http://www.inquisitr.com/224402/valeria-lukyanova-model-seeks-to-be-real-life-barbie-doll-photos/

Barbie’s Perfect Body

            She is almost there! Valeria Lukyanova has nearly reached the Barbie body through a series of surgeries and many hours working on her hair and make-up. Valeria looks incredibly convincing as a human Barbie.

            Body image has become incredibly important to many people around the world. They constantly want to change their body to meet the “ideal standard of beauty.” But what is the “ideal standard of beauty?” is it the constant change to your body through surgeries to look like a perfectly proportioned doll or is it being comfortable with the body you have, the one you were born in? I choose the latter of the two. Is it really necessary to have a set standard for all people? I think it should be want you want to look like as an individual; what is natural for you. People are willing to go to any height to get to what they think we would look like; what we have been presented and taught from a young age as what is attractive, sexy, and successful.

            This is too realistic and if she gets success as a model by looking like this it will not be good for the young women who already think they need to reach the perfect beauty queen look. Valeria is just another agent putting out the messages that there should be a standard of beauty, as well as contributing to the pressures to meet this standard. It gives the young women the idea that they have to fit the stereotypes of looking good if they want to become popular and sexy, additionally if they want to become a model later in life. Valeria is also presenting the ease and the ways to the opportunities to get this “perfect barbie body” through surgeries. She is exposing young women to the availabilities of plastic surgery.

            The standard of beauty will become even more skewed if more and more women undergo the surgeries necessary to look this “perfect” (although the comments, made by women, throughout this article suggest that some women do not like the appearance and what Valeria has done to herself; they don’t want to look like that). If the number of surgeries that are needed to meet the standard, increases, then there will never is an end to the altering of our bodies needed to constantly have a better, beautiful body. As soon as that standard is met by a large amount of people, then that will be average and no longer the standard of ideal beauty, thus a new standard must be made. It’s a never ending process.

            Young women are under these pressures the most because they are in a stage of life where they strive for the acceptance of their peers and they desire the feeling of fitting in. According to the article “The Plastic Surgery a Model Needs to Look like Barbie,” 5% of 13.1 million body parts that were surgically altered, in 2010, were carried out on a person under the age of twenty; that is about 650,000 surgeries!

            It all starts with the media, what is in our reach, and what and who were interact with on a daily basis. Ranging from the commercials we watch during our favorite TV shows to the billboards we drive by everyday on our way to class and work to the mass media news that we read in newspapers and see on television, there are agents that influence us to act a certain way and believe certain things. If we want to diminish stereotypes, the standard of beauty, and the ideal body image, we must decrease the availability of these media agents and messages, as well as change the way these ways of living are portrayed and presented to us. We must also exercise our freedom to have an open mind and to develop an individual who you want to become; not a robot programmed to live a certain life.

Sources:

·            The Inquisitr. "Valeria Lukyanova: Model Seeks To Be Real-Life Barbie Doll." The Inquisitr. Inquisitr Ltd., 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://www.inquisitr.com/224402/valeria-lukyanova-model-seeks-to-be-real-life-barbie-doll-photos/>.

·                  Weiss, Piper. "The Plastic Surgery a Model Needs to Look like Barbie." Yahoo! Shine.       Yahoo! Inc., 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2012. <http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/the-plastic-surgery-a-model-needs-to-look-like-barbie-2584798.html>.

http://www.wimp.com/awesomeman/

In this video, the classic stereotypes of men, women, and Muslims are portrayed and carried out by every day Americans. The fact that we have preconceived judgments of people based on their looks, clothing, and race is really disappointing. Nobody should be judged on just these factors; get to know someone before you make an opinion about them. The length of waiting time was directly related to the gender, race, and clothing of the person in distress. For the woman, people jumped to her aid more than half the time of the time for the white male. Nearly thirty minutes passed before one single person stopped and helped the Muslim male in comparison to the two minutes waited by the white male and about thirty seconds for the female. Also, every male they asked said the females looks, the blonde bombshell persona if you will, definitely influenced them to act as fast as they did.

 One thing I did found extremely interesting was when one of the guys commented on not stopping for the Muslim male, “He looked like a perfectly capable young man to change a tire.” Yet, greater number of people stopped for the white male who looked just as capable, just as young has the Muslim man did. What was the real reason? His looks, his beliefs, and the object he placed on his head. People make these grand assumptions that this person is evil or this person is dangerous based solely on the preconceived stereotypes other people have created about that person’s ethnicity, gender, and religious affiliations. These stereotypes usually come from the worst and most radical perspectives of these factors.

Most men are largely influenced and more attracted to the sex appeal of woman and people are extremely judgmental of people based on how someone looks. People need to be more like the young man at the end and do things without judging someone first. Try to get to know someone before you make an opinion of them. 

"Stuck on the Road: Who Would You Help?" ABC News. ABC News Network. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/video/stuck-road-16091432>.