Television's Effect on Self Image

1772 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: media influence on beauty

New mirrors are in the market and many homes have been remodeled with these mirrors. These new mirror are like snow whites mirror, they tell you who the most beautiful one of all is. A little girl is looking at her new mirror that tells her she has to wear makeup and look a certain way in order to be beautiful. This new mirror is the TV and the voice that is telling her is the media. The media portrays the beauty of women a certain way that is distorting beauty.

The media distorts image so much that women start to see an unrealistic beauty and think that all women should actually look that way. An experiment done by Mahler Beckerley and Vogel (2010) demonstrate that women’s attitudes about certain looks reflect on how they view the models. There were two groups of women and some saw photos of models that were tanned and the other saw models that were not tanned. The participants then were told to describe their attitude about tanning. The group of women that viewed models that had a tan had a more positive attitude toward tans and the group of women that viewed models with out a tan had a negative attitude towards tanning. This research demonstrates that the media has a big influence in the decision women make on their appearance.

So what is beauty? Is beauty the perfect supermodel on a magazine? Is it the stunning actress on television? Do you have to be thin and tall? According to Dictionary.com Unabridged, beauty is “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest)”. However, the m...

... middle of paper ...

...:10.1080/14680770903068266

Mahler, H. M., Beckerley, S. E., & Vogel, M. T. (2010). Effects of Media Images on Attitudes Toward Tanning. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 32(2), 118-127.

Slater, A., Tiggemann, M., Firth, B., & Hawkins, K. (2012). Reality Check: An Experimental Investigation of the Addition of Warning Labels to Fashion Magazine Images on Women's Mood and Body Dissatisfaction. Journal Of Social & Clinical Psychology, 31(2), 105-122.

Solomon, M. R., Ashmore, R. D., & Basil G., E. (1994). Beauty before the Eyes of Beholders: The Cultural Encoding of Beauty Types in Magazine Advertising and Music Television. Journal Of Advertising, 23(2), 49-64.

Bates, C. (2012, January 05). Mail online. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2082500/A-quarter-children-10-diet-think-overweight-face-bullying-taunts-shocking-survey-finds.html

Show More
Related

  • Media – the Negative Influence on Females

    1249 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mass media influence has expanded since its inception during the 19th century. Media has become a direct influence on people today by shaping social identity and giving people a false sense of contentment. Today mass media has become more influential to society because it sets the standards of what a person’s appearance should look like along with what is beautiful – especially in women. Women have become a focal point for the media to target; media have used a female insecurities to promote products and establish a false perception of beauty. Today, mass media have defined beauty for an ideal woman, and established this ideology across the globe. This essay will argue the following (1) false perception of advertisements, (2) shadism, and (3) how females react to advertisements.

    Read More

  • White Washed World

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Beauty is often described as being in the eye of the beholder. However in modern western culture, the old adage really should be beauty is in the eye of the white makeup artist, hair stylist, photographer, photo shop editor, and advertiser. Beauty and body ideals are packaged and sold to the average American so that we can achieve vocational, financial, social, and recreational successes. Mass media and advertising has affected the way that women perceive and treat their own bodies as well as their self-concept. Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic images and hold themselves to the impossible beauty standards. First, we will explore the role of media in the lives of women and then the biggest body image issue from a diversity stand point, media whitewashing.

    Read More

  • Essay On Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman And A Beauty Of Spirit

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    Obviously, it is not a term applied to outward appearance in cases such as this. From this, one must ascertain that "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.” (Keller) So, is beauty a physical characteristic? Is it a state of mind? Each person has their own idea of what beauty is and what it entails. Each individual must measure their values of others and themselves, their ideas of what true beauty is to determine what beauty they wish to be and to bring into their worlds. While a person can be pleasing to look at, it is what they do, how they treat others, how they treat us that determine how we will continue to feel about

    Read More

  • Eating Disorders and The Media

    1688 Words  | 4 Pages

    The media and how it affects our society has changed tremendously over the past few decades. Our population of children who spend a lot of time in front of the television or on social media continues to increase, creating a superficial view of themselves and who they should be. This superficial outlook has been created by the media because it preaches to our society that looks matter. Not only are there millions of advertisements saying to lose weight and buy certain products to be beautiful, but there has been a specific standard of beauty set for models and actresses to obtain. These standards include big eyes, volumino...

    Read More

  • Ideal Beauty Essay

    1899 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media, bombarding women with images that depict what is considered to be the "ideal body." Images of thin, attractive and

    Read More

  • Reasons Why Women Develop a Negative Body Image

    1161 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wolf, Naomi, Ed. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. Random House, 1991.Web. 28 March. 2014.

    Read More

  • Is Beauty a Social Construct?

