Before we can begin to investigate why youth culture strives for visual immaculateness, we must first discern what is considered ‘perfect’. This concerns both social personas and physical appearance. To be socially presentable, one must dress appropriately, listen to the right music, socialise regularly, partake in certain hobbies and so on. These aspects of a person’s personality create their overall social image which can be viewed by others and judged, deemed interesting or boring. There are many subcultures of ‘personas’ that people may attempt to align themselves with, for example ‘hipsters’, ‘chavs’, ‘Goths’, ‘grunge’, ‘bros’ and so on. These terms, to an audience of youths, hardly need explaining which shows there is a constantly changing language shared between the young generation that labels their own subcultures neatly.
There is also a great emphasis on the body and how it should look for both women and men: women should be skinny, yet curvy with large breasts and bottoms; men should be tall and muscular with well defined abdominal muscles and strong arms. To help visualise this I have used the example of ‘pop-culture’ action movie posters which show women in a pose that accentuates both their bums and breasts whilst also contorting their waists to look thin. Conversely, the men tend to stand almost straight on to the camera to show their toned torso, with a slight turn or extension of the arm to show the big biceps. And, of course, the after edits remove blemishes and further emphasise body image. That these poses are so standard and common shows that we as youth - and as consumers - are constantly subjected to this idealised portrayal of the body.
Millennials.