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Social media negatively affecting girls body image
Society's view on beauty standards
Mass online medias effect on young peoples body image
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In recent years, body image emerged as the top concern among 29,000 young people aged 11-24 years. Three key factors affecting and influencing the body image of adolescent girls today include social, print and digital media, gender expectations of people in relationships and peer pressure pursued by those living around us. Social, print and digital media is utilized everywhere and has a significant influence on viewers. Girls admire the celebrities displayed in the media and are encouraged to look like them. This provokes a negative self-image to young girls because they don’t have society’s ‘ideal’ look. The idea of the ‘ideal body’ has changed dramatically overtime, during the 1900’s, having a voluptuous, curvy body was seen as beautiful yet nowadays the idea arising from our culture is women becoming thinner as the years pass. These images of the ‘ideal body’ are displayed on mass media and this is where the thought and vision of what is ‘beautiful’ comes from. ‘Normal eating’ is defined as ‘eating until you’re satisfied’, and many extreme diets have been published by celebrities...
Society is obsessed with fitness and weight loss. Ever since I was in sixth grade I have had issues with my weight and self-image. The article “Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, by Susie OrBach focuses on how our society puts this unrealistic image of what women should look like into everyone’s heads. The media and magazines urge women to conform, at any cost, into a constantly changing expectation of what is beautiful. Women are taught to look at themselves from an outside view, to be a sex image for men and fuel the diet and fashion industries. Society thinks if women do not fit within the unrealistic image something is wrong with them. The highly glorified concept of beauty marketed by the media contributes to the concern over body image that causes many women, including myself, to eating disorders and poor self-image.
In “Hunger as Ideology” by Susan Bordo, she divulges into the concept of eating habits, uncovering both past and present societal norms, and what is expected of our future generation. This ideology that there needs to be a standard in terms of body images creates a societal problem of envy, preconceived notions, and discrimination. One of the most distasteful things in our society is the training of children at a young age to live a life with a certain body image in mind. As Bordo opens up, she begins with a television advertisement displaying two French girls “they are exquisite little girls, flawless and innocent and the scene emphasize both their youth and the nature sense of style often associated with French women,” (Schor, Holt, 2000, p.99). as one of the girls take notice of the others mother the conversation ensues ““Your mother is so slim, so beautiful! Does she eat?” the daughter, giggling replies: “silly, just not so much.” “Are you jealous?” “Not if I know her secrets.”” (Schor, Holt, 2000, p.99). This advertisement instills false images to children’s especially young girls, who must watch their weight in order to lead a life of success, in order to be a trophy wife in some retro sense. Through these advertisements promoting the use of diet pills, women watching their weight, the feeling of looking like the model, are not only selling a product but installing a set of behavior, one that grows and becomes planted in the consciousness of every child’s
As the modern world has changed, the idea of what is beautiful has changed as well. Since the middle of the last century, female adolescents have developed an obsession with their weight and how their body should look according to what is depicted in the media. As a result, this obsession has turned dangerous. Stress is placed on thinness to the point where looking normal is being underweight. Such a body image has become perfection. This is not only seen on television, in live action movies, and in animation, but in real life as well. For example, in the animated film, “Shrek”, Princess Fiona is an attractive slender woman during the day. However, at night she becomes an overweight, hideous ogre (Kovar, 2009). This indicates to young impressionable females that thin means beautiful and being overweight means not being attractive. Due to such images, an increase in body dissatisfaction and the development of eating disorders have put the health and lives of some young female teenagers in jeopardy (Van Vonderen, & Kinnally, 2012).
