How does the media influence our body image? In what forms, does the media influence our perceptions about our body? These were the two questions that I asked myself in order to do the research paper and the panel discussion. In my opinion, I would agree that the media does influence and promote women and men to believe that the culture's standards for body image are ideal. Hence, the phrases, "thin is in" and "the perfect body" are two examples of "eye-catching" headlines that I observed in many women magazines. I learned that the media influences us through television, fashion and health magazines, music videos, film, commercials, and various other advertisements. Sadly, as a result, this repeated exposure, the "thin" ideal, can lead many young girls in triggering eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, stress, and suicide. After acquiring this relevant information, I decided to focus my research on what type of media influences elementary school children and the adolescent teenager. The three central types of media that I found that did indeed influence body image are: Fashion magazines, famous top-models and actresses, and teenage or young adult women in the music industry. According to the Seretean Center for Health Promotion, " the term, "body image" has been coined to describe a person's inner sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the physical appearance of her/his body." (From The Wellness Column, April 1, 1996.) In my research, I found that many young girls are dissatisfied with their bodies and many "strive" to look like the "waif-thin" models or actresses one sees on television or in fashion magazines. There was a lot of information and facts on body and image that I found on the Internet. However, one website, Just Think Foundation, supported my belief that the media, magazines in particular, do indeed influence young girls to be "thin" in order to be popular and beautiful in our society. For example, I was in alarmed to learn that "eighty percent of 10-year-old American girls diet; more than five million Americans suffer from eating disorders and ninety percent of those are adolescent and young adult women; the number one magic wish for young girls age 11-17 is to be thinner; and between elementary and high school, the percentage of girls in the U.S. who are "happy with the way I am" drops from 60% to 29%.
Media is infamous for having a tremendous effect on teenage girls. The mass media have long been criticized for presenting unrealistic appearance ideals that contribute to the development of negative body image for many women and girls (Harrison & Hefner, 2006). Whether it’s the influence on their choice of friends, school, or their self image, media has played an important role in affecting those decisions. A growing number of experimental studies have demonstrated a causal link between acute exposure to "thin-ideal" images (i.e., images of impossibly thin and attractive female beauty) and increased body dissatisfaction (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). It has recently been brought up that media influences girls in preadolescence, which is highly likely since most young girls idolize Barbie (Rintala & Mustajoki, 1992). “Were Barbie a flesh-and-blood woman, her waist would be 39% smaller than that of anorexic patients, and her body weight would be so low that she would not be able to menstruate” (Rintala & Mustajoki, 1992). Most young girls wish that they could look like Barbie when they grew up, but if they knew the reality of having her measurements their perceptions would probably change. Children frequently fantasize about who they will be, what they will do, and how they will look when they grow into adulthood.
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.
Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...
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 media uses means such as social media, magazines, and television to influence people, specifically teenagers. Adolescence can be a confusing time for everyone, but teenage girls are more vulnerable to their influence due to their emotional maturity. Although girls currently believe that this impossible body image is expected of them, they develop eating disorders because of it. For example, the Victoria's secret fashion show and underwear commercials help set up the impossible beauty standard all girls and women are trying to achieve. Those models live by a strict diet and exercise routine plus their photos are manipulated in order to look the way they do. If models don't look thin enough, they will “frequently have collarbones, ribs, and even hips erased to make them look thinner (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” Magazines are also a huge part of media's influence. It is common to find teenage girls reading fashion magazines. One issue of the popular magazine, Vogue, “was found to contain 144 manipulated images, including the cover (Body Image-Photo Manipulation).” It is normal to be conce...
