PRETTY HURTS

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Pretty Hurts
An Argumentative Essay
Cassandra Orozco
El Paso Community College

Author Note
This essay was prepared for English 1301, MWF 7A.M., taught by Instructor Sabrina VargasOrtiz

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Abstract
With trying to be a size zero, using the scale multiple times a day, worshipping
images of beautiful women on magazines, women experience a plentiful amount of pressure
from social standards, culture, and the media on how to be beautiful. The media in general has
had a big part in influencing womens attitudes and behavior when trying to meet a beauty
standard. From advertising pills that burn fat fast to publicizing on social media, eating disorders
and depression have been the results from being unsatisfied with body appearance. For the most
part women perceive or consider what is beauty is having an upper body, the waist, and hips as
the shape of a coke bottle, and being thin in general. Many women have faith that being beautiful
will boost their confidence, make them popular, be successful in life, and will be easier to find a
job. Culture has stereotyped that if a girl was more attractive people will like her more. Women
believe that being attractive will make them more likeable and people will want to be around
them. Because of the influence on culture or the nature of being around to such high standards
women have taken to the extremes of hurting their self-esteems and health. It can lead to
unhealthy choices such as starving or limiting daily intake of food just to lose weight or be
skinny. Women become their own bully as they put themselves down for not having what they
wish they had which is looking like the ideal image of a beautiful girl.

KEYWORDS: cultural and social influence, beliefs in positive outcomes, negative effects from
social pressure, ideal image

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Pretty Hurts:
I think all girls of all ages have experienced this type of situationyou see a girl passing
by and you like how nice her figure looks and especially with what she is wearing might even
compliment her body shape. Compared to you she is thinner, clear-faced, with a nice wide gap
that many boys find attractive, her collar bone sticks out, her waist is like the shape of an hour
glass, her legs are toned, no indication of fat hanging over her jeans, and no cellulose on her legs.
Comparing yourself to other girls is basically being your own bully. Letting your own conscious
tear you apart because of not being satisfied with your figure is more challenging to battle
against the media, culture, and social standards. Womens perception of beauty has been based
on trying to fit in with the people they encounter in their daily life, the belief that having an
acceptable appearance will improve their self-esteem, and that having the perfect body will
make them successful in life. Trying to meet unattainably beauty standards is a disease or a
monster that has deteriorated womens health and self-esteem.
Trying to Fit in Within Society
Social pressure can cause especially girls to be influenced to be a certain way. Especially
amongst high school teenage girls, they experience the most pressure trying to fit in and be
acceptable to others. Why? They come up with negative conclusions right away. They start
thinking she dresses funny, she is too fat, and she is not pretty enough to hang out with the cool
people. Pressure is the most maleficent monster to fight against because there are so many high
standards girls have to deal with. According to Eriksons theory of psychosocial development
from the works of Licht, Hull, and Ballantyne, it is between the years of puberty to early twenties
when people go through psychosocial stage during their development in their human life span
where they either experience an ego identity or a role confusion phase. With ego identity they

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tend to learn new things about themselves and build a strong sense of values, beliefs, and goalmaking skills. When it comes to young females, they can experience confusion about themselves
when trying to figure out who they are or what they want to be (2014, p. 360). It does not just
have to be high school girls because girls in elementary school can deal with social pressures.
For example, in elementary if one girl wears something that looks nice on her then all the other
girls will start to want one. It is all about the trendy culture like monkey see, monkey do.
Self-Esteem
In a study involving college women, Engeln-Maddox performed a descriptive research on
what women perceive as beautiful and how the perception from culture has influenced their ways
of thinking and behavior. In several surveys, a number of women were asked to draw what an
ideal beautiful woman looks like. The majority of them drew a girl being thin. In the surveys
women stated that if they were thin their confidence and self-esteem would improve. One
admitted that her weight gets in the way of trying to be happy in life. (2006). In general, females
who associate with being thin or having an unrealistic goal of how to look believe that they
would not be self-conscious of their figure, insecure, shop at any store because everything will
look good on them, would not have to stand over a scale all the time, and people would find
them more attractive. All of these positive outcomes of achieving a beauty standard can cause
body-dissatisfaction where one realizes that it is difficult to achieve their goal or dream body.
With Engeln-Maddoxs study she showed participants of women who represented a general level
of appearance related perfection that is not achievable for most women. The majority of the
response from all the female participants had an I wish statement. One of the positive
outcomes women generally believe would result from being thin is able to live well off.

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Belief in Being Successful in Life
With womens perception of what is beautiful, the results of being attractive will
supposedly make them economically successful. For example, women believe it will be easier
for them to find a job, that only attractive people get the high-paying jobs, and women would be
able to find an attractive, suitable man that would support them financially.
Being Occupied with Your Figure
The standards influenced by culture causes women to be obsessed with how they look
like. It can also cause them to be self-centered, materialistic, and jealous. By being self-centered,
women can eventually have the mentality of, It is all about me and try to compete with other
girls by trying to look better. Women tend to perform excessive amount of exercise that can harm
their body, take pills to slim them down faster, or become obsessive by checking their weight all
day with a scale. Magazines that talk about how to lose weight can cause women to reach the
extremes that will make them hurt themselves. For example, not eating.
Eating Disorder
Body-dissatisfaction can link into eating disorders because of the obsession of wanting to
be thin. The obsession of wanting to be thin can lead to restricting a diet or starving. I was a
victim of anorexia and I was obsessed with looking at the nutrition labels, restricting foods that
had even one gram of fat, sugar and high calorie content. It was hard to see that others saw me as
a thin, sick girl, but in the mirrors I always saw myself fat. Through time, my hair became thin
and brittle. My hands would dry up like a summers drought and the skin would cut because I
had no fat to protect my skin. Lastly, at some time, I had stopped my period for four months
straight. Even an educator with a masters degree named Quast admits her story of dealing with
anorexia. She openly explains, I shifted from being cognizant of my health to obsessing over

