My Image Struggles in Capitalist Society

In our culture, women try so hard to be the ideal congenial beauty queen. We believe that there is only one standard of beauty and if we don't look that way then we are ugly. We compare ourselves to each other and especially to the size 0 models in the magazines. I have struggled with this since elementary school when girls start learning that they have to appear attractive to the opposite sex. Even in my fourth year of college I continue to stress over what image I want to portray. When I was younger I was not aware of the constant effort I put towards achieving the perfect image. As I matured, I realized the impact it had on my life. I allowed people and culture around me to categorize me into groups according to my popularity and choice in clothes and friends. Any distress I experience because I am unable to achieve the ideal image can be somewhat blamed on society. Our culture has created this unattainable ideal which the majority of women do not resemble at all. I also see that society has shaped me and influenced the way I perceive myself. In order to better understand my experience, therefore, I need to explore the impact society has had on my life. Sociologist C. Wright Mills calls this mode of inquiry the sociological imagination (Newman 8). A few months ago I became acquainted with a new girl who seemed like a potential friend. When you first meet somebody that you like you try to put your best self forward. I tried to be pleasant, talkative, and fun; in other words, the kind of person other people want to be around. I tried to figure out and read this girl in order to present myself as a person she would want to be friends with. Even at this early stage, I was performing impression management, a concept used by the sociologist Ervin Goffman (Newman 134, 138). Several months have passed since our first encounter and we are both learning new things about each other which may or may not coincide with our original impressions of one another. As time elapses we have remained friends and are much more comfortable with one another. However, I still find myself concealing information about my identity that may not necessarily fit into the person I want her to think I am. I have also had to decide how to handle some news I received about her that has conflicted with the image she had conveyed to me. I chose to accept the surprising information and not judge her. Knowing where this girl worked and looking at her clothes caused me to judge her in a certain way. Since she was attractive, I believed she was popular, confident, and sociable. To some degree, most of this was true but I automatically assumed it because she was attractive. I am happy to say that we've begun to let our guards down and we continue to be friends. Through impression management, we expose certain characteristics to people in order to get a desired reaction. Certain identities are used in appropriate situations to whatever audience is present. There is usually an identity that an individual works on presenting the most in a given situation. In addition to changes in behavior, we tend to change our appearance to make ourselves feel worthy and to have other people think we are worthy enough to get their attention. This is where my struggle with image comes in. I buy clothes that fit an image that I believe people will be impressed with. On a larger scale, fashion is fed to us by designers who want to sell their products. If we weren't up on the trends we become fashion victims. I am programmed to believe that if I wear clothes everyone else is wearing I will be liked. One relationship that has ended but is fresh in my mind is a romantic one. Just like any new relationship, we try to appear desirable depending on what we think the other person is looking for. The male person was under the impression, maybe because of my physical appearance or demeanor, that I was a sweet, innocent, pure, angel. He put me up on a pedestal and believed that I could do no wrong. …