Girls all over struggle with the pressure to be perfect. Most girls want to be extremely skinny because that is what girls think guys want. All girls are different and that doesn't mean they are less pretty. Everywhere girls go, there is something around them advertising weight loss: TV ads, weightloss ads, shakes, diet pills, weight loss apps are popping up like crazy. The pressure for females to have the perfect body is insane. It lowers a girls self esteem and leads to eating disorders, depression and other mental illnesses. Not only is pop-culture harping on girls to be perfect, but family can do it, too. Pressure at home is more of an issue than ads out in public. Girls are around family members all the time; they pressure girls to be …show more content…
Some students even sympathize with celebrities and the pressure that they experience. The CEO admitted he doesn't want 'plus sized' girls wearing his clothes. The company does not make clothing above a size large in shirts and a size 10 in pants to keep bigger girls out. That right there can be detrimental to a girl's view of herself. The CEO has but lots of pressure on girls to look a certain way in order to wear certain clothes. He also admitted that only popular and cool girls are skinny. Craig also believes that stores should carry all sizes and to stop discriminating against body types and shapes. Sophomore Jaz'myn Lewis thinks there is a real problem between girls and the media. Lewis also thinks [clothing] brands should be more open and not stick to one size. Too much pressure can lead a girl to restrict their food intake and become afraid of food in fear of gaining weight. Other girls 'binge and purge' which is known as bulimia. All this comes from the media and home pressure to have a perfect body. Even with this demand for girls to look a certain way, some celebrities have changed the way some people think about women and their
She writes of the clothes that were sold there that were made for fat people and she thought they even looked stylish. She tells of a talent show where people get to try the lead role they did not get in high school as a result of the fact that they were not as beautiful as the skinny people. She writes that even though some researchers conclude that body size is genetically determined, they still say large individuals should try to lose weight, but it may be futile. She calls them out and says they cannot align their findings with what they believe personally.
Many young girls read magazines and watch TV and look up to the models that they see. They then get the idea that their bodies should look that way and if it does not, they are unattractive. It is said that models promote you to be “comfortable with the skin you’re in” and to be yourself but how can that be when the size of models are getting smaller and smaller. As these negative thoughts sit in their heads, their self esteem begins to plummets to an all time low, ultimately doing the opposite of what was intended. Frederique van der Wal, a former Victoria secret model went to the New York Fashion Week show back in 2006 and said “I was shocked by the models that seemed to be skinner than in previous years” (Hellmich1). If a former model can see the damage in extremely skinny models, society and agencies definitely should. Models make girls, especially from the ages of 13-25 feel extremely bad about themselves. Above all, society makes model’s body images seem like the right or “perfect” image and for the sake of girls’ self esteem it needs to stop.
The media uses means such as social media, magazines, and television to influence people, specifically teenagers. Adolescence can be a confusing time for everyone, but teenage girls are more vulnerable to their influence due to their emotional maturity. Although girls currently believe that this impossible body image is expected of them, they develop eating disorders because of it. For example, the Victoria's secret fashion show and underwear commercials help set up the impossible beauty standard all girls and women are trying to achieve. Those models live by a strict diet and exercise routine plus their photos are manipulated in order to look the way they do. If models don't look thin enough, they will “frequently have collarbones, ribs, and even hips erased to make them look thinner (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” Magazines are also a huge part of media's influence. It is common to find teenage girls reading fashion magazines. One issue of the popular magazine, Vogue, “was found to contain 144 manipulated images, including the cover (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” It is normal to be conce...
Rather than feature and promote unnatural body weights, society can benefit from the promotion of a healthy physical appearance. This would increase self acceptance for young girls of their body. After all, women and girls come in all sizes and shapes. If society cares about the future of our young girls, steps should be taken to minimize eating disorders. With the knowledge that young girls can be very impressionable, society and the media have a responsibility to stop promoting unrealistic body images. The need to have clothing look better on the runway is not more important than the health concerns of young women.
Girls are now led to believe they are not as good as what the “ideal” women based on looks. Even though, “on average the model weighs 23% less of what the average women living in the United States really weighs” (.) Young women are striving for an outcome that can be unobtainable based on body structure, and are left insecure when their goal is not reached. Eating disorders such as, “anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating are the result and the top three eating disorders among the teen community today” (.) The idea of perfectionism takes over their mind to knit pick themselves until girls, unfortunately, fall for things like anxiety disorders, depression, and turn to substances that hurt the body, not help it. In a People Magazine survey, it showed that “80% of female respondents feel that women in movies and television programs made them feel insecure about their bodies” (.) The “look” they are creating is not only unhealthy, but it is spreading an unhealthy image to girls just maturing and is damaging their ego in the developing years of t...
Meanwhile,, men and women are being forced to think what is attractive and what is not. Such as being too fat or to skinny. Many research has suggested that 86% of all women are not happy with their bodies and constantly want to lose weight (“Beauty and Body”). With all the high expectations the media is feeding to their audience, how could one not think they need to lose weight? We see it through magazines, we see it in movies; as a result, men and women all over the world want the unrealistic bodies that the media creates in these mediums.
