What does the US media imply makes a woman beautiful?
Here are some pictures which I think are relevant to the question:
How is it for children to grow up seeing these images and feeling like that is what they are supposed to look like? How does it affect girls to have these women as their paragons of beauty? What does it lead boys to expect in a lover? Can he ever be satisfied with his real-life partner? Can a young girl/ a mature woman/ an old woman ever be fully satisfied with her own body? What do these women think about themselves? What brings them to pose for these pictures? How do they feel about themselves?
I got the following information from Wikipedia where there is an excellent article on physical attractiveness:
The perception of beauty can be influenced by racial stereotypes about skin color; the African American journalist Jill Nelson wrote that "to be both prettiest and black was impossible" and elaborated:
"As a girl and young woman, hair, body, and color were society's trinity in determining female beauty and identity, the cultural and value-laden gang of three that formed the boundaries and determined the extent of women's visibility, influence, and importance. For the most part, they still are. We learn as girls that in ways both subtle and obvious, personal and political, our value as females is largely determined by how we look. As we enter womanhood, the pervasive power of this trinity is demonstrated again and again in how we are treated by the men we meet, the men we work for, the men who wield power, how we treat each other and, most of all, ourselves. For black women, the domination of physical aspects of beauty in women's definition and value render us invisible, partially erased, or obsessed, sometimes for a lifetime, since most of us lack the major talismans of Western beauty. Black women find themselves involved in a lifelong effort to self-define in a culture that provides them no positive reflection."[72]
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