Research shows “that regular readers of fashion and beauty magazines in early adolescence are more likely to suffer from a distorted body image during their teenage years” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”), when they read beauty magazines they read articles and tips of how to look better and they try to them all to look and feel better about themselves. Research shows that “more than three-quarters of girls repot that television influenced their body image” (Mascarelli). Social media influences how we act and what we do Amanda Swartz once stated “Social media and mass media influence the way we react and interact with our world and potentially influence the perception of our own body image” (Mulliniks). In today’s worlds there are more ways to access websites to promote body image as a positive thing, “On the internet, there are now more than 100 pro anorexia websites that not only encourage disordered eating but offer specific advice on purging, severely restricting calories intake, and exercising excessively” (“Children, Adolescents and the Media”). It’s not a bad thing to eat healthy and work out to be fit and healthy but it’s another thing to eat less and work out excessively. Teens always compare themselves to others, either their peers, models and celebrities, “People are on Facebook or Instagram and they’re constantly comparing themselves to other people” (Mulliniks). Also reality television shows, show only the glamorous about what is happening, like “when teen moms become celebrities, the message to avoid teen pregnancy is lost” (Kroll). When teens watch shows like Teen Mom they don’t see the entire negative about becoming pregnant as a teen they see that the teen mom got famous and is on the show. Social media, media, magazines, and TV give teen’s unrealistical facts about body image, pregnancy and
Why is this topic of utmost importance? Undeniably, the media now has become an essential tool for everyone in this era, be it for information and social networking (Shakeel). However, it has also become a platform for people to look up to – for both the good and bad reasons. Generally, most females look to the media as an example for an “ideal” body image. If so, what are the impacts? To what extent does mass media contribute to negative perceptions of body image by females? Does the amount of time spent using the mass media contribute to females’ perception of their body image? What factors influence why some females are affected by the images of the media and some aren’t? This literatu...
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 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
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...
Society plays many roles in peoples’ lives. The biggest role that society plays with females is how they should appear. All over the television, movies, and different magazine covers, females come into view as looking very thin and beautiful. People that see these famous females begin to idealize that body image. The male gender also visualizes these famous females and thinks that all females should have this slender appearance. As the year 2000 rolled in, actresses and models’ body weight decreased, and their waiflike bodies became more noticeable in the public’s eyes. Many little girls grow up idealizing the people in the public eye, giving them the idea that they must look a certain way, which is not a healthy way. These little girls grow up to become teenagers and then discover adulthood. The image that they grew up visualizing only worsens when they hit puberty and their bodies go through drastic changes, which makes them realize their bodies do not look like the people they grew up bearing in mind. When females realize they will not be able to accomplish the same body that the famous acquire, they become very self-conscious and some even develop eating disorders. The media’s role in self-images has greatly affected the way people perceive themselves in today’s society.
The advertising involved targets young teenage women and features models that portray desirable items, and the “norm” is for these women to be slender and beautiful (Vonderen & Kinnally, 2012). Research has been done to prove that the media’s pressure on being thin causes women to be depressive and have negative feelings about themselves. Women’s views are skewed and perceived incorrectly of what the typical female body should be (Haas, Pawlow, Pettibone & Segrist, 2012). Body image for women has always been stressed for them to look a certain way and to try to obtain “physical perfection.” But due to the pressure on women to be this certain way, it is common for the mass media to be destructive to the young, impressionable girl.
Supporting research done by Spurr, Berry, and Walker (2013) views how the average adolescent views body image with the influence of the media. Eating disorders have become apparent to adolescents who think they know what a healthy body consists of. Spurr, Berry, and Walker (2013) conducted a focus group with adolescents’ aged 16-19 and scored their answers on what they thought a healthy body was. The results had shown the risks of large consumptions of mass media showing low self-esteem scores due to the participant’s unrealistic ideals on a healthy body accumulated from the
Evidence shows that there has been a raise in dieting, anorexia, and bulimia within the last three decades, which is speculated to be caused by the great increase of media exposure. A recent study conducted by the American Association for Health Education found that teenage girls believe that their physical appearance is extremely important, as shown by the AMA’s survey. The “ideal” body image for teenage girls comes from advertisements, which sell images of thin, beautiful women along with the message telling girls to lose