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Body image and self esteem among adolescents
Negative impacts of media
Body image of girls in society
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In modern Britain, we live in a celebrity obsessed society powered by the media. Everywhere you see a celebrity’s face, whether it’s plastered across magazines or advertising the latest product. Many people, particularly teenagers, aspire to be like the celebrities they obsess over and it completely controls their lives. However, many famous people have a positive effect on society by being excellent role models and inspiring people to follow their dreams. So does a celebrity obsessed media have a positive or negative effect on society as a whole?
The media’s portrayal of celebrities could be seen as a major contributing factor to the body image problems that many teenagers face. Unrealistic images heavily tampered with airbrushing are viewed by millions every day, leading to self-consciousness and low self-esteem. Women in particular are faced with feeling they aren’t pretty or skinny enough and that they therefore cannot be happy. It isn’t surprising that an increasing number of people battle eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Extreme dieting and exercise does little to achieve the ideal body when it never truly exists in the first place, but young people especially are desperate to fit in, forsaking both their physical and emotional health. Rachel Johnson, an anorexia survivor, spoke about her mind-set when she was first admitted to hospital.
“My obsession at the time was Victoria Beckham. I would cut out images of her body and stick my face on the top. I would write underneath, “This is what you have to be – she’s perfect”
From 13 Rachel idolised excessively slim models and felt the media’s portrayal of them as beautiful was partly responsible for her illness. Would so many people feel unhappy about themsel...
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...on ultimately has the biggest impact on the nation. Celebrities can be great role models for young people by showcasing their determination and charitable work. On the other hand, the media pushing the idea that skinny is beautiful is alarming and although celebrities aren’t the direct cause of this, many don’t use the media to speak out against it. The worst actions of celebrities are often the ones highlighted in magazines, leading to people thinking that it’s alright to be unfaithful, for example. Likewise, the media drives obsessions without thought for the consequences. If the media has such an influence on society and knows it, shouldn’t they be more careful to provide a positive guidance instead of worrying about potential profit?
Works Cited
www.dailymail.co.uk
www.helium.com
www.theguardian.com
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.idebate.org
www.bbc.co.uk
She showed the world that models no longer were just a pretty face but also shrewd businesswomen with enterprises of their own. Twiggy paved the way for the top models of today, and will always be remembered. Her body matched Diana Vreeland's description of the perfect contemporary woman: "the straightest legs, knees like little peaches, tiny narrow supple feet, rounded arms, and beautiful wrists and throat. She was both modern and romantic. She was perfect." (Vogue).
“According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, about 70 percent of girls grades five through 12 said magazine images influence their ideals of a perfect body, a fact that’s plain to see in the online world of teenage ‘thinspiration’” (Krupnick 1). This quote explains that girls in grades five to 12 are more likely to have a lower self esteem because of the idea of a perfect body beinging spread through social media. Models enjoy sharing their work with their fans their instagram and twitter accounts, which isn’t wrong. However, sometimes the pictures they post are exposed subtly, this causes for the pictures to get under someone's skin before they notice. These models, like Kylie and Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, are idealized but billions of people and have millions of followers on social media but all they do is post pictures of them living the luxury life that everyone watches. These posts could either help influence teens to work harder or cause them to try to achieve what they want in a harmful way. Having weight and height limits will lower the self esteem of others because they put out an image that most people think they must look
The complications that accompany body image have long been an issue in society. Body image is the sense of how an individual views his or her own body as compared to others in society, or what is considered to be the ideal body image. There are many different factors that effect ones body image, but a major influence is the media. The media has long been associated with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder where an individual participates in self-starvation, and bulimia is an eating disorder where an individual will eat as much as he or she wishes and then purges the previously eaten food. These are two destructive eating disorders that are associated with a negative body image. This comes to question, does media have an influence on creating a negative body image, which may inherently lead to eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia? Anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect various age groups but is extremely common in adolescence and emerging adulthood. During this stage in an individual’s lifespan there is a lot going on with ones psychological development as well as body. How an adolescent views his or her body image be highly impacted by how the media portrays what the ideal body image is. According to Berger (2015), “as might be expected from a developmental perspective, healthy eating begins with childhood habits and family routines” (p.415). If proper eating habits are not implemented negative body image and eating disorders that are associated with media becomes further predominant in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Though obviously people are aware of what they are listening to or watching, thoughts and assumptions can drift into their minds without even realizing it. These thoughts that drift in are extremely influential. The massive impact it can have on America's perceptions leads to generalizations, assumptions, and stigmas. Media influence is not always negative, however. In most cases, it has beneficial and positive aspects.
Our society today is heavily influenced by the media and the imagery it shows. Though it may be indirect, the media provides unhealthy messages about ideal body sizes, gender attractiveness, and weight control that make women view themselves in a negative way. Magazines, television, and movies influence teenage girls on what they believe their body image should be. The images they show set the standard of what is considered physically attractive in our society. With the use of photoshop, media depicts falsified images of models and actresses to create a perfected look that is unattainable by the average woman. This creates a desire among teenage girls to look like these stars that are often shown. When teenage girls look at these images, they compare themselves to those images, and then judge themselves based on these comparisons. These judgements can potentially lead to eating disorders. In order to prevent the risk of eating disorders among teenage girls, the media should depict a typical image of people, rather than idolizing a specific standard of beauty.
