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How the media negatively affects body image
Effect of media on women's self image
How the media negatively affects body image
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While watching the video "looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model" By Cameron Russell I got a lot out of it. Cameron made some very interesting key points throughout her talk that will eternally stick with me such as when she stated people ask her "do you get a lot of items for free?" And she replies a lot of the items she gets for free are the ones in real life that people don't like to talk about. Cameron stated that one day she left her wallet at home when she went to a store to buy a dress and the workers just gave it to her for free another example, she gave us was when her friend was a reckless driver and ran a red light the cop car pulled them over but all it took was a simple "I'm sorry officer" and the officer allowed them to go freely. She stated she got these "free things" because of how she looks and not because of who she is. I loved when she went on to talk about how other people are paying a cost because of how they look and not …show more content…
They don't have a sense of style or how they want to look so they watch people who are famous or who are older than them to be there role models and set the tone on how their body type should be, how they should dress and look. Cameron states when she did research on 13 year old girls in the U.S. 53% do not like their body and by the time they are 17 years old the number goes up to 78%. I believe this is an important factor for when I say the media influences the body image of teens because the media shows that older you are the more provocative you should dress with is not true but teens actually believe this and when they do start dressing more provocative like how they see on TV, magazines etc. they don’t see the same results as them. They either can’t fit the clothing properly or they don’t like the way they look because it's not how it looked on the individual they were
How Do You See Your Self? Over the past five years, the way media has depicted the perfect woman to have a specific size has caused many women to have problems with body image in their everyday life. The specific size that the media portrays is a super thin woman, who has very little fat, and is tall and slender. One health issue: low self-esteem can be caused by how the media portrays the super thin woman, making females feel bad about what their body type is and how they look when they compare themselves to the media’s portrayal of the super thin woman. Another health issue that females can develop is disorders.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
Research shows “that regular readers of fashion and beauty magazines in early adolescence are more likely to suffer from a distorted body image during their teenage years” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”), when they read beauty magazines they read articles and tips of how to look better and they try to them all to look and feel better about themselves. Research shows that “more than three-quarters of girls repot that television influenced their body image” (Mascarelli). Social media influences how we act and what we do Amanda Swartz once stated “Social media and mass media influence the way we react and interact with our world and potentially influence the perception of our own body image” (Mulliniks). In today’s worlds there are more ways to access websites to promote body image as a positive thing, “On the internet, there are now more than 100 pro anorexia websites that not only encourage disordered eating but offer specific advice on purging, severely restricting calories intake, and exercising excessively” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”). It’s not a bad thing to eat healthy and work out to be fit and healthy but it’s another thing to eat less and work out excessively. Teens always compare themselves to others, either their peers, models and celebrities, “People are on Facebook or Instagram and they’re constantly comparing themselves to other people” (Mulliniks). Also reality television shows, show only the glamorous about what is happening, like “when teen moms become celebrities, the message to avoid teen pregnancy is lost” (Kroll). When teens watch shows like Teen Mom they don’t see the entire negative about becoming pregnant as a teen they see that the teen mom got famous and is on the show. Social media, media, magazines, and TV give teen’s unrealistical facts about body image, pregnancy and
The media has had an increasingly destructive effect on young people who are becoming worryingly obsessed with their body image. The media is saturated in sexual imagery in which young people have to face every day. The sheer volume of sexual imagery in the media today has resulted in the vast majority of young people to become hooked on looking as near to perfection everyday by using the latest products and buying the latest fashions. This used to be enough but lately the next step to achieving perfection is cosmetic surgery. Everyone wants to look attractive, especially teenagers who are not only put under massive strain to succeed but to look beautiful and climb the ranks of the social ladder, and it seems that the only way to achieve the much desired beauty is to turn to drastic measures.
In recent years, sociologists, psychologists, and medical experts have gone to great lengths about the growing problem of body image. This literature review examines the sociological impact of media-induced body image on women, specifically women under the age of 18. Although most individuals make light of the ideal body image most will agree that today’s pop-culture is inherently hurting the youth by representing false images and unhealthy habits. The paper compares the media-induced ideal body image with significant role models of today’s youth and the surrounding historical icons of pop-culture while exploring various sociological perspectives surrounding this issue.
