The media has a strong influence on society, both negatively and positively. So when children as young as 6 are being influenced by celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears; we as a society have lost site in what it is to be a positive influence. Kathleen Deveny and Raina Kelly raised awareness in their article “Girls Gone Bad?” which depicts the bad behavior and influences set by celebrities such as Hilton, Lohan, and Spears have any long term affects on young women. Are young women so riveted to the highlights of these celebrities and the media that surrounds their lifestyle that, as Deveny and Kelly boldly puts it, we are raising ‘prosti-tots’? Or can our young women look beyond the bad behavior with lavish lifestyles, and still make a wise decision based on common sense? Not only are young women bombarded with the lifestyle of these celebrities produced by the media but they are plagued with images of how they should behave and what they should look like. This is an adolescent crisis in a young woman’s life because from the stages of preteen to near adulthood is when young women are most susceptible to influence.
Kathleen Deveny and Raina Kelly highlighted that “77 percent of Americans believe that Britney, Paris, and Lindsay have too much influence on young girls.” (¶ 4.6-8) These three celebrities are always in the media, so much so that we know just about everything that’s going on in their lives. Britney’s tacky lifestyle of erratic behavior, two over-night marriages that failed, a bizarre head-shaving episode, a few admittance to a mental hospital and losing custody of her children more or likely based on her behavior she shows to be an unfit mother. Under her 29 year-old belt, Britney portray...
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... There’s a sense of superiority over these non-role model celebrities because even though these celebrities live an unrestrained lifestyle, young women such as Emily Boyce can still ignore them and maintain a being a top student in school.
To conclude, young women like to watch the ‘Brit Pak ‘ and their wild style of living but even though they see this, it’s really a decision left up to the “real life role models” to show these young women what is to be a successful young woman. Does Britney, Paris, and Lindsay’s lifestyle have a long term effect on young women? I personally don’t believe so. These celebrities have their five minutes of fame and will utilize it the best way they can. If a young woman can depict what is wrong from what is right, she can surely tell what is good behavior and that Britney, Paris, and Lindsay are not representing a good role model.
Grandmother, mother, daughter, sister, aunt: what does the future hold for the women of the world? In 1991 Katha Pollitt had that same question. In an article in The New York Times Pollitt expressed her concerns regarding female role models in the media for the younger generation. “Contemporary shows are either essentially all-male, like Garfield, or organized on what I call the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined” (as cited in Green & Lindsky, 2012, p. 546) Katha Pollitt argues that the television shows children are watching are predominantly male leads, thus leaving girls without suitable role models. But why does a role model for a girl have to be a woman? Over the 25
Celebrities hold a strong power to influence the lifestyle trends of an audience. As members of the entertainment industry, celebrities are looked up to as role models by a large general public. With such high exposure, celebrities essentially hold the power to positively or negatively influence their followers, from fashion trends to behavioral tendencies, the attitudes and lifestyle habits of celebrities influence cultural qualities and the way in which many people function within society. Mindy Kaling’s career started when she became an intern on the popular show “Late Night with Conan O’ Brien”. Mindy was a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth College when she first started her internship.
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
Why is that all blogs or media sites only pay attention to the bad behavior? We see videos of famous people getting drunk, doing drugs, and even being disrespectful. Eventually, we see this domino effect on young girls, they start being rebellious, start to talk back to their parents even go to parties and drink. Nowadays, celebrities are seen as role models to these kids. What kind of example are these celebrities providing to teenagers when they can barely control their life. Role models are supposed to be someone you admire, someone you look up to and try and follow their examples. Not someone who lives a fake life and you barely know. As stated in an article called “Why this generation is so completely obsessed with the idea of Celebrity” Adam Pliskin explains the real reason to why we follow celebrities as much as we do. This is because we secretly want fame ourselves.
In “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect,” Stephanie Hanes covers the sexualization of young girls and women in every aspect of the media that influences children and teens. She explains that girls see media figures, movies, and sports being sexualized, and how this is causing children to associate looking and acting a certain way to being ‘the perfect women’. Hanes believes the hypersexualized media is causing girls to obtain a negative body image and it’s killing their self-esteem. The author proposes what she believes society should do about overcoming this obstacle, and how people can crush the stereotypes about women; to her everyone is responsible and should aid in fixing these problems. She explains that the media
Miley Cyrus is a cultural icon. Since the time she was fourteen the media has been scrutinizing every move she makes. From whom she is dating, to what roles she chooses and what she says. But nothing is scrutinized more than her performances; most specifically Miley’s performance at the MTV VMA’s. Miley preformed her song We Can’t Stop and along with Robin Thicke preformed his song Blurred Lines. This performance led to a huge backlash in the media. Every major new station covered it. CTV even brought in psychiatrists and experts on the media to analyze her performance. The next morning Miley’s news story had even beaten out the Syrian war crimes. The experts all came to the same conclusion that she was out of control, and a slut. Miley was most heavily criticized on her attire, and her interactions with Robin Thicke. Everyone was claiming that she was setting a bad example for young girls; CNN even went so far as to claim her “performance sets girls and women back” (Wallace 2013)
“ The media needs to take responsibility for the effect it has on our younger generation....why aren’t we regulating things like calling people fat”(Lawrence). The actress Jennifer Lawrence expressed her opinion in what she believes that the media is responsible for the damaging body image that has affected the younger generation into believing this image is ideal. Considering this quote, recently there have been more .The negative body image in female adolescents has been affected by the influence of impossible body types in the media such as the doll “Barbie” and characters in popular children shows.
