Source+5+Facts

[]
 * 1) Most of the women we see in the media are young and white
 * 2) Hollywood movies rarely feature women over forty, and the older women we do see represented in the media, from movie stars to news anchors and even politicians, look much younger, thanks to plastic surgery.
 * 3) Disabled women are often portrayed as helpless victims who need protection, or as heroines who have beaten the odds.
 * 4) The small percentage of women of color represented in the media usually conforms closely to the white beauty ideal.
 * 5) Commercial media must create a fantasy world that we hope, in some way, can become ours. Consequently, magazines, television, movies, and advertisements rarely feature women of color as their stars or on their covers: In a society that is still racist, magazine editors and Hollywood executives know that white women do not, in general, fantasize about looking Latina, black, or Asian.
 * 6) The average American sees three thousand ads per day
 * 7) Magazine editors, in a fierce competition for readers, know that to make a sale, they need only play on our doubts or create new ones, making us think we have "problems" that don’t really exist ("What’s He Really Thinking When He Sees You Naked?"). Every part of the female body is picked apart and scrutinized, with most articles telling us outright which products we should buy to fix--or at least camouflage--our numerous "flaws."
 * 8) The female stars of mainstream movies and TV shows not only look sexy but often behave in the kind of subservient, helpless way that many men find appealing. The camera eye is usually focused on women who look and act in a way that pleases men; men look (active), and women receive their gaze (passive).
 * 9) How many naked bodies do most of us view on a regular basis in real life--not counting what we see in the media? Very few. But if women or men consume a steady diet of fashion magazines or pornography, they encounter more naked or semi-naked female bodies than they would otherwise--female bodies that just happen to be airbrushed and plastic-surgery-enhanced.
 * 10) It’s not surprising that in our media-driven culture, our views of what women should look like are warped.[|19] Real women with pubic hair and breasts that aren’t perfect round orbs begin to seem unnatural compared to the altered images we see in the media