Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Media and its influence on body image
The media's portrayal of body image
Media's portrayal of body image
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Media and its influence on body image
The moment a little girl watches Cinderella for the first time can be a life changing experience. She now knows what she wants her next Halloween costume to be, the theme of her next birthday party, and maybe even her new bedspread. However, what happens when a couple of years later, she looks into the mirror and realizes she doesn't look like Cinderella? Or Belle? Or Tiana or any of their other beautiful royal friends? Cinderella doesn’t have a scar on her cheek or a gap in her teeth or bumps on her forehead. Many people, adolescent girls in particular, struggle with body image because they are presented with the idea that they must look a certain way to be successful, important, and accepted. This idea that the perfect look will lead to the …show more content…
The powerful effects of photoshop can have negative impacts on how girls view themselves and their bodies. Many magazines, photographs, and commercials use photoshop to enhance the looks of the people being shown. This proves that the images society views as perfect are not real and therefore not attainable. In the article, “The Great Photoshop Crusade”, a concerned father says, “ These fake, impossible, and digitally altered bodies have been contributing to serious, deadly health issues like eating disorders for too long. When at least 30 million Americans are suffering from eating disorders, we can't simply ignore the problem and hope it goes away” (Cogan). Even though society is aware of the uses of photoshop and it’s unrealistic effects, there are still a lot of real people such as models and actresses in runways, fashion shows, and real life that have the beauty and perfect body that everyone wants. These models, actors, actresses, and singers are all successful which goes back to the point of with beauty comes success and acceptance. People see models and strive to have the features that models have because those models look good and people want to look good themselves. However, many models are still not happy with how they look and still have unwanted flaws. Ann Simonton, a former cover girl, turned her attention to body activism after an incident in the dressing room with other models. She explains how …show more content…
It is a condition in which people obsess over visual imperfections that exist only in their mind. As many as 5 million people in the U.S. may have BDD and it can happen to all ages, however adolescence is the most common time of onset. It is normal and common for people, especially adolescents, to care a lot about their appearance. James Rosen, professor of psychology at the University of Vermont says, “but you begin to have a problem when you attach more importance to your appearance than is realistic. If you think that if you don’t look perfect nobody could ever care about you, or that people are repulsed by you, that’s not normal.” The symptoms of BDD can range from mild to severe and the condition can also worsen over time( Nutricise.com). Chris Trondsen, host of a music show who also interviews celebrities, spent his teenage years suffering from BDD. In an article he explains how he was never satisfied with his appearance and no matter what he did it never helped and he never looked good enough. His condition became so severe that he would wait until three in the morning to go to the grocery store and he eventually quit his job. He kept a list of things he thought were wrong with him and the longer it got, the worse his depression got as well. However, now Chris says he looks back at pictures where he had no acne or blemishes but during the time all he could see were pimples and scars on his face.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
Societal constructs of bodily perfection have a massive influence on both genders and on all ages. If you look at any magazine, you will see women constantly being compared to each other, whether it is in the “who wore it better” section or in the “do’s and don’ts” part of the magazine, comparing body images and overall appearances. All parts of the media that encompasses our daily lives are especially dangerous for young and impressionable teens because they see people being torn down for trying to express themselves, and are thus taught to not only don’t look like “don’ts”, but also look like the “do’s”. This is dangerous in that women in the magazine set very high standards that teens want to emulate, no matter the cost to themselves or their health. Celebrities have the benefit of media to make them appear perfect: Photoshop and makeup artists conceal the imperfections that are often too apparent to the naked eye. Viewing celebrities as exhibiting the ideal look or as idols will, in most cases, only damage the confidence of both young teens, and adults, and warp the reality of what true “beauty” really is. It makes teens never feel truly content with themselves because they will be aiming for an ideal that is physically impossible to attain and one that doesn’t exist in the real
Rachel recalls that whenever she would see a picture of herself she would fell repulse and sick to her stomach. She said she hated her nose and the whole right side of her face. Her lips where too flat, her lips where uneven, and her neck was too long that she looked like a duck. As time went on she developed obsessive compulsive disorder and used to wash her face at least 30 times a day. Rachel wouldn’t leave her house for 7 years because she was too ashamed of what people might think of her appearance. Rachel even tried to cut off the fat from her leg with a regular kitchen
By definition, eating disorders qualify as 'any range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits’ (Mayo Clinic). Often times, the media, television, movies, and Hollywood, influence this pride of utter perfection through retouching. Photoshop can be used to completely change the appearance of a person though blurring, trimming, and color changing (Extropia.com). This allows the user to completely create a new picture and allow the photograph to look anyway they please. These false images often promote ‘skinny’ and ‘thin’. However this, standard photo editors set is often extremely unattainable. Supermodel Cindy Crawford stated “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” (ABC News), and by this she means that even being described as perfect and one of the most flawless women in the world, she wasn’t. The editing on the photos made her appear that way. These impossible averages are often times what cause those with poor self esteem to turn to eating disorders;...
