NOTE: Please find a link to the full article above.
I am unable to repost the whole article due to copyright restrictions. Below
are extracts from the above article.
We’re deluged with images
of ‘beauty’. No wonder so many of us feel so bad
Mon 13 May
2019 16.33 BSTLast modified on Mon 13 May 2019 18.40 BST
In the early 2000s, the internet was a key component
of my teenage life:
many evenings we annoyed my friends’ parents by hogging the phone line and
spending hours talking to schoolmates on MSN Messenger. But during the day, we
didn’t use the internet:
we had clunky phones that could only call and text. So I wasn’t bombarded 24/7
with images of purportedly perfect-looking women. Few of us bothered with teen
magazines bar reading the problem pages.
Today
on social media teenagers and adults are deluged with images of traditionally
“beautiful” people, along with endless adverts for cosmetic procedures such as Botox, and lip and cheek fillers.
And this week a survey for the Mental Health Foundation found that one in eight adults has thought
about killing themselves because they were distressed over their body image.
The foundation’s chief executive, Mark Rowland, said: “There has always been idealised body
representation across media, but it’s the quantity of those images and the
frequency in which we see them – that’s what we’re worried about.” He
also warned that social media platforms were “increasingly consumerist, increasingly
celebrity-orientated, increasingly focused on external appearances”.
People
have always worried about their appearance, but the survey confirms what many
have long suspected:
being bombarded with images of the “perfect” body shape, along with adverts for
weight- loss apps and cosmetic procedures, can have a huge negative effect. One in five people told
the foundation that images on social media had made them worry about their body
image, and one in 10 women
said they had self-harmed because of this.
And
it isn’t just the imagery. Any woman who speaks out on social issues can face
victimisation. One of my
friends recently had a man write extensive abuse under photos of her brother’s
wedding on her Facebook page. My Instagram is locked after a deluge of people
wrote eugenicist arguments under photos I had taken in hospital, stating that
disabled people should die out.
It’s
obvious, too, that more and more women are having cosmetic procedures at a
younger age. Many nail
bars, hairdressers and beauty parlours offer Botox injections. The
adverts that target young women normalise the procedures: surely they should not be seen as akin to getting
your nails done.
And the industry promoting Botox and
other cosmetic procedures should be more strongly regulated. One company has
bombarded me with adverts offering interest-fee credit for several procedures. Young women should not be targeted by these
messages, normalising
painful procedures by convincing people they are ugly, that they have faults in
their face that should be eliminated.
Teenagers
are notoriously image-conscious and also intensely worried about their body as
it goes through changes. But adults, too, are not immune. Ultimately, different
people find different people attractive: we should all remember that beauty and
attraction are wide-ranging – even if you don’t love yourself, the chances are
that someone else will find you beautiful.
Points for discussion:
Look at the ways in which Dawn Foster has used the colon for
effect in this article.
When should be use a colon?
A colon
instead of a semicolon may be used between independent clauses when the second
sentence explains, illustrates, paraphrases, or expands on the first sentence –
see how that works in the article above.
See if you can write some sentences of your own which use a
colon in this way
Where have the following techniques been used?
·
Statistics
·
Quotations from experts
·
Anecdotes
·
Emotive language
No comments:
Post a Comment