Negative Effects Of Media On Body Image

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English Essay
To what extent does the media have a negative impact on adolescent about there body image?
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Today adolescents, both male and female, aged between 13 to 19 years are faced with a negative impact from magazines about how they should look. Body image is a person’s opinion, thoughts and feelings about his or hers own body, and their physical appearance. Magazines such as Dolly, Girlfriend, Cosmopolitan, Mens Health and Zoo have become a powerful focus throughout the world today amounts adolescents, causing adolescents to rely on every information they read or hear about their body image.

Models in magazines are photoshopped and receive touch ups to look the way they do before the magazine is printed. This does not stop teenagers from believing that these models portray the ideal body shape, size and figures. Research by Levine, Smolak and Hayden (1994) found that "An increase in reading of magazines with fitness, beauty and weight information was strongly related to and increase of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders". Even if the main idea behind magazines today is to gain subscriptions and awareness around the celebrity and fitness industry this is decently being achieved by these powerful facts.
Despite this is a serious problem amounts adolescents today believing what they see is the way the opposite sex and the same sex sees and judges them, but this is clearly not true. A recent investigation conducted by Healthy place (2013) established that 69% of adolescent girls in one study said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body shape. Although these findings are significant, recent statistics by Knauss, Paxton, and Alsaker (2007) found that " One third of adolescent wished thei...

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...en magazine headlines "Getting him to notice you, The Ultimate Get-a-Guy Guide, Dude Snagging Do’s and Don’ts, Love Clues: Fifteen Ways to Make Him Want You Bad, Find True Love: Twenty-four Crucial Clues to Snag Your Crush"(Healthy Children, 2013). It is indeed magazines that presents the biggest challenge to teenagers wanting to move into adulthood.

As adolescents are more exposed to these types of magazines and headlines, so does the expectation of adolescents about other adolescents. Without magazines changing their topics and photos to provide adolescents with a well balanced understanding about body image will allow teenagers to become less acceptance of models appearance. This will not only be a help for adolescents to develop there own individuality and appearance. Our younger generation will suffer And when younger generation suffers, the future suffers.

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