Numerous clothing ads appeared in the August 2009 issue of Seventeen magazine to show of the fall's biggest trend especially for “back-to-school” shopping. The eyes of the reader are first drawn to Seventeen's headline of “1081 Ways to Look Amazing;” and further into the magazine, the readers are attracted to models who appear to look like seventeen year-olds. Majority of the clothing ads portray the “everyday” teenager who is constantly happy, and most of all, thin. However, Torrid's clothing ad differentiates from the rest of the advertisements. Torrid is a clothing specifically created for “plus-size” bodies, but by looking at the ad, the reader cannot tell the model is plus-size; each of the model appears thin. The back-to-school issue illustrates that having a thin body is significant for girls.
On the other hand, in the most recent issue, the prom issue, of Seventeen magazine (May 2010), the focus shifted from having the perfect body to having perfect, skin. The main headliners includes “943 Ways to Look Pretty For Free!” and “Perfect Skin! Without Any Makeup.” Many of the ads and features of the magazine focuses on close-ups of the face for make-up or acne medicine. Neutrogena, Clearasil and Clinque are featured products to have clear skin and Maybelline and Covergirl are make-up lines to hide imperfections on the face. These ads stigmatize the image of having the “perfect skin” that is shown to be clear of every blemish on the face. Having perfect skin coincides with having the perfect body in which girls must attain both to appear normal.
In the podcast, Taking Surprising Risks for The Ideal Body, there is a global perspective of the ideal body image which young women and girls in Jamaica use extreme methods to fit t...
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...ger message that controls the girl's image.
There was three different podcasts that revolved around adolescent girls adapting to society's ideal body image. The time periods for each podcasts' publication varies: Taking Surprising Risks for The Ideal Body was published on March 22, 2010; Is America Obsessed With Beauty was published on August 22, 2008; and Roundtable: Black Women and Body Image was published on June 9, 2005. Throughout the span of five years, body image ideologies among girls increased to a global issue, as seen in Jamaica, and have not diminished in today's values. Unlike Seventeen magazine, the podcasts are directed more towards an adult audience due to the analysis of young teenage girls. However, if younger generations listened to the podcasts, they will have a better and new perspective on the “ideal” body and how they view themselves.
Female beauty ideals are an overwhelming force in teen media. Approximately 37% of articles in leading magazines for teen girls emphasize a focus on physical appearance. This is none to surprising considering two of the top contenders in this media genre are Seventeen and Teen Vogue. CosmoGIRL and Elle Girl were among the ranks of popular teen magazines, but in recent years have become exclusively online publications. Add in a dash of publications Tiger Beat and Bop, and it becomes glaringly obvious that girls are charged with the prime directive of looking good to get the guy. The story becomes more disturbing when the actual audience, which includes girls at least as young as eleven years old, is considered. In a stage when girls are trying for the first time to establish their identities, top selling publications are telling them that their exteriors should be their primary concern of focus. Of course, this trend doesn’t stop with magazines. A study conducted in 1996 found a direct correlation between the “amount of time an adolescent watches soaps, movies and music videos” a...
Today society has never been more aware of the impact the media has on what is considered to be an attractive person. Those who are most vulnerable by what they observe as the American standard of attractiveness and beauty are young females. Their quest to imitate such artificial images of beauty has challenged their health and their lives and has become the concern of many. As a result, advertisements used in the media are featuring more realistic looking people.
According to Beverly Ballaro, the combination of two trends, the technology-enabled media saturation of the American public, and the promotion by this media of highly unattainable body types, is largely responsible for an epidemic of body image pathologies afflicting American girls and women, as well as an increasing number of boys and men. She also mentions that the media has given certain images for each gender. Generally, for females the body image is extremely thin, and there is an emphasis on large breasts and for males, tall, slender, muscular and toned. For both genders, the most valued and appreciated appearance i...
Mackler, Carolyn. Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image. Ed. Ophira Edut. Emeryville, CA: Seal, 2004. Print.
The media is a fascinating tool; it can deliver entertainment, self-help, intellectual knowledge, information, and a variety of other positive influences; however, despite its advances for the good of our society is has a particular blemish in its physique that targets young women. This blemish is seen in the unrealistic body images that it presents, and the inconsiderate method of delivery that forces its audience into interest and attendance. Women are bombarded with messages from every media source to change their bodies, buy specific products and redefine their opinion of beauty to the point where it becomes not only a psychological disease, but a physical one as well.
Our media continues to flood the marketplace with advertisements portraying our young teens much older than their age. Woman’s body images have been the focus of advertising for generations. However, now the focus is more directed to the younger teenage girls instead of woman. Young girls are often displayed provocatively while eating messy triple decker hamburgers, or sipping a diet sodas on an oversized motorcycles. As a result, young teens are dressing older than their age, trying to compete with this ideal media image. By allowing younger girls and teens to be portrayed as grown woman in advertisements, our teens are losing their young innocence. With society’s increasing tolerance, this epidemic will continue to exploit our young daughters, sisters and friends. Young teens feel an enormous amount of pressure to obtain the ‘ideal’ perfect body. Trying to emulate the advertisements seen in the media and magazines. As a result, more girls and woman are developing eating disorders. Media can no longer dictate how our young teenage girls should look.
