This paper focuses on the impact of digitally altered images on individuals’ body satisfaction and beauty aspirations. Drawing on current psychological literature authors consider interventions designed to increase knowledge about the ubiquity and unreality of digital images and, in the form of labeling, provide information to the consumer.
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Taken together then, there are psychological accounts which offer some reasons for why knowing that images are unreal may do little to stop us seeking to attain them, and in fact may further reinforce and embed unrealistic beauty ideals. Beauty as an Ethical Ideal Turning from the psychological literature to the philosophical, we can explain the continued power of beauty ideals, however unreal, if we recognise that, at least for some women in some instances, beauty ideals are functioning as ethical ideals. By this, we mean that the extent to which a women conforms to the beauty ideal determines how morally good she judges herself (and others) and how she evaluates 123 Health Care Anal (2018) 26:235245 241
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4 The use of moral language here we regard as accurate and signicant and not simply a matter of language. I should go to the gym because I should improve, is moral in that it is about what is required to be judged good (or good enough).5 If this is the case then it is not surprising that knowing that beauty ideals are unreal and unattainable does nothing to reduce the wish to attain such ideals. That there are moral and ethical elements in beauty ideals, standards and discourses is overtly the case. Many people judge themselves according to their success and failure in beauty terms. This is true both with regard to achieving long-term goalswe judge ourselves successful when weve attained some aspect of the ideal (reached our goal weight, lled our wrinkles or rmed our thighs)and in terms of daily habits and practiceswe are successful when we make it to the gym, stick to the diet, get a manicure or undergo some procedure. Success here i
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For instance, when we deem ourselves successful for engaging in many of these practices the success is only moral: sticking to our calorie count for the day or making it to our exercise class has very little impact upon how we look in the short term and the data on diets suggests that very few of us dramatically change our size over the long term. However, meeting the goal is less important than engaging in the practices, even though we may never reach the desired goal (and we know that it is unlikely), on a day-to-day basis we can still succeed.6
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