The Media and Body Image One’s body is unique and everyone has their opinion about the ideal, healthy perfect body. In today’s society there has been a rise on obsessing over the thin ideal body which many people think that media plays a role to it. “The Role in the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women” by Shelly Grabe, Janet Shibley Hyde, and L. Monique Ward was published in 2008 explains how the increase of thin-ideal body has greatly affected women's view on their body. While Amanda Vogel’s article Body Image: The Impact of Social Media published in 2015 explains the positive side of the issue. Grabe, Hyde, and Ward provide information and laboratory experimentations on over the past years media has portrayed thinner women which cause …show more content…
Monique Ward start out stating that nearly half of girls and young women dissatisfied with their bodies and be the causes of unhealthy habits such as skipping meals, extreme dieting, and bingeing. They mention that there many factors that contribute to this such as parental message, peer related teasing, and the increase of thin ideal body dominating the media. The authors provide outside sources and different research studies in order to help support their claim. They later discuss that if media does really encourage the thin ideal body or if there are more contributing factors like women who are already have low self esteem are drawn more to the thin ideal body. They provide two types of research, experimental research and correlational research. The experimental research study where women are shown a series of magazine or television advertisements that contain either images of the thin-ideal body (experimental condition) or images that are considered neutral (control condition). Following the experimental manipulation, respondents are asked to complete assessments of body image-related constructs (Grabe, Hyde, and Ward 461). This leads that there are two outcomes, one is that it does leads to body dissatisfaction and there are certain factors make some women more vulnerable than others to the effects of media exposure. The second study measures media …show more content…
The first article contains studies from credible sources to make their point clear and understandable. It’s also well organized and has subtopics about what the next paragraph is about. Some of the weaknesses is that it is very long and not a very interesting article. Also some of the information in the first article is a few years old and can be out of date. While the second article tends to have a more opinion than fact approach and it provides fitness professionals about what they think about social media and body image which doesn't really have any credibility and only has one credible study that can provide a more credible source. One of the strengths is that it is interesting to read and the information is recent while the first article is a bit out of
It is a serious numbers that are increasing daily, and its constantly been fuel by the press. As research shows, it is an issue that the standard of beauty for women is so unreasonable. Promoting a thin standard that is not achievable or realistic could be detrimental to adolescents s health. It is important to realize that parents should limit their children’s exposure to the media, by encouraging participation in activities that promote self- esteem building. This could help children form a better
All three of these articles share one common topic: body dissatisfaction leading to an eating disorder promoted by some type of media. Some degree of body dissatisfaction among women and young girls is consider a norm today. According to one girl asked to describe the “ideal girl” she described it as “5 ft. 7 in., 100 lb. , size 5, with long blond hair and blue eyes” ( Groesz, Levine, and Murnen 1). This ideal is not attainable for all young girls and women and I can only imagine how horrible this would make them feel, always seeing images of ideal beauty and not being able to meet it can cause them to go to extremes to get the body they want.
One of the biggest issues with the media is “thin-ideal media.” Many American celebrities of the twenty first century are incredibly skinny. However, this is only because so many of them lose weight due to unforgiving diets and overbearing workouts. Thin-ideal media causes the majority of issues, “‘thin-ideal media’ refers to media images, shows and films that contain very thin female leads… Thin-ideal media highlights the idea that thinness is a good and desirable thing to be, even if it is to a level that is potentially damaging to a persons health” (Farrar). Females are portrayed as feminine, skinny, and ladylike on screen.
In today’s modern culture, almost all forms of popular media play a significant role in bombarding young people, particularly young females, with what happens to be society’s idea of the “ideal body”. This ideal is displayed all throughout different media platforms such as magazine adds, television and social media – the idea of feminine beauty being strictly a flawless thin model. The images the media displays send a distinct message that in order to be beautiful you must look a certain way. This ideal creates and puts pressure on the young female population viewing these images to attempt and be obsessed with obtaining this “ideal body”. In the process of doing so this unrealistic image causes body dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence
It is clear that society is responsible for cultivating a community in which beauty and thinness are interdependent. According to Lintott, “the average woman is preoccupied, if not obsessed, with thinness” (66). She argues that this comes directly from exposure to modern media, which “bombards us with images of impossibly thin models and exceedingly skinny actresses, among whom the rates of eating disorders are extremely high” (qtd. in Lintott 67).
