Ideal Female Body Image

The media’s depiction of the perfect female body image is appalling. It is the largest contributor for many adolescent female’s dissatisfaction with their bodies. At an early age, girls are introduced to perfect body ideals; from the advent of Barbie dolls to the launch of a wide variety of Disney Princess movies, they are exposed to unrealistic portrayal of the perfect female body. Young girls are very impressionable therefore they are more susceptible to the idealistic image of a size zero waistline. The means by which these young girls try to achieve the glorious size zero waist can lead them to dangerous life styles. The media should have realistic body images for women because the images they circulate do physical and psychological damage to adolescent girls.
The media’s ideal female body image has changed over time. Starting in the nineteen hundreds, the socially accepted female body has changed from voluptuous figures to that of their slender counterparts. In an article titled, “Curves! Curves! Curves!” the author mentions that you can tract the variety of ways in which the media has changed the ideal body figure for a woman through the movies of the past time periods. “The look of the late 1920's was termed "the new slender look" and…was quite different than that only twenty years earlier in that attention was drawn away from curves (bust and hips) and to a more toned-down look. The look was flat-chested with narrow hips and waist.” The author also states that the ideal female body figure changed again in the 1940’s with a switch from the slender flat chested look to a more curvaceous appeal. “This new image was very pronounced: a higher bust, defined waist, and rounded hips.” With the media constantly evolving sooner...

... middle of paper ...

... the amount of access that their young ones have to the media; including limit their contact with social media, television and magazines portraying women on size double zero figures. Also stated in the article, Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders, “Adults need to take responsibility for teaching children healthy habits, and one of the best ways to do so is by modeling healthy eating and exercise.”

Works Cited

Derenne, Jennifer L., and Eugene V. Beresin. "Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders." Academic Psychiatry 30.3 (2006): 257-61. ProQuest. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Brown, Amy, and Helga Dittmar. "Think "Thin" and Feel Bad: The Role of Appearance Schema Activation, Attention Level, and Thin-Ideal Internalization for Young Women’s Responses to Ultra-Thin Media Ideals." Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24.8 (2005): 1088-113. ProQuest. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.