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The impact of media on body image
Articles about the impact of media on the body image of women
Medias negative impact on body image
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These days it is almost impossible to walk through a store without seeing a magazine that features a young, slim model on the cover. Flipping through the pages, there are more pictures of young, beautiful women, all skinny. Each and every single picture is airbrushed to perfection. It is hard not to take a good look at the model and begin to think, “Why can’t I be as pretty as her?” Many females, from as young as elementary school, struggle with their body image and their self-esteem. In fact, in a study consisting of fifth graders, ten year old girls and boys told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show "Friends" (University of Washington). As a result, they look up to these models, since they seem like the epitome of perfection. However, looking up to these models is neither practical nor healthy. Purposely or not, the portrayal of female models and unrealistic weight expectations in the media are, in part, responsible for several health and psychological issues in today’s society. The media can be magazines, television, or the internet, and all are easily accessible in the United States. Magazines in particular boasts diet tips, exercise information, and unrealistic expectations of the ideal body size and shape. They send a message to the reader: that in order to be attractive, you must also be skinny. The portrayal of the perfect body image is inescapable in today’s society. As standards are becoming smaller and smaller, the effect it has on women show a similar trend. Magazines such as Glamour and Vogue feature many pictures of thin models. In several cases, these magazines also feature articles, which interview a well know... ... middle of paper ... ...6 Jun. 2006. Web. 14 Jan. 2014. Lockwood, Penelope, Christian H. Jordan, and Ziva Kunda. "Motivation by positive or negative role models: regulatory focus determines who will best inspire us." Journal of personality and social psychology 83.4 (2002): 855. National Institute of Mental Health. "Eating Disorders." NIMH RSS. National Institute of Mental Health, 2011. Web. 13 Jan. 2014. . Rian. "Star Magazine: Jessica Simpson's Diet Disaster." Web log post. The Skinny Website. N.p., 27 Aug. 2013. Web. 14 Jan. 2014. . University of Washington. "Teen Health and the Media." Teen Health and the Media. University of Washington, n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2014. .
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.
The media can impact people’s lives in many ways, whether it’s fashion, movies, literature, or hobbies. One of the impacts is how women view their bodies. Movie stars and models feel pressured to catch attention and to look good in order to have a good career in their respective field. People tend to judge how someone looks based on their body composition. The result of this “judgment” is that Hollywood is getting skinny. Since models and actresses serve as role models for people, people tend to want to look like them. The result of this seemingly harmless model of behavior is in an increase in eating disorders.
Women’s fitness magazines are supposed to inform females how to get fit and be healthy; however, they continuously send messages to women that they have to fit certain standards of flawless skin, sex appeal, and dangerously low amounts of body fat. Women in their twenties and thirties are feeling the pressure from society to conform to body images seen in magazines, such as Heidi Klum who is 5’9.5’’and 119lb, Carmen Kass who is 5’10.5’’ and 114lb, and Elsa Benitez who is 6’ and 125lb (Magazine Dimensions 153, 162) (supermodelguide.com). (Are these the healthy bodies that we should be trying to obtain?) Fitness Magazines need to revamp themselves and give women healthy, realistic images and informative articles so they can help women become healthy.
The frequent use of media also contributes to the fact that people become influenced by what they see in the media. 8 out of 10 Americans watch television on a daily basis. Younger people are more prone to developing eating disorders and becoming influenced by media; they are the ones who use media more often. Young children from the ages of 8-18 are engaged with some type of media for approximately 7.5 hours a day. Of those 7.5 hours, most of it is watching television that is filled with influential commercials. Children even are influenced from the cartoons they watch. The cartoons and videos they watch often stress the importance of being attractive. One of the most common forms of influential advertisements and pictures are in teen magazines which are directed towards young, adolescent girls. The increasing use of media has a correlation with the increasing number of victims dealing with an eating disorder. Media has become easier to access and is needed for more things. For example, smart phones make accessing media like social media easier and since they are portable, you can use them where ever you go. Media provided influential content in which young kids can learn th...
“Pro-ana” is the promotion of anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice rather than a mental ailment. The creators of these blogs provide tips, tricks, and support for those wanting to live with anorexia. The blogs are dedicated to encouraging young women to further their disorder. They cause women to fall into a consistent, reoccurring pattern of destruction, and this ideology is all too easily accessible to women who suffer from eating disorders. ‘Pro-ana’ blogs are detrimental and because of the negative effects on the physical and psychological health of young women, these b...
Warbick, Caroline. Just the Facts: Eating Disorders. Reed Educational and Professional Publishing, Chicago, IL. 2003.
“My lips and fingers were blue because I was so thin that my heart was struggling to pump blood around my body”, said teen model fashion Georgina (Carroll 1). The new skinny has become excessively scrawny. Is it definitely not normal for today’s society models to walk around with blue fingers starving themselves until their organs start failing! As for the model agencies, they couldn’t care less of the pressure and dangerous practices they put the models through in order for them to stay thin for the runway. Even fashion Designers continue to produce the smallest couture sample sizes and scout for the slimiest bodies to wear the designs not aware of the consequences of the pressure they not only put on models, but on the society girls to look like these starving models. And when the models continue to get offers from the most important fashion industries like Prada, it motivates them to keep doing what they are doing to stay in the shape they are in (Carroll 1). But little did the outside world know what this pressure had on the models and what they were doing to their bodies to peruse their modeling careers.
Kasey Serdar (2005) argues that only a small number of women can actually fulfill the characteristics of what media defines beautiful. Yet, women are constantly being exposed to the ideal women image. Serdar (2005) illustrates that “models shown on television, advertisement, and in other forms of popular media are approximately 20% below ideal body weight, thus meeting the dia...
The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ...
Websites promoting anorexia, created by anorexics themselves, are of growing concern. The Eating Disorders Association estimates there are an estimated ten million women and one million men suffering from anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive eating in the US alone. Pro-Anna sites are helping to give incentive to sufferers to throw up their last meal and to reinforce their 500-calorie-a-day diet. These so-called clubs may not cause anorexia but they encourage members to lose weight and avoid recovery.
Young girls and young women are seen eating as little as they can, even starving themselves at times to stay fit. Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said exposure to thin models is a great trigger in maintaining an eating disorder. When watching America’s Next Top Model or flipping through a fashion magazine, these young women don’t apprehend that those models are either naturally slim or are suffering from an eating disorder themselves. Our young women are growing up in a society where they are not comfortable eating what they crave without regret. To worsen the situation, Victoria Secret models pose in their bikinis in advertisements, building up guilt in young minds.
Strasburger, V., & Donnerstein, E. (1999). Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Issues and Solutions. Pediatrics, 103(1), 129-139.
For example, since 1960s up to mid 80s, all model, advertising and media houses used thin sized models as a way of passing commercial statements. However, the consistent posturing of thin women as the ideal body representations by the various media conditioned the audience to accept that as a reality. Therefore, progressively and over time had women themselves fall over each other asking attempts to realize this ‘perfect’ body figure and attract the eyes of the casting agents. Consequently, many behavioral scientists supported by medical actors warned that glorification of the ‘thin size’ in commercial adverts and fashion houses was forcing women to indulge in punitive dietary efforts and body weight cutting procedures. The entire model size debate is now centered on gauging the benefits it brings to advertisers Vis a vis the effects felt by the models, themselves.
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...
Over the years, the media has promoted the idea that being thin is being “beautiful”. Because of