What remains similar between the bodies flaunted across the media, is that they all possess popular standards of some kind of objective beauty. Women have an aptness to fall prey to advertisers and somehow unknowingly accept the creation of such standards for a woman’s body that is unrealistic for the majority of society. Slender, good-looking models are so prominent in today’s culture that chronic exposure to them reinforces a discrepancy for women between their actual body and the ideal body. Media fuels this unrealistic image and convinces women that in order to be accepted and considered beautiful, you better be fat-less, have silky hair and a flawless complexion. Unrealistic media images of women are so prevalent that it seems that females who fulfill such a standard are more the norm than the exception. The Cultivation theory argues that images that portray women who match the sociocultural ideal of beauty are extremely prevalent in pop...
...r young, impressionable mind will have been exposed to more than 77,000 advertisements, according to an international study. Last week, it confirmed the link between the images of female perfection that dominate the media and increasing cases of low self-esteem among young women..” (Shields,2007). The propaganda techniques such as liking, sex appeal, and celebrity endorsements are used in advertisements constantly. Commercials on television, billboards, magazines, and various other advertisement types are everywhere you look in America, and sadly it has become very important for women of all ages to try to be perfect. We come into contact with these messages every day, and the beauty industry is getting bigger and bigger. Propaganda has molded our worldly perception of beauty and will only continue to hurt us and gain from our lack of self-esteem if we allow it to.
Step out into the everyday world as an average American and you will witness an entanglement of varied body size, and shape. Now, enter the world of the media, a world in which you are formally introduced to high fashion, where flashing lights, money, glamour and riches crash around you, satiating every crevice of your being. Here, you will find two unified body types, divided into two categories of shape in women; thin, and thick. Naturally, any woman who wishes to someday strut down the catwalk in Zac Posen, or pose in Marie Claire wearing Dolce and Cabana must have a body that fits one of these required molds, right? It is a well-known reality that many women who cannot reach by healthy means, or do not already have, the desired body type for fashion industries, will develop an eating disorder to starve their way into the position. However, most fail to address the issue of obesity that curdles on the other end of the physical spectrum; the plus size modeling industry. This statement not only boils the blood of millions of American Women, but begs the question: If extremely thin models promote eating disorders, should we prohibit advertisers, especially those in fashion, from using plus size models, as they may promote obesity? To put it simply, no. Plus size models do not promote obesity because they only provide thicker, much larger women, confidence and appreciation for their body without pressuring them to take unhealthy means to shed pounds; they do not encourage overeating and lack of exercise.
Everyday all over the world young women is skipping a meal, maybe two or even starving themselves the whole day, because of the unattainable ideal body image the beauty industry have created.This is an issue to the world because the because is sending a negative message to women all over the world. This message makes women feel guilty about themselves. “Woman are deemed below the beauty standard and then made to feel guilty so that they purchase beauty products.” (Nicolosi and Sarvani) If this issue is not solved it will increase, and the ideal body image will keep on getting less attainable for the average woman. “It is commonly known that the average model during the 1950s wore a size 8 and the average woman a size 10: today the average model wears a size 2 and in contrast the average woman now wears a size 12” (Childress) These facts show that the beauty industry is sending a wrong message to women about what being healthy...
Youth, timeless beauty and the pursuit of perfection seem to be on the forefront of everyone’s agenda. From television portraying reality shows such as “Extreme Makeover” and fictional dramas such as “Nip and Tuck”, it is no wonder Americans are obsessed with finding the ultimate secret to looking flawless. The beauty industry is a 40 billion dollar enterprise,
The mass media plays a large role in shaping a teenage and adolescent girl’s body image. By pushing an ideal body type that is uncommon and untrue to life, girls strive, and struggle to obtain this image. When the mass media only shows one type of body as desirable, they are alienating every girl who does not fit into that category. Pushing these ideal bodies onto teenage girls at an important developmental time in their lives can be detrimental to their bodies and their self worth. By showing what a girl should look like, the mass media is damaging the body images of young girls, and unless awareness is raised, could become more and more adverse on young women today and tomorrow.
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.
The media has promoted a dominant view of how people should perceive beauty, and what consists of perfection in beauty. According to Dr. Karin Jasper, the media have women encouraging them to be concerned with their outward appearance and how others perceive them by surrounding everyone with the ideal female beauty. (Jasper, 2000) Body image has become a particular concern for young girls and women, often females work diligently to attain the perfect body image advertised in mass media. (Gibbs, 2010) When women are not able to obtain their ideal body goal, many develop negative feelings and become self-conscious about their bodies. Conversely, it is not possible for someone to look like a model in ads, someone without blemishes, scars, or pours. Another study conducted in 2012 showed contemporary media and culture has defined a women’s social desirability in terms of their bodies. For females, this has often resulted in comparing themselves to bodies shown in advertisements, commercials, magazines, etc. however not all body
Ever since the 70s, body image has been heavily influenced on young adults. Trying to fit in and look skinny has always been a big problem. Media has played a huge part in this by showing what they believe being beautiful means. In the 70’s curves lost their popularity and the look to achieve was slim and slender. Making the supermodel Twiggy a big deal; not only because of her beauty, but because of how skinny she was. Making “the average fashion model” at that time 8% thinner than the average woman. Today, that number has risen to 23%” (Derenne 259). Making the 70s the beginning of the “me generation” – an era that saw many bouts of plastic (Klein 39) surgery in an attempt to fit a certain mold of unattainable physicality (Mulvey 165). Extremely high amounts of money were spe...