Media and Girls' Body Image How many of you girls have atleast once in your life asked yourselves
“does this dress look weird on me?” or, “am I too fat?”
Because if you have, you’re not alone. In a Glamour magazine survey,
75% of women aged 13-35 believed they were fat but only 25% were
actually medically overweight. Its safe to say most girls don’t agree
with the saying that ‘beauty is only skin deep’. We are living in a
world where body image governs the clothes we buy, the food we eat,
how we spend our leisure time – basically how we live. So that’s what
I’m here to talk about – body image, especially women’s body image in
today’s world.
So what is the perfect body? Well in todays world its people like
Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (picture) that have the perfect body.
Take a look at the early 90s, the perfect body was quite different as
we can see by the example of Cindy Crawford. She wasn’t as thin as a
wafer biscuit, like the stars today. Take a look even further back
into the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe was considered the most attractive
woman around and she was even curvier you can see that the “perfect
body” has gone from curvy to bony.
Who defines the perfect image? Well the media plays a big part.
Every magazine you read, every ad on TV, majority of the film
actresses and even mannequins displayed on window shops create the
“ideal” image that is unre...
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...heir menus to
include healthier options such as salads and wraps. As for the media,
which is largely to blame for portraying an image that is unrealistic,
it is slowly changing its view regarding women. Large influential
companies like Dove are using average sized women to advertise their
beauty products. So instead of saying, “I wish I could look like
her”, looking at the Dove ad you’d be saying “That girl in the ad sort
of looks like me and yet she seems really happy and confident”.
This is the direction the media should be heading towards because lets
face it, the media will always be a major influence in our lifestyle.
Meanwhile its also up to us girls to be more educated about the health
hazards of these unrealistic body images, and also to think for
ourselves. Because remember, Beauty truly is skin deep.
The misconception of what is beautiful can be detrimental to young girls. In a television industry attempt to sell goods, they are depicted as sexy. Creating a need for parents to intervene and present a more realistic and normal view of physical beauty. Today, TV presents sexually based images crafted to appeal to young girls. Unfortunately, they are led to believe that their value is only skin deep, causing flawed expectations, illusions, and wrong information about the truth of the physical body in the real world. In an attempt to look the part some have fallen victim to eating disorders, while others have exchanged childhood innocence for an Adult view of what is sexy.
Finally, we need to understand that the review might not be everything related to the relationships between mass media and females’ perceptions of body image. In particular, most studies that were featured in this literature review were conducted not from a local context but it will be able to aid us in the formulation of our survey questions for our specific sample group of a particular population.
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.
Mass media is designed to reach large audiences through the use of technology. Its purpose is
Advertisers use women that are abnormally thin, and even airbrush them to make them appear thinner. These advertisers promote a body image that is completely unrealistic and impossible to achieve (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006b). It has been instilled in these advertisers’ minds that a thinner model will sell more (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). Media has a direc...
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.
. Romo, Samantha. "As Body Image Issues Grow in Society Be Aware of Medias Influence." The Crimson White 7 Mar. 2012: n. pag. 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.
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 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.
It seems that the media’s portrayal of women has negatively affected the body image of The Wykeham Collegiate senior school girls. The media has a negative effect on the youth of today, primarily amongst the female population when it comes to how young girls and women regard their bodies.
Vargas, L E. (2013) The Negative Effects of The Media on Body Image. Personal.psu.edu. Retrieved 30 Nov. 17 from:
In the present day, females who are within the media (entertainers/socialites) have been given a global platform to go about showcasing their contribution to media and their lives, this way it has allowed for the ‘ordinary’ women and men to be influenced by their culture and lifestyle based on what is presented on television and social media. has shown that the amount of females within media has increased over the years. This has allowed them to have a larger impact within society both negatively and positively. Having done sources have clearly shown that the ideal female body image conveyed by females is accessible