Globalization and Iranian Womens Physical Image
By: Loosineh Markarian
Usage of new methods of plastic surgery and different types of medicines for reshaping the physical appearance is a common phenomenon among young women in last years. Different sites announce about the rise of tendency to do surgery in the USA and Europe. We can see the same phenomena in Iran also as a consequence of establishment of new fitness and surgery centers. But what urges women to take all the risk and do these surgeries? How is the image of feminine body in their minds? Liposuction, face lifting, breast enhancement, lip enhancement, etc. are the most common surgeries in Iran. How many of the women who do surgeries have really any physical disorder?
As a critique to this phenomenon one can say that what is being introduced by media, in this day world is a special type of female body (big breasts, thin, tall, etc.).Depiction of an ideal of woman body and face created and represented mainly by TV (specially in TV adds) and parallel advertisement of diverse tools, medicines, and methods of fixing appearance are part of media content nowadays. This ideal body certainly doesnt match with physiological standards of different people in different regions of the world.
Therefore subtraction of the self confidence of women and changing the definition of beauty, can be seen among certain people in society. For example being ashamed of physical being is the topic of lots of Psychological consultation sites. This sense of shame and the feeling of being ignored cause problems in creating and maintaining social activities by women and isolate them. Therefore too many women find the solution in doing plastic surgeries or using medicines which are usually expensive and not accessible to all classes in society. The antitype for a woman shape as a human being doesnt exist in the real world but in screens of TVs or front page of newspapers by using different tricks of movie making and photography. Although there is ban on satellite broadcasting in Islamic Republic of Iran but too many Iranians specially people who live in the Capital Tehran have bought satellite receivers and watch the programs illegally. Among satellite programs Persian language satellite channels broadcast from LA are among the popular channels. Advertising of new beauty products is one of the main contents of these TV channels.
Therefore in the age of globalization and transnational media we can talk about global woman body image. An ideal standards of beauty that every woman whish to match them. Media try to define a global meaning and standards of beauty which is much more cultural and related to geographical and ethnic elements in different societies that a global standard. One of the programs of Opera an American popular TV show- was about Chinese and Korean women who do surgeries on their eyes to change them like westerns. In one hand these girls dont like their appearance and in the other hand they challenge their cultural identity. Their ancestors have lived with these types of eyes during centuries and they were accepted by the society and also were considered pretty. But what happened that, these eyes became ugly or unwanted? Another problem is hatred toward senility and efforts to look younger. But senility is one of the natural levels of human life. People run away from it, instead of accepting it as a part of their life. The plastic surgery, has also become a way of presenting oneself and social position in Iran. As a conclusion I believe that working against representation of these images of women seems to be hard and impossible since a whole industry in global market benefit from it. But special lessons at schools in Iran, for female students specially, can be useful to increase their knowledge about their body and what is natural in their physics.
I'm Loosineh Markarian.A junior student of media studies in Tehran university.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Loosineh_Markarian
Tags: senility
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