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Beauty standards and how they affect
Psychological effects of body image
Psychological effects of body image
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Baracaia, Alexa. “Teen girls just want to be skinny” Daily Mail Web. 18 October 2014.
Clinical psychologist claims that the effective way to help their children is to support them and accept them,caring their health and do not focus on their weight. …show more content…
Because of the health risk and appearance, women are dieting to lose weight.He then states that once people overdo it,the risk of dying is higher than being overweight.Moreover, he provides scientific proof that people need to balance diets and develop well on variety of diets.
Mary Ray Worley does an excellent job of using her personal experiences as “proof” of the points she makes. When she attacks the idea of dieting she states, “Many fat people have made numerous efforts and spent thousands of dollars throughout their lives to lose weight and each time regained the lost pounds plus a few more” (Worley 165). She makes this point and backs it up in paragraph 11 with her personal experience with dieting and how she gave up on it. She states, “After years and years of dieting it slowly dawned on me that my body rebelled when I tried to restrict my food intake. All those years I figured that it was me who was failing, and then I began to realize that it was the method that was failing” (Worley 165). To certain audiences this article is effective due to this kind of approach. It is especially effective to people who can relate to Worley. Those who can relate to her personal life are more likely to believe what they
“…So many people want to know about diets because so many people are going to try them, but they don’t work … some weight will be lost temporarily.” Harvey Diamond, author, was speaking. “But let me ask you something – do you want to be healthy temporarily? No. But you want to lose weight temporarily. They’re – They have failures built right into them.”
Geissler continually argues that one should make their own choices and others should worry about themselves (Geissler). She also makes the point that dieting is without positive results, supported by her quote from Allison which states, “suffering does not enable; it destroys” (Geissler). While in extreme cases dieting can be dangerous due to the risk of starvation that extremists may put themselves at, healthy eating of smaller portion sizes a proven way to care for our bodies. Although dieting is not guaranteed to give remarkable results, it is the stepping stone for many to climb out of obesity. The viewpoint used by the author in her argument tends to constantly turn a blind eye to normal circumstances, and it instead looks for the negatives that support her.
However, Kilbourne’s statement surprised me when she claimed, “dieting doesn’t work.” Although Kilbourne’s intention with this statement was to encourage young women to accept their bodies, it creates leeway for laziness and obesity. Advertisements at times can be used as inspiration or motivation for those who try to sculpt their own body through fitness and healthy dieting. Dieting in today’s society is often associated with depriving oneself from the food they love. However, dieting is simply eating food in moderation and not splurging excessively. Furthermore, advertisements displaying women who are overly skinny from an eating disorder such as Anorexia, is not helping the current and future generations of women. In fact, companies should advertise women that have dedicated their lives to a healthy diet along with a vigorous routine of fitness and have achieved a healthy and achievable body.
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).
Every teenage girl goes through a time in her life when she just does not feel good enough. That time when the perception of what a girl should look like is just not realistic. Body image is a big part of a girl's life, no matter if it is a positive or negative one. It helps decides whether or not she will grow up to be confident and strong or scared and nervous. Having a good perception of yourself is important to having a positive body image. However all around us society is shoving “the perfect body” in our face and shaming those of us who don’t fit the cookie cutter image they’ve created. From lingerie store Victoria's Secret, to popular teen magazine Seventeen, all of the women that we up to seem to have that perfect body. How are we letting something like pretty underwear, promote a perfect body for teenage girls? Dove steps in eventually to explain that nobody on this Earth is perfect.
Abraham and Mira warnes in 1988 that health educators and health professionals should weigh up carefully the benefits of weight loss against the risks of inducing psychological disturbances such as eating disorders and adverse physiological side effects such as dieting and severe weight loss…(37)(ajn).
The problem with society today is, teens are judged everyday on their weight; they are either “too fat” or “too skinny”. Every body type is different, some people may not be able to gain or lose weight; Judging someone based on their weight is a huge problem in society today; when someone comments on ones weight it causes someone to do damage to their body, such as mental and physical health problems. Judging someone based on their weight is a huge problem, when someone comments on ones weight it is most common to make them feel less of a person; it could lead to eating disorders or harming oneself.
Second, the author only talks about the positive aspect of the fat, she wrote that:” being overweight can decrease a premenopausal woman’s risk of developing breast cancer and lowers the mortality risk for heart disease patients.” It will leads people feel that being overweight has no negative influence on our health, people will not take any risk to be overweight, which is totally wrong. The rate to be overweight is increasing in recent years, and fat’s negative influence on people’s health is much more than its positive influence. For instance, fat will increase the rate to get coronary heart disease even heart failure because, our heart can’t pump enough blood to meet our body’s need, and high blood pressure is a big issue, our chance of
By allowing younger girls and teens to be portrayed as grown woman in advertisements, our teens are losing their young innocence. With society’s increasing tolerance, this epidemic will continue to exploit our young daughters, sisters and friends. Young teens feel an enormous amount of pressure to obtain the ‘ideal’ perfect body. Trying to emulate the advertisements seen in the media and magazines. As a result, more girls and woman are developing eating disorders.
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...
The advertising involved targets young teenage women and features models that portray desirable items, and the “norm” is for these women to be slender and beautiful (Vonderen & Kinnally, 2012). Research has been done to prove that the media’s pressure on being thin causes women to be depressive and have negative feelings about themselves. Women’s views are skewed and perceived incorrectly of what the typical female body should be (Haas, Pawlow, Pettibone & Segrist, 2012). Body image for women has always been stressed for them to look a certain way and to try to obtain “physical perfection.” But due to the pressure on women to be this certain way, it is common for the mass media to be destructive to the young, impressionable girl.
In the United States over seventy percent of adults are considered to be overweight. Maintain a healthy weight. "Determine whether you are overweight by checking your body mass index. If you are overweight, it can lead to a higher risk of chronic disease such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and certain cancers."(How) Although the price of a burger is going down the prices of salads goes up. The fast food industry grows daily so while more jobs are being provided more and more people die from a heart attack. "Often a result of unhealthy eating habits and increased weight gain. Dietary habits established in childhood often carry into adulthood" (The importance) As a culture we know that cheating is wrong so why do we cheat our diets or our work outs. We often make new year resolutions but often give up shortly a couple days later, why? To achieve a healthy lifestyle all you have to do is look at the big picture, plan ahead, maintain a healthy diet, and exercise.
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.