    1246 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jean Kilbourne started collecting ads in the 1960s, influenced, in part, by her involvement with the women’s movement, her interest in media, and her background in modeling. She began her film Killing Us Softly by showing vintage magazine articles and advertisement that she claimed are responsible for creating “an epidemic of eating disorders”. In 1991, Naomi wolf’s bestseller the beauty myth claimed the obsession with beauty was the result of a cultural conspiracy seeking to undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for women. She argues that ideology of beauty is the "last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact" and that women's magazines have played a pivotal role in the selling of the beauty myth. If, as Jean Kilbourne suggests, the media and advertising teach us to detest ourselves and damage our bodies, then what Wolf calls "the beauty myth" is a threat to everybody. In 1999, Dr. Nancy Etcoff published Survival of The Prettiest, rejecting Naomi Wolf’s claims that beauty is a backlash against feminism and using historical and scientific research to argue that beauty objectively and universally exists. She states “Beauty is one of the ways life perpetuates itself, and love of beauty is deeply rooted in biology”. So, is Naomi Wolf justified in her concerns? Is beauty truly an invention of Madison Avenue or is it an instinctual universal urge that played a major role in human evolution? Did the magazine advertisements in the sixties shape or reflect the obsession with beauty? To answer these questions, one must virtually travel back in time and carefully examine the magazine articles and advertisements of that era and analyze whether what they are promoting are novel ideas or do they ...

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Perfect Woman

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    We live in a society where the actual appearance of women is determined by people’s perception and idea of beauty one that is made available through advertisement and commercials, it is almost like women are being told what to look like to make them feel good about themselves, it seems women have been targeted as the focus of such subliminal attacks on self image. Conventional femininity in our generation has taken a whole new life of its own a life were more is more, one which portrays that nothing is good enough as opposed to what the older media and in ...

    Read More

  • Effects of Media on Women’s Body Image

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.

    Read More

  • Beauty Essay: The Definition Of Beauty

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    The definition of beauty is varying among different people in the world. Even though almost everyone knows the term beauty, many people are struggling in defining it and persuading others to agree with their opinions. Beauty is defined by a combination of qualities existent in a person or thing that fulfills the aesthetic feels or brings about profound gratification. Many people define beauty as a term to describe a person’s physical appearance; they often think that beauty comes from magazines, video girls, or even models. Although the term beauty can define a person’s physical appearance, true beauty lies in the way one acts and thinks rather than the way one look.

    Read More

  • The Cause and Effects of Beauty and the Ideal Women

    2294 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout history there have been many claims about what is beautiful and what is not on the face and body. America’s idea of beauty in the past changed many times from the fragileness of the Steel-engraving lady to the voluptuousness of the Greek slave. The ideal beauty in America is not so different from the ideal beauty of cultures around the world and follows many of the traditions practiced throughout history. The widespread of advertisement and technology is something that’s said to be the contributing problem to the ideal women phenomenon, but I believe history and trend plays the bigger role.

    Read More

  • Beauty Essay: What Is Beauty?

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    Beauty is the innate ability all things possess to inspire a sense of admiration and awe. Society today has a skewed up sense of what beauty actually is. Many believe it is all how the person or thing looks, they think it is about the looks of a person or their physical features. Beauty is beyond the physical state. Webster’s dictionary defines beauty as “an assemblage of graces or properties pleasing to the eye, the ear, the intellect, the æsthetic faculty, or the moral sense”, but beauty cannot be summed up by one source, beauty is what is all around.

    Read More

  • An Essay About Beauty

    1849 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are so many different opinions on what beauty is. The idea of beauty is purely opinionated. Beauty is your own idea, skinny or thick, long hair or short hair, light skin or dark skin. How people define beauty is unique in many different ways everyone has a different opinion. No ones idea of beauty is the same. In society today it has become more materialistic based if you wear the latest designer or you have the newest pair of sneakers out and the true meaning of being beautiful has escaped our souls. Beauty is not just what we see on the outside it is so much deeper then what we see its what we also have to offer on the inside.Your intelligence is beauty your mind, body, and soul. Beauty is not a single image, but the active embodiment

    Read More

  • Advertisement Analysis: Special K And Fashion Magazine

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    In today’s society, more than ever there is a great importance placed on beauty. In fact beauty is often associated with self worth, especially among women. This idea that beauty is more important than anything else is prominent in the media, specifically advertisements. Advertisements present ideas of beauty that women think they must conform to in order to be beautiful. This essay will analyze two advertisements from the winter 2016 issue of Fashion Magazine. Both advertisements present very different ideas of beauty. The Erin Tracey ad reproduces the dominant ideologies of beauty, which are traditionally white and thin beautiful women. On the other hand the Special K advertisement challenges these hegemonic

    Read More

  • Essay On Negative Effects Of Television

    1771 Words  | 4 Pages

    Television is one of the many available means for entertainment and it has become a big part of children’s lives. Television being on top of the list for entertainment can have some positive effects on development and behaviors in children but television and other media types can also negatively influence children’s perception of their own identities, gender roles, norms and behaviors.

    Read More

More about Television's Effect on Self Image

Open Document