Teenage Girls and Media

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Teenage girls receive around 40 hours of media exposure every week. This is the most time that teens spend on an activity other than school and sleeping. Teenage girls are highly influenced by the ideal body image that they see on screen. Girls have a difficult time trying to attain the ideal body image and may diet or develop eating disorders to take control of their weight and body figure. When girls fail to do so, they can become depressed and have a lower self-esteem. However, most of the bodies of models and celebrities are difficult for the average person to attain. In fact, it is so hard that many celebrities have their bodies photoshopped to become slimmer and appear more beautiful. A research team from the Temple University conducted a study where they created a website called My Pop Studio. On the interactive website, teenage girls were asked to give themselves a makeover using makeup, different hairstyles, and physical attributes. The result was that most girls wanted to look more thin, white, and blond, much like a Barbie doll. This is because media has created an ideal image of what a girl should look like. Teenage girls associate their success and popularity with body weight and beauty. In the public eye tall and skinny models and celebrities are looked highly upon where as overweight actresses and models are ridiculed. Media includes forms of online communication such as social media outlets. A very popular one amongst teenage girls is Tumblr. This is a microblogging platform that allows users to post multimedia content to a short- form blog. On Tumblr there is a group of people called the "wannabe depressed". They post black and white pictures with a quote of misunderstood turmoil. This i... ... middle of paper ... ...e seeing pictures of models reduced the adverse effect of the media. At home, mothers need to have more talks with their daughters about body image. When mothers exercise obsessively, diet constantly, or make derogatory comments about their own appearance it influences the daughter because mothers are the most influential role model for most girls. Fathers also need to be more cautious of how they respond to the media images of sexy, thin women. There have been campaigns started by companies about real beauty that try to teach girls that they should appreciate who they are. The campaigns try to reject the ideal body image and explain that some beauty in the media is not attainable. The company Dove has created a great campaign about Real Beauty. For more information visit: http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/campaign-for-real-beauty.aspx

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