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.
Body image is a mental representation that is socially constructed and impacts a large majority of people. Body image is subject to internal and external distortions (Atkins & Cataldo, 2013). For example, how one visualizes him or herself may conflict with how the world perceives them. Throughout history, individuals have idolized and categorized beauty. Beauty is a socially constructed concept that has different standards depending on the culture and time period. In the 21st century media, celebrities, and fitness fads significantly influence women and men’s attitudes toward their bodies. Body image is absorbed through a series of positive and negative messages that we acquire consciously and unconsciously throughout our lifespan. During the
The standard way of thinking while looking through magazines is to compare ourselves to the people we see in them. Innumerable teenage girls assume that the media’s ideal beauty is unrealistically thin women. Looking up to adults as role models, we are constantly influenced to be on a diet, to not eat as much, and to feel poorly about yourself if you aren't thin. Growing up with this expectation to be skinny, some women develop bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating. Americans today tend to believe that we can be as skinny as models if we just eat less, work out more, and get plastic surgery. Consequently, with technology growing, you can now alter a photo using an application called photoshop. Photoshop is a tool commonly used in magazines to enhance a photo to it more appealing to the consumers. The problem is, that many teenage girls don't notice the subtle changes the photo has gone through. Therefore unrealistic beauty standards women have been given are what makes us have negative body images.
Researchers have used various abstract foundations for examining the relationship between media and body image ( Holmstrom, 2004). Here I review the theory that has been used by researcher in the area. Bandura’s Social cognitive theory (1994) assumed that “people learn and model the behaviors of attractive others”. The supporters of this theory suggest that young women find slim models in the media attractive and try to imitate them through dieting which leads them to eating disorders.
The media have been criticized for portraying the thin women as “ideal” .This research plans to look at the effects of media on the body image of women. This cumulates the findings of empirical studies that observe the effects of media on body image. This study will also look at the different social comparison theories that relate media and body image. It will also investigate the different sources of media that have an impact on the body image of women. It also scopes to find out which sources have a greater consequence than the others. Furthermore it also researches about how the women could be prevented from comparing their body image from that of the models and actresses portrayed in the media.
The media defines what is and is not beautiful and acceptable. Most of the people on TV are photo shopped, edited, cropped, copied, and pasted. A lot of young people, mostly female, suffer from low self-esteem because they cannot live up to the standards of a woman who isn’t even real. Social media is taking over today’s teens. This is the only way they communicate and this is what a lot of their lives consist of. Social media is the cause of low self-esteem and low self-confidence because of the high standards that they set for today’s young people.
This is so incredibly damaging for girls growing up. Especially at an impressionable age, to be constantly thrown images of women that are deemed beautiful or sexy, and then to not fit in to these standards themselves (as most women do not), it is sending the message that they have no worth in society. The media sexualizes girls from a very young age, and it imposes sexuality on them too soon. Things like push up bras being marketed towards 12 year olds sends a message to our younger generation that they have reached the point in their lives where they are supposed to present themselves as sexual beings, when they are still only just forming their own ideas of sexuality to begin with. The sexualization of the female body leads to millions of girls and women all over the world developing self esteem issues because they do not fit in to the narrow standards that have been set for them by the media. Not only this, but nine out of ten times, the images we see are extremely photoshopped, making these standards even more unrealistic. Creating these false images of what a woman should or should not look like instills a feeling of worthlessness in our girls that is meant to force them to spend time and money trying to achieve this look, and it is telling them they are nothing if they cannot achieve
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
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 image of young girls, and unless awareness is raised, could become more and more adverse on young women today and tomorrow.
They may not like the way they look in the mirror, so they want to look like someone else. Watching media and the environment all influence body image problems. When some teenagers see their friends around them and all the supermodels and stars on TV with their perfect bodies and skin, teenagers want to look like them. Often adolescents are associated with extreme behaviors and are engaging in practices that could be called dangerous.