Subscribe to RSSAbsolutely Safe: Media’s Power
The Media’s Power
No one would deny that the media has influence over all of us. We see images of “beautiful” people in magazines, on billboards, in TV ads, in movies on a daily basis. The average American sees thousands of ads per day. How can we not be influenced by what we see?
“The body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is
possessed naturally by less than 5% of females.”
– Social Issue Research Center
Influenced by images of pop icons, 27-year-old Deneé Dimiceli, a character in ABSOLUTELY SAFE, got breast implants to fulfill her idea of what she thought was sexy, appealing, and beautiful. In the film, her husband T.J. explains that he likes Deneé the way she is and doesn’t want her to have the surgery. But Deneé is determined to have larger breasts, and with the help of saline implants she becomes the “full C” she has always longed to be. Despite losing breast sensation after her surgery, she says she feels “more like a woman” now. Clearly, “feeling” like a woman is not just a physical sensation.
Looking like a celebrity is an attainable goal with the help of cosmetic surgery. Women of all ages – even teenagers – are getting plastic surgery to make themselves look more like the images they see in movies, magazines and on television.
The question is how do we as the consumers get off that merry-go-round and take back the power we have given the media? Maybe it is one choice at a time, one person at a time, one conversation at a time.
The National Organization of Women (NOW), one of ABSOLUTELY SAFE’s outreach partners, started a campaign several years called Love Your Body. The objective of this campaign is to get women, especially young women, to appreciate themselves as they are and to not buy into unrealistic images and standards of beauty.
ABSOLUTELY SAFE asks men and women to consider the images they see in the media and how those images affect ideals of beauty. The film challenges viewers to reclaim their own sense of what is beautiful rather than rely on the media’s manufactured and unrealistic definition of beauty.
To learn more about the educational safe outreach program for ABSOLUTELY SAFE please visit the film’s Educational Outreach page and Redefine Beauty page.