If one does not fit this ideal, then they are considered unappealing. Unfortunately, there is nothing one can do to truly change their body image other than think happier thoughts, obtain plastic surgery, or go to the gym to make themselves feel and potentially look better. Popular media is making it extremely difficult for one to maintain a positive body image. They have created the perfect human image that is almost unattainable to reach. The idea of a teenager’s body image is being destroyed by the standards of magazines, television shows, and society as a whole, making it to where it will never recover again. To better understand the effect popular media has on one’s body image, viewing psychology, medicine and health sciences, and cultural and ethnic studies will give a better understanding on the
Picture the world controlled by the media. Could you imagine how ugly, scarce, and hateful it would be. What would you do if a magazine or a television show told you that your body weight had to be twenty pounds lighter to be all most perfect? Would you actually consider the fact or let ignore it? Teens, mainly girls, will be sucked into these magazines. (National Eating Disorders Info Centre 15) These could be magazines like Seventeen and Cosmo Girl. In addition with many others of course. All though, the media is a bad example at times it is not precisely the main issue for negative body image. (National Eating Disorders Association 1) All though, these constant screaming messages the media produces can progress to something more serious. (National Eating Disorders Association 1) More serious as in an eating disorder.
Mass media has evolved over the years and is heard to have many effects on body image. Does mass media have an effect on body image? To answer this question, I have explored academic articles for different social science disciplines. This particular discipline is Psychology. The discipline of psychology will show how body images affect people and what causes them to be affected. The articles being reviewed are Barlett, Christopher P., Christopher L. Vowels and Donald A. Saucier. “Meta-Analyses of the Effects of Media Images on Men’s Body Image Concerns.” Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology. 27.3 (2008) : 279-310., Hayes, Sharon and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn. “Am I too fat to be a princess? Examining the effects of popular children’s media on
The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ...
"Introduction to Body Image: Teen Decisions." Body Image. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. Teen Decisions. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 20 May 2014.
It has been said time and time again that media heavily influences the desassinate body image, may women and girls encounter. Previous studies have shown how over exposure to the hyper-sexualized ads and images in the media lead to a distortion of body image in women and girls. However, there is yet another factor that influences the decline of body image just as much. Peer competition has been shown to contribute to this decline as well. Peer competition is a rivalry for supremacy amongst those of the same age group or social group.
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...
Research in psychology today seems to be drawn towards particular fields of interest especially when it comes to understanding human behavior. One of the most common research topics for social psychology is body image and the perceptions that are related to age groups, genders, and ethnicities. Young people today are pressured by society to make physical appearance a dominant factor in their everyday lives, and the pressure is found not only through media influence but friends and family as well (Pavica, 2010). These pressures can affect many different aspects of a person’s life and significantly influence their actions. The aspects affected by body image can include popularity among peers, social comfort, and the attitudes an individual comes to commit to behavior (Lewis & Rosenblum, 1999).
The media’s way of portraying a woman can be skewed and unrealistic from what reality is. Teenage girls then have a desire for this look or style. In this essay, the three ways I will describe as to why the media can negatively affect a teenage girls body image is by showing unrealistic bodies and women, women whose bodies are desirable by a mass number of people, and lastly not allowing all body types to be equally shown as “attractive.” The pattern is similar for the portrayal of women on television, magazines, and other parts of the media. The way media represents women is for them to be thin-like models and other women on television to be the high standard of “attractiveness” to others.
However, it is evident that the media usually presents and sexualizes women who are “young, fit and beautiful” hence probably creating self esteem issues more than confidence especially in younger women who are religious towards the media’s expectations. This stereotype of being a desired body shape only forces women to meet unattainable perfect physical standards (Gill 2015). The media bombards the youth with gender representations and the types of bodies that are deemed to be attractive. Many teenagers all around the world are desperate to lose weight to be “beautiful”.
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.
Body image is the mental image of one 's own body. Body image is very important because the majority of people think about their appearance and how they look all day long. Many people today have a very poor body image. The causes of poor body image include: body size, bullying, media, low self-esteem, depression, and even gender. Body image also has some very unhealthy effects on men and women. Body image in our world today is at an all-time low, but there are many ways to help improve it. The most important ways are to focus on the good and positive talents he or she has and to not compare his or her body to another individual’s body.