Study Task 1: Quote

Society:

Jansson-Boyd, C. (2010) Consumer psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education.

'Many studies have found that both women and men do not believe that their current body form is attractive... Research has repeatedly found that physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable than those that are perceived as being unattractive, something that is likely to have been reinforced by consumer societies…’

I have chosen to base my context of practice essay on the quote due to my interest in how the media portrays men and women and the effects this has on us socially as a society in relation to what is deemed to be physically attractive and the expectations of men and women in todays society and how this effects consumer societies and behaviours as well as how this has changed over the past few decades.  

There are a few areas/topics I plan to research into further:

• Gender representation in media, how men and women are perceived, expected to look like and behave. standard? unobtainable? under-representation of sexuality, race, religion, gender identity. 
• How different styles are represented and how they represent target market within fashion and society. 
• What different men and women find appealing/ attractive personally- how are these quantified to define physical attractiveness in mass media or is it personal to each individual. 
• How media shapes the way we look at men and women/ what are expectations are in relation to physical appearance and the relationship between others. 
• How expectations are effecting the way men and women see themselves potentially causing mental illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia, depression. 
• Relation with bullying and cyber bullying on growing number of social media platforms such as Instagram and twitter due to societies preconceptions of how men and women should look/act.
• How expectations effect men and women differently and to what extent are women supposedly more effected by expectations than men due to the stereotype that men are supposed to be strong and women to be sensitive and concerned with looks to gain attention.