Negative Effects Resulting from the Presentation of Women in the Media The subject of women’s bodies has been a topic of mass discussion for many years. With the advancement of technology, the distortion and manipulation of images has come to reach an all time high. For many clothing companies, especially retailers of intimates such as Victoria’s Secret, the emphasis of advertising focuses on the beauty and body of the depicted woman. There are various expectations of what a woman should look like and the debate over “the perfect body” has been an issue of controversy for many years.
This constant fixation on physical perfection has created unreasonable beauty standards for women, ones we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Such standards permeate all forms of popular media, particularly fashion magazines and advertisements. Women are bombarded with the notion that we must be thin in order to be desirable. These images project an
Over the years celebrities, models, and actress are becoming increasingly thinner. The media creates an illusion of the woman's body that is so unattainable leaving women despondent about their body image causing them to be desperate and willing to try anything to appear as media portrays them. The experiment that was conducted was to examine the correlation between women’s feelings of their body image after seeing various images of thin women through media. There was two subject groups. One group looked multiple pictures of beautiful thin models.
Social media plays a big role in how society portrays body image. “Alternatively, an increased number of Facebook friends may provide girls with greater opportunity to rapidly make multiple social comparisons, itself shown to be associated with body image concern”(Tiggemann and Slater 82). According to the survey that was taken by Marika Tiggemann and Amy Slater, the more Facebook friends the girls had, the more likely it was that they had body image concerns. They were able to compare themselves to the other girls that they were friends with, which led to them to have an increase in their drive for thinness. “Further, these comparisons are likely to be with somewhat idealised images, in that girls mostly post photographs in which they look good or are doing something ‘cool’ (and can be digitally altered)”(Tiggemann and Slater 82).
"The Impact Of Advertisements Featuring Ultra-Thin Or Average-Size Models On Women With A History Of Eating Disorders." Journal Of Community & Applied Social Psychology 15.5 (2005): 406-413. Academic Search Premier. Web.
From an early age, we are exposed to the western culture of the “thin-ideal” and that looks matter (Shapiro 9). Images on modern television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful. Often, television portrays the thin women as successful and powerful whereas the overweight characters are portrayed as “lazy” and the one with no friends (“The Media”). Furthermore, most images we see on the media are heavily edited and airbrushed
The media has developed significantly over the years, especially in the field of advertising. Television, magazines, and music videos are some of the strongest elements influencing societies attitudes and behaviors in the United States. Eating disorders and unhealthy eating habits are on the rise, due to the distorted vision of the world and social expectations the media presents to us. With the constant exposure and availability to media outlets, the media creates an unrealistic appeal to excessive thinness. Women internalize these ubiquitous messages that being thin is the only way to be beautiful, however, women internalize these detrimental messages, and as a result, fall into unhealthy eating habits and severe eating disorders.
The main points is: Humans have feeling; Humans have thinking; Humans have social media. Nancy Clark, who wrote for American Fitness, states that “comparing yourself to your friends, and friends of friends, on social media can easily put you in a bad mood, harboring negative thoughts about your body.” It is a quite evident why people go to social media, not all, but many. Many would never admit how social media really affects them mentally and emotionally. The risk factors of social media vs body image are frequently overlooked, npt by a variety of authors writing for International Journal Of Eating Disorders, they constructed and experiment to test out the effects of social media on, specifically, young girls; “Results showed that girls who regularly shared images on social media, relative to those who did not, reported significantly higher overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and internalization of the thin
Most current media is bias. The government needs to work towards making the media more progressive, which will decline the affects of harmful media. To reduce this concern, the government can limit what consists in the media due to strict policies. Everyone needs to work together to reduce the biases involved in the media. Also, according to College Men’s Third person Perceptions about Idealized Body Image and Consequent Behavior portrays that young children “who are influences by the idealized body images portrayed in the media tend to compare their bodies to the media”
Media has made having the perfect body a must but also made that body a impossible standard to meet, Boys strive to grow facial hair and gain muscle mass while girls, want to have large breast and be tall and thin(barbie Doll). so both male and female strive to reach a body they can’t achieve and therefore are not happy with the body they have.(Cobb 2010)(Brand 2013)(Thompson 1990)