Literature Review: The Effects Of Body Images Among Women

Literature Review: The effects of body images presented in the media, concerning women

Introduction

Body images has always been somewhat of a concern to women, especially to those that are obsessed with beauty or those that feel insecure about themselves. Since the presence of mass media, the influence of body images and appearance played an important role amongst women. This topic is about the effects of mass media portrayals of body images amongst women. The purpose of this review is not to demonize the media or single-out a specific gender; it is to inform people about how women are effected by body images in the media. This review will discuss three aspects of body images in the media; first will be the risks that it possess to women health

An article by Gemma Lopez- Guimera and colleagues on the “Influence of mass media on body image and eating disordered attitudes and behaviors in females: A review of effects and processes” states that “women feel more dissatisfied with their body when they see images of thin beauty ideals than when they see images women with average body size” (394). This is because real images of average looking women don’t make average women feel insecure about their body. A survey from 1999 found that 69% of adolescent girls’ conception of the ideal body came from the images in magazines, and 47% of them wanted to lose weight because of those images (Lopez, et al.). Those percentages are concerning because they show that most young women are getting their beauty cues from areas that are not very realistic, like magazines, instead of looking as beautiful as they want. Also according to Lopez and colleague “ideal images doesn’t produce negative effects for teens who feel accepted in their social environment” (395). However, a research study of a 100 people found 92% of the participants were dissatisfied with their body (Kazmierzak, Patryn and Niedzielski pg.