Mass Media uses codes and conventions; understanding these helps us to understand how we are presented and what our roles are in society are supposed to be. Ideology and representation are key theories in understanding and exploring the politics of perfection, mass media for example films, advertisements even in reality shows. Understanding Ideology is essential to understanding the ideas behind a media text, the secret (or sometimes not-so secret) agenda of its producers. It is important to be able to identify the different ideological discourses that may be present in even an apparently simple photograph.
For example, the idea of beauty and the ‘perfect’ female shape propounded in Western magazines bears little to no relation to the measurements of the majority of Western women. It is accepted as 'natural' that models in women's magazines should be young and drastically underweight. Since the 1960s the preferred reading has been that these women are beautiful. However, there are signs that, as hegemonic belief begin to adapt to the concerns of many that this body shape is actually unhealthy. (Mediaknowall 2000)
We see this vice versa in with men in the mass media. They are represented with their muscle body and their six-pack. Society sees this as ‘natural’ and is accepting the ideology of the perfect man. I did a search on the Google search engine of the perfect women and perfect man and these were of my results.
These images are very similar to each other. They both show how the research of a ’perfect’ woman is represented in the media and how much the media sexualises a women.
