Medias Influence on Body Image

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There has been much research done regarding the media’s portrayal of celebrities and how it affects both men and women's view on body image. Although there has been little change within the last few years on what is now viewed as beautiful, women and men are still going to extreme lengths to achieve the “perfect” body image. The media influences men and women through their depiction on how celebrities look as well as how they make them appear. Through the use of airbrushing and other techniques, magazines and other media outlets change the appearance of a celebrity and create a more perfect look, which is then, what society is seeing. Men and women are striving to look like images that are impossible to achieve. In the present paper the role that the media has on men and women’s body image will be investigated. It is hypothesized that the media’s portrayals of celebrities affect men and women's body images as well as the lengths they take in achieving the perfect body image. The following eight literature reviews attempt to demonstrate and support this hypothesis.
In a research article by E. Mooney, H. Farley, and C. Strugnell (2009) specific questions were addressed in guiding this study. First, do celebrities and have an influence on young girls? Second, does the media also influence adolescent girls view on body image and what is beautiful? The focus of this investigation was on adolescent females through using a group session to discuss their feelings. It is hypothesized that celebrities do play a dominant role in the majority of the participant’s lives (Mooney et al., 2009, pg. 489). The reasoning behind using a group session as their procedure was that talking to their peers rather than the researcher may have different...

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... asked to partake in a questionnaire dealing with a celebrity who the person admired. 8 months later the participants were then asked to report if they had undergone plastic surgery or not. The results support he hypothesis being that intense celebrity worship can lead to cosmetic surgery in a young adult. This hypothesis is differing from the research done by Young et al. (2012) stating that worshiping a celebrity may have positive effects not just negative. The research done by Maltby and Day (2011) reports the opposite stating “higher levels of celebrity worship will be associated with elective cosmetic surgery with the individual establishing an identity using the celebrity as a physical exemplar” (pg. 488). With the dissimilarity in views it is challenging to say for sure if celebrity images have more positive effects or more negative effects on body image.

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