...to them to love themselves as they as are is the first step in taking back control from the media. The media would like for them to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty for their own selfish benefit to solicit their industry. However if we don’t give in to medias perception of perfection the media will have to change.Certain companies like Dove have realized the medias negative effect on adolescent girls and has taking matters into their own hands by publishing a new ad with healthier looking model. This ad is one step in the right direction to building back up young girls self esteem and making them comfortable with their bodies. Women will never stop wanting to improve themselves however by embracing all different beautiful attributes women have they will refrain from practicing unhealthy methods and will work towards realistic goals that will make them happy.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In our society today, people would rather see what celebrities are up to than what is going on with our health plan. Watching the news makes us aware of the latest trend, new gadget, who’s in rehab, or who has an eating disorder. In the eyes of society, women like Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, and Megan Fox are the epitome of perfection. What girl wouldn’t want to look like them? Unfortunately, this includes most of the girls in the US. Through TV shows, commercials, magazines or any form of advertising, the media enforces a certain body type which women emulate. The media has created a puissant social system where everyone must obtain a thin waist and large breasts. As a society, we are so image obsessed with the approval of being thin and disapproval of being overweight, that it is affecting the health of most women. Women much rather try to fit the social acceptance of being thin by focusing on unrealistic body images which causes them to have lower self esteem and are more likely to fall prey to eating disorders, The media has a dangerous influence on the women’s health in the United States.
Everywhere one looks today, one will notice that our culture places a very high value on women being thin. Many will argue that today’s fashion models have “filled out” compared to the times past; however the evidence of this is really hard to see. Our society admires men for what they accomplish and what they achieve. Women are usually evaluated by and accepted for how they look, regardless of what they do. A woman can be incredibly successful and still find that her beauty or lack of it will have more to do with her acceptance than what she is able to accomplish. “From the time they are tiny children, most females are taught that beauty is the supreme objective in life” (Claude-Pierre, p18). The peer pressure for girls in school to be skinny is often far greater than for boys to make a team. When it is spring, young girls begin thinking “How am I going to look in my bathing suit? I better take off a few more pounds.”
The issue, as mentioned above, is largely due to the fact that the media, and its air brushed models, urge women to change their appearance to become more attractive or healthy while gaining popularity and confidence with their new looks. As absurd as it may seem Celia Milne, the author of Pressures to Conform, upholds this idea and states “90 percent of Canadian women are dissatisfied with some aspect of their body” and that “they will go to frightening lengths to achieve their body ideal” (Milne 4, 9). Where does this dissatisfaction arise, and why should people who already have a normal body mass index (BMI) be intent on loosing weight? The answer lays in the media as it presents young women with idealistic body images that, although they may appear achievable, are entirely unrealistic. Despite this glitch, most women will continue striving towards perfectionism due to peer pressure, or media influx, thus becoming trapped with a goal that they can never reach. Dieting, excessive exercising, and weight loss programs are several of the healthy options that thi...
Most of the time girls are trying to act and look like celebrities. So they can hopefully be as successful as their celebrity. For instance Diana, Princess of Wales was one of the world's most beloved women, suffered from bulimia. It is said to h...
Every culture has a “perfect body image” that everyone compares their own bodies to. Girls especially have the mental thinking that they have to live up to the models on TV and magazines. In the United States the skinnier the girls, the more perfect their image is perceived. The “perfect body image” has an intriguing background, health and psychological problems, and currently few solutions.
The overwhelming idea of thinness is probably the most predominant and pressuring standard. Tiggeman, Marika writes, “This is not surprising when current societal standards for beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness, an ideal accepted by most women but impossible for many to achieve.” (1) In another study it is noted that unhealthy attitudes are the norm in term of female body image, “Widespread body dissatisfaction among women and girls, particularly with body shape and weight has been well documented in many studies, so much so that weight has been aptly described as ‘a normative discontent’”. (79) Particularly in adolescent and prepubescent girls are the effects of poor self-image jarring, as the increased level of dis...
It seems like every little girl dreams of becoming a model. They want to be thin and pretty like the models they see on television and in magazines. Often the desire becomes an obsession and young girls see "thinness" as being a needed characteristic. For many girls, the teenage years are spent trying to acquire this look. Females are trying diets and are exercising like it is a competition to see who can lose the most weight the quickest. The obsession of many young girls over their appearance or weight has led to a growing number of people who have developed an eating disorder to try to deal with their lack of self-esteem or other related problems.
Firstly, Sarah Murdoch, the representative of Bonds underwear, is of the opinion that fashion industry encourages “unhealthy body images” (Dunkerley, 2008) that is thought to be unrealistic and unhealthy for most women and girls. Besides, the fact that most designers prefer to choose thin models than bigger size ones (Bolger, 2007) shows us an astonishing phenomena that there are series of clothes from size 0 to size 4 seen not only in the fashion shows but also even on the sale markets because they think that there will be “stigma attached” when doing something for “plus-size people” (Stevens, 2010). Naomi Crafti representing Eating Disorders Victoria thinks that teenagers are becoming obsessed with “the very skinny models on the catwalk” in the fashion shows (Stevens, 2010) which gradually leads to “eating disorders, mental health” and “negative body image on young people” (Stevens, 2010). Fashion industry skinny trend seems to poison young women’s attitude towards their appearance.