messages, and although it seems like we can ignore them these messages get ingrained in our heads.  Ads everywhere picture women beautiful, perfect, and skinny. Girls need to strive for perfection, but it isn't possible. I just got a magazine in the mail today, it's called Glamour. After watching Killing Us Softly 4 I couldn't help but notice all the ads in Glamour when I was looking through it. Before I would try to skip over and ignore them, but now I can't. And, I realize now that I could never fully ignore the messages of the ads. When me and my friends would go through magazines together we would always look at all the pictures of the models and say I wish I had that body, or I wish I was that pretty. When we were finished with the magazines we were just left feeling badly about ourselves. But, it's impossible to strive for this kind of perfection. The models and people in the magazines don't even look like that because their pictures are photoshoped and altered.