According to the National Eating Disorders Association body image is how a person sees themselves. For example, a young teenager will be critical of how tall she is, how much she weighs, and how developed her body is (“What is body image...
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.
... taking a stand against Photoshop for fear of ruining the careers of actors, actresses, and models. That statement alone proves that society values physical perfection than the health and emotional well-being of people, specifically impressionable teenagers. There are girls everyday who are impacted by the media in one form or another.
From the moment we wake up in the morning media is at our finger tips. As our day goes on we cannot escape all the visual media. One image after another a person’s self-confidence is either boosted or destroyed. Through the use of Photoshop a picture can be altered to get the perfect figure, skin, and hair, but when is the line drawn, when has it gone too far. Hailey Magee takes a stand when it comes to the ethics behind Photoshop in the world of beauty, “In this “Ethical Inquiry” we explore the ethics of digitally altering photos of individuals so as to make the subjects appear “more beautiful” in alignment with cultural standards of beauty”. Shiela Reaves, Jacqueline Bush Hitchon, Sung–Yeon parks, and Gi Woong Yun agree with Hailey Magee in the discussion of photo manipulation in beauty and fashion. “This study is concerned with the moral dilemma that stems from the digital manipulation of magazine ads to render models thinner. Exposure to the “thin ideal” has been linked to such damaging psychological responses as body dissatisfaction, loss of self-esteem, and to eating disorders”. Women and men are constantly affected by exposure to models that achieve the unrealistic beauty outcome of the media. Using the theories of social comparison and cultivation/ media literacy we are able to explain why photo manipulation makes women take on the thin-ideal. In the media driven world photo manipulation has become an accepted practice since it increases sales and fulfils the “thin ideal”, but the emotional and physical damage it has on women is catastrophic.
“With BDD there are many, many people walking around in the U.S. who have it that you never know have it. For a lot of people, you don’t know what it is that you have, but you know that life is not normal,” said Dr.
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.
Fashion models don’t need to be thin, they need to be diverse and healthy at whatever weight that is. Not everyone is supposed to be thin, some women are big boned and curvy, others are naturally slim and small boned, some are tall, others are short, some are light skinned and others are darker. So many diverse looks exist in the world today and the fashion industry need to change their perception of perfect. Body image in our society is out of control. We have young men and women comparing themselves to unrealistic models and images in the media and feeling bad about the way their own bodies look because they somehow don’t measure up. (Dunham, 2011) The struggle for models to be thin has led to models becoming anorexic or bulimic, untimely deaths, and inferiority complexes. Even worse is the fact that they influence a whole generation of young women who look up to these models and think “thin” is how they are supposed to be. They influence what we buy, how we eat and what we wear. Why has this specific group captured our attention so much? Why do we seem to be so fascinated in their lives, to the point where we try to look and act just like them? The media is largely to be blamed for this, many people believe the media has forced the notion that everything supermodels do is ideal. Others believe that the society is to be blamed because we have created a fascination with their lives. There are many opinions, and I agree with both of these specific opinions. We allow ourselves to be captivated by these people's lives, and the media portrayal of their lives seem to also enthrall us. (Customessaymeister, 2013) Despite the severe risks of forcing models to become too thin, designers, fashion editors, fashion brands and agencies still ...
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...
In today 's society, people have a very skewed perception of beauty. People are exposed to so many advertisements and pictures that are photo-shopped each day that many do not even realize what they are looking at. They are seeing an image of something that is not real; something that is not even possible to obtain. Photoshop has an outrageously negative effect on men and women in society, creating an unattainable image of perfection.
Clearly, there is a necessity to curtail the cases of teenagers suffering from body image pressures immediately (Kennedy, 2010). If there are no pressures, there will be surely no obsession with their appearance and there will be certainly no more risks of young women’s health and rise in serious eating disorders.
In American culture today, society's view of beauty is controlled by Hollywood, where celebrities are constantly in the lime-light. The media watches Hollywood's every move, and is quick to ridicule “A-listers” whenever they dare to gain a few pounds or to let an uncontrollable pimple show. The media has created a grossly distorted mental image of what should be considered beautiful, and with almost every junior high and high school-age girl reading and viewing this message, the idea has been instilled in them as well. This view of beauty is causing many teenage girls to become obsessed with a highly problematic and unattainable goal of perfection.