In the early 1980’s, women were not supposed to be open-minded or even allowed to have such sexual thoughts that Madonna inspired. Women were expected to be traditional and keep their femininity behind closed doors. When Madonna first came into the entertainment business, it was a complete shock for everyone. No one could believe a woman was capable of being a sex symbol in public. It was not Madonna’s fault that she was simply a desirable creature to everyone (Allen 5). In today’s youth, people are used to watching television and music videos since a young age. We learn from the media and it helps us to comprehend the representations that it is giving of society. Madonna became the main subject of the media and society. Since, celebrities are always focused on by the media; they have the power to impact society by showing their perspective of thoughts and images. Accord...
"Children are influenced by media–they learn by observing, imitating, and making behaviors their own" (APA, 2001, p.1224). Girl’s as young as 4-years sees Britney Spears music clip “Baby One More Time”, who at the time was a 17-year old girl/world pop icon at the time wearing a school uniform showing off her midriff, wearing a lot of makeup and a short skirt. Disney teen icons such as Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana taking personal photos of herself in “sexy” poses and sending it to her ‘older’ boyfriend and then having it all published all over the internet for the entire world to see. Boys also face sexualization too, as has been seen in Calvin Klein ads, where pubescent-looking boys pose provocatively with perfectly sculpted six-pack abs hawking teen fashion These pop culture celebrities both female and male are always in the media, for inappropriate actions and they’re meant to be role models for children. In fact most of these sexualized celebrities are still children themselves. The sad part is it’s not just sexualization being encouraged in the media other negative things such as violence, drug and alcohol use ...
If there is one individual in the celebrity world that is known for his or her troubled thoughts or misbehavior, there isn’t anyone better to recognize other than Lindsay Lohan. An American star, model, and singer, Lohan was recognized in all different aspects of Hollywood because of her talents as a young actress. However, as her stardom continued to progress, so did the instability in her mental health. The mass media and people alike had an influence on Lohan’s behavior by distorting how she was portrayed on and off the screen. Lohan’s family life also had a huge impact on her turnout because she was constantly around the instability of her family members, thus affecting her mental
I can recall a time when the media was influencing my life and actions. The week after I graduated high school, my girlfriends and I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, where the MTV beach house was located that summer. As I look back on the week of drunken partying and sexy guys, I can only wonder how I made it home alive. How could any young woman find this behavior acceptable? Every young woman there was flaunting their bodies to the young men around them. They were proud to be sexual objects. Where did they learn such debauchery? This is the kind of woman that is portrayed throughout MTV and various other aspects of the media. They have even coined the term “midriff”—the highly sexual character pitched at teenage girls that increasingly populates today’s television shows—in order to hook the teen customer. Teenage women increasingly look to the media to provide them with a ready-made identity predicated on today’s version of what’s “cool.” The media is always telling us that we are not thin enough, we’re not pretty enough, we don’t have the right friends, or we have the wrong friends… we’re losers unless we’re cool. We must follow their example and show as much skin as possible. The type of imagery depicted by MTV-- as well as people like Howard Stern, the famous “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and various Hip Hop songs—glorifies sex and the provocative woman.
We are part of a generation that is obsessed with celebrity culture. Celebrities are distinctive. Media and consumers alike invented them to be a different race of super beings: flawless, divine and above all the real moral world. In a 1995 New York Times article “In contrast, 9 out of 10 of those polled could think of something
Media has been filled with exaggerated scrutinies and trashed with unreasonable criticisms. It deserves a break. This is the generation of Information Technology. Danger is just around the corner, where a click from a mouse or a remote control and all sex-related garbage can pop out of the monitor. Truly, a vulnerable teenager can easily get lost to temptations. As an adolescent, I can empathize how these sweet girls feel about how horrible their body shapes are, how ugly their face is, and how brands in fashion seem to be worth more than anything in the world. Fashion labels, tiny bodies, and sexual activities are all characterized in Sex and the City. From th...
Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Marilyn Monroe, Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne are some of the most idolized celebrities in today’s society. People worship celebrities, not because of the good morals they may possess, but because of their fame. We canonize celebrities despite the fact their music encourages use of drugs and alcohol, the abuse of women, and they dress slatternly. There are many luminaries, deceased or living, who are good role models who are often overlooked because they are not at the top of the charts. When you look at whom most teens idolize, you should realize just how bad of an influence they have over their fans.
Children are influenced left and right by role models all across the world in ways that could have a positive or negative impact on them. A role model is a person whose success or unsuccess is impacted by people, especially children. Celebrities often times become role models without even choosing to be because of the social media. For example, even turning on the television for two minutes you can hear all the negative things that these celebrities have done. These public figures should not be considered role models because they influence poor decision making, they can lower children's self esteem, and while children rely on celebrities, parents should be their role models.