The Female Beauty Myth Fostered by the Mass Media

Authors: Yoojin Chung

Abstract:

This paper starts with a critical view of beautiful female images in the mass media being frequently generated by a stereotypical Korean concept of beauty. Several female beauty myths have evolved in Korea during the present decade. Nearly all of them have formed due to a deeply-ingrained androcentric ideology which objectifies women. Mass media causes the public to hold a distorted concept about female beauty. There is a huge gap between women in reality and representative women in the mass media. It is essential to have an unbiased perception of female images presented in the mass media. Due to cosmetic advertisements projecting contemporary images of female beauty to promote products, cosmetics images will be examined in regard to female beauty myths portrayed by the mass media. This paper will analyze features of female beauty myths in Korea and their intrinsic characteristics.

Keywords: Cosmetics Advertisements, Female Beauty Myth, Korean ideologies, Roland Barthes' Mythology Theory

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1071756

References:

[1] "SIMULACRES et SIMULATION", trans. Tae-whan HA, Seoul: Minumsa, 2010, pp.13-19
[2] Ibid (1) p.111
[3] Roland Barthes, "Mythologies", trans. Annette Lavers, New York: Hill and wang, 2000, p.114
[4] Ibid (3) p.115
[5] Ibid (4)
[6] Roland Barthes, "Mythologies", trans. Hyun Chung, Seoul: Hyundai Mihaksa, 1995, pp.69-70
[7] In-sik Kim "Study on poetics of Roland Barthes's Semiotics", Sung-gyungwan University, 1983, p.29
[8] Financial Supervisory Service, Korea, 2010