Media Body Image

729 Words2 Pages

Why is the media an issue in relation to body image?
The media everyday shapes the mind of people everywhere with magazines and hard hitting headlines. This makes many question rise out of heads when they pick up a paper to read about it. One of the concepts that those publishers and article writers talk about is the concept of beauty and what it may mean to the majority of their readers. Everything most people learn these days are from the media and All those people may have a common misconception of the idea of beauty or what’s really considered beautiful.
Beauty in the dictionary means a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. People these days are very susceptible …show more content…

Statistics show us that there are “over 2.3 billion active social media users, this is a very large and widescale amount of people”. On social media the so called “perfect” body image of a female is portrayed as a skinny body with a small waist and little body fat. However, this so called perfect body does not necessarily mean that it is a healthy body. Also for men the ideal body is to be lean and and have a six pack of abs. Social media seems to advocate that the skinnier you are or the more appealing your body shape is the healthier your body is. This idea is very dangerous and can have a harmful effect in multiple ways. For instance people who have a skinnier body or shape may think that it is ok to eat or drink whatever they want and not exercise and still be healthy, which can lead to many harmful effects on the body. This also applies for people with a bigger body who think that they must have that ideal skinny look in order to be healthy. This can be harmful to them because they might overexercise or completely change their diet to achieve that “perfect …show more content…

Over 80% of Americans watch television daily. On average, these people watch over three hours per day. “American children engage in increasing amounts of media use, a trend fueled largely by the growing availability of internet access through phones and laptops. On a regular day, 8 – 18-year-olds are engaged with some form of media about 7.5 hours”. Even media focused on elementary school age children, such as animated cartoons and children’s videos, emphasize the importance of being attractive. Sexually objectified images of girls and women in advertisements are most likely to appear in men’s magazines. The second most common source of those images are the ads in teen magazines directed at

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