The media can impact people’s lives in many ways, whether it’s fashion, movies, literature, or hobbies. One of the impacts is how women view their bodies. Movie stars and models feel pressured to catch attention and to look good in order to have a good career in their respective field. People tend to judge how someone looks based on their body composition. The result of this “judgment” is that Hollywood is getting skinny. Since models and actresses serve as role models for people, people tend to want to look like them. The result of this seemingly harmless model of behavior is in an increase in eating disorders.
Over the years the rise in body image dissatisfaction has grown as both male and female progress to adulthood. This factor can be contributed to societal standards that the media presents to the public daily. These standards continue to rise making the body image more difficult to attain. With these standards comes the push to seek the “perfect body”. This myth of true beauty commonly found in today’s society, is the price that adolescents buy into often sacrificing their health. The perfect body can often present a distorted view of one-self leading to unhealthy methods of weight reduction. The most common methods for weight reduction are the diseases Anorexia and Bulimia. The similarities and differences between Anorexia and Bulimia will be used to prove that the society’s pressure to fit a certain mold contribute to the onset of the disease.
The deception of media consumers allows for the abuse of economic infrastructures of society. An obsession with celebrities’ lives passifies ordinary people in accepting the stratification of the elite businesses and the ordinary citizens. Though pseudo-events and celebrity worship may not be exactly complementary, the similarities of both leaves the public to be utterly vulnerable unless they begin to critically think for themselves.
Hollywood is starting to become more and more harmful to society. Many people wonder why it is this way. Simple, Hollywood is a very high power in the world; that power leads to being influential. Individuals look up to celebrities as good role models, when in fact, they aren't good ones at all. They aren't themselves on the set of a movie or a TV show. They are playing a role that the producers have written up. Since the characters aren't real, America gets the wrong impression of almost everything. Children get false ideas in their heads of what the world is really like. Teens and adults get false perceptions of how much they should weigh, what size clothes they should wear, and what they should look like. All ages get the wrong idea of what they should and shouldn't do. They also think Hollywood is perfect but it isn't. The effects of Hollywood on society today are very detrimental to all ages.
...ld influence somebody undoubtedly. Mass media audiences are arguably on the whole not passive, and so the amount of influence that is exerted upon the recipient depends entirely on the individual. As most pieces of media output are “polysemic” in nature, meaning that it is capable of having different meanings and readings from person to person (O’Sullivan, Dutton, Rayner: 1998:327), the way in which, or by how much, an individual is influenced is entirely through choice.
A tall, glamorous runway model is every girl’s dream. Long beautiful legs, lean body, and beautiful shiny hair is what an average young woman views as an ideal image for a female. If you don’t resemble the images of those stunning Victoria Secret models and Fashion Week models, you suddenly become ashamed of your own body. It is a great life to have with the high pay, fame, drinking champagne on a yacht with famous celebrities and even being on the Vogue cover page. Fashion Modeling Industry has been the most influential source in our young women’s lives. Young girls and young women are seen eating as little as they can, even starving themselves at times to resemble those models. What they don’t realize is that they are contributing to the 2.7 percentage of 13- 18 year olds suffering from anorexia and bulimia. Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic said exposure to thin models is a great trigger in maintaining an eating disorder. When watching America’s Next Top Model or flipping through a Fashion magazine, these young women don’t apprehend that those models are either naturally slim or they are suffering from an eating disorder themselves, in other words, hostages in the dark hell hid behind those runway curtains. The growing number of young anorexia and bulimia patients, and the number of websites such as thinspiration, where girls put up pictures of their thin bodies clearly suggest that the fashion modeling industry do not at all bear any responsibility in providing healthy, realistic physical role models for young women.
No matter how serious the impacts of eating disorders are, the fashion industry still continues to give out the products called “doll clothes” (The Sunday Telegraph, 2009) to young women. People in our society do not want to see teenagers with “jutting bones and no breasts or hips” (The Sunday Telegraph, 2009). We really want to see girls with healthy body image. Clearly, there is a need to curtail the cases of teenagers suffering from body image pressures immediately (Kennedy, 2010).
Unquestionably the media being newspapers, internet, radio and television, influence society. They can affect, have affected and will continue to affect the progression of life in this nation and around the world, as electronic technology continues to be the chosen mode of communication for a whole generation, offering direct, often anonymous influential information.
Teenagers constantly worry about their body image. Magazines, newspapers, and television don’t exactly help to boost their confidence. The portrayal of stick thin woman and body building men forces teens to believe they need to achieve that “perfect” body and look. The biggest issue of these images being broadcasted to teens is the effects that the images have on them. Teenagers who obsess over their body image can experience stress due to trying to impress others, develop an eating disorder, and neglect, and even jeopardize, important aspects of their lives when they focus too much on their body image.
The media is everywhere and takes up a great deal of people’s everyday lives. People depend on the media to provide them with information that would otherwise be hard to get. The people of society also use the media to communicate with friends, family, and people from all around the world. Also, the media serves as a means for entertainment. Businesses use the media as a way to advertise their products. The media affects society in many different ways; such as, businesses use the media to promote their products, the media effects communication, and the media affects body image and behavior of people in society.