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calories and weight loss. I had made weight loss my only indicator of self-esteem. I was the girl
who never ate sweets [because I was not so easily tempted] (2006, p. 8). The influence from
liberal culture such as in the United States has caused a relationship between pressure and eating
disorders. Licht, Hull, and Ballantyne mentioned that, Western concepts of beauty particularly
female beauty often go hand-in-hand with thinness. With all this pressure to be slender, [it is] no
wonder eating disorders like anorexia are most commonly diagnosed and treated (2014, p.
402).
Depression
Eating disorders and depression go hand in hand because it is the result of not fulfilling
satisfaction with appearance and weight. Eventually, one will have a hard time with trying to be
satisfied when obsessing with every part of their body. They always see themselves as failure and
not beautiful. Nobody is perfect and that is the reality. Unfortunately, perfection is what gets in
the way of peoples lives especially girls when trying to be happy with them. Beyonc in her
latest song from 2014, Pretty Hurts states that perfection is a disease of a nation. We try to fix
something but [you cannot] fix [what you cannot] see. Its the soul that needs surgery (2014).
Even a beautiful, talented artist/ dancer/ actress like Beyonc reveals in her song that she
struggles with perfection because of the pressure with the media TV says bigger is better,
South Beach, sugar free, Vogue says, thinner is better (2014).
Every girl wishes that a doctor could take away the pain of not feeling beautiful. In other
words, Beyonc argues, [There is] no doctor or pill that can take the pain away (2014). But,
females struggling with an eating disorder and depression can seek treatment and help. Learning
to love your own self is the hardest thing to accomplish because instead of trying to please others
it is harder to be satisfied with yourself. I was a patient at a mental hospital because I was

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considering suicide. Even though I did not attempt to commit suicide the care of loved ones
encouraged me to get help and from there I learned a variety of ways of how to cope with my
depression. Today, I am not anorexic, but still take medication for depression.
Reaching the light at the end of the tunnel of depression can be a long process but can be
an inspiring accomplishment. The first thing to do to achieve happiness is to find something
good about your own self. Find the part of you that you dislike the most and start loving it.
Learning to love and accept yourself for who you are is not an easy thing to do. I learned so
much about myself in treatment and during recovery (Lovato, 2013). Overall, I am pretty happy
with myself. Though, I may struggle at times and I solve the problem by running. I try to run
away from anorexia and depression. In addition, I also made a conscious decision to be happy
with my own self by avoiding social media. I have no accounts on Facebook and Instagram
because it distracts me from accepting for who I am. I chose that and I am happy that I did
because I learned it was not for me when I got my first account. Plus, think about it, what would
ones life be like if one deleted all those accounts? Would one have more time to do things?
Would one stop feeling pressure?
The Media
Social media, commercials, music videos, advertisements, and magazines have a role in
influencing young girls, teenage girls, young, adult women, and all females in general to be a
certain way or make them feel pressure to a high standard. There has been an increase of
correlation with girls and media in general publicizing the unrealistic image of beauty to eating
disorders and depression. Why should girls judge on how beautiful they are by the amount of
likes or comments they get on their Facebook and Instagram status by posting pictures of
themselves posing? Not only that but other viewers that are being bombarded with pictures,

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videos, advertisements, and commercials can be negatively affected emotionally. As a result girls
who look up to girls who they think are more beautiful can become obsessively preoccupied with
their figure and make unhealthy choices such as starving themselves. Cohen-Sandler would
agree about the media as she states, The impact of the media on teenage girls [has been resulted
into girls being] bombarded with images in magazines portraying sexy young women with
flawless skin and perfect hair (2005, p. 29). A lot of commercials and advertisements are
selling females to sculpting their body with plastic surgery, Botox, implants, and just being under
the knife in general. What happen to just eating right and exercising to lose weight? Maybe if
one was overweight and their life was at risk it would make sense to get a portion of their fat
removed. The media has gone far to selling to customers to be under the knife in order to look
beautiful. Nobody is perfect and that is why pretty hurts. Beauty is painful. But, the ultimate goal
in life for everyone especially girls is to have the aspiration to be happy.
Because of standards in being beautiful has caused to be detrimental to self-esteem and
health, I tend to always ask myself this whether I am happy; what does being beautiful really feel
like? What is being beautiful really look like? How do I know if I am beautiful? Torturing our
health and self-esteem is not the answer to being happy or letting the media become a bad
influence of accepting ones own self. In solution to pressure, I learned healthy ways to stay slim
and one of them is not starving to death. Once you find your inner beauty and learn to accept that
no girl is perfect finding happiness is simply the only reason why I would not give up my life.
Are you happy with yourself? Being beautiful is not being thin but having an inspiration to be
happy. It is time for an end from accepting pressure and the first step would be is to find at least
one quality or characteristic and start loving it.

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References
Cohen-Sandler, R. (2005). Stressed-Out Girls: Helping Them Thrive in the Age of Pressure. New
York, NY: Penguin Group.
Engeln-Maddox, R. (2006). Buying a Beauty Standard or Dreaming of a New Life? Expectations
Associated with Media Ideals. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30, 258-266.
Knowles, B. (2014). Pretty Hurts. On Beyonc. [CD]. New York, NY: Columbia.
Licht, D.M., Hull M.G., Ballantyne, C. (2014). Psychology. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Lovato, D. (2013). Staying Strong: 365 days a year. Harrisonburg, VA: R.R. Donnelley and Sons
Company.
Quast, R. (2006). Journey from the Storm within: 9 Steps to Eating Disorder Recovery. SHED
Productions.