Fashion and Body Image Fashion Industry, Body Essay

Fashion and Body Image

Fashion industry, body image, and self-esteem

The fashion industry has established itself as a multimillion industry with more and more players jumping onboard each waking day. With the new agencies fro the fashion industry opening shop, there are higher standards of beauty set in the fashion industry. This means each agency would like to have the most beautiful models rolling out of their agency and representing the best and most famous brands in the world.

As a result, there have been more and more stringent rules on the selection of the appropriate candidates fro the agencies to me molded into a final product to be rolled, out in the market. This has made the fashion industry to act as a modern human trafficking and slavery for the participants and the society at large.

This paper purposes to look into the portrayal of good image as per the fashion industry in America and the effect it has on the self-esteem of the female and male population in general. It is focused on the negative effects that the fashion connotation of the perfect body image has implanted into the young Americans and the effect it has in terms of how people view their bodies and the strife they are sent into in a bid to tune their bodies to the standards that are acceptable by the fashion industry.

According to Women's Health (2007), the body image is "the picture that a person forms of their body in their mind. A person's body image is influenced by their own beliefs and attitudes as well as ideals in society." It also notes that the body image has been observed to be changing and not static at all. It changes with the lifestyle and trends that the society experiences in the daily conditions. Instances like pregnancy, surgery, menopause, puberty, illness, disability can al affect the body image of an individual.

2.1 Self-esteem

Apparently, in the current society the body image is closely related to the self-esteem that an individual will acquire. Self-esteem can be refereed to as the value or the worth that an individual attach to their beings.

Self-esteem can be seen based on how an individual protect his ego or presents himself before the peers and the older people, the level of confidence and the societal worth that they attach to themselves.The current society has infiltrated us with a skewed way of looking at the male and female genders. The male gender in the society are viewed to be more accepted in the society for their achievements in terms of career and wealth and the female gender is more towards their attractiveness and desirability that the achievements that they have accomplished. Amazingly even the women who have had high achievements will have to be portrayed from the beauty and sexy perspective rather than the wealth and achievement first.

The fashion industry has epitomized the young, thin, white models that are also able bodied to be the perfect body image no wonder many women do not have the positive view of their bodies and always die to change it to the fashion defined image.

The fashion industry has many ways of reaching the American society. The television, magazines, radios, internet and advertisements have been the major ways through which they have managed to capture the attention of the entire American society. Consequently, the fashion industry has taken captive majority of the social lifestyle and daily indulgences.

The advertisements industry, sales industry, hospitality industry and many more have all relied upon the fashion industry for the provision of the 'perfect body shape' for the running of their industry according to Psych Central (2011). The worlds known stylish clothing, shoe labels and executive vehicles have all relied on the fashion industry to captivate their clients on advertisements.

International airlines have all sourced their in-flight attendants from the fashion industry, a phenomenon which places a substantial amount of pressure on the young men and women in our society today. The negative effects that come alongside the skewed fashion industry are therefore as follows.

The fashion industry has succeeded in portraying the thin image as the perfect image for a modern woman. As a result, there have emerged trends where women would rather fast and starve themselves to acquire that body image. Some go….....