Jill Stark’s opinion article, appearing in The Age 19th Jan 2008, outlines in a concerned and direct fashion, that most stereotypes seen in glossy magazines have a negative and dangerous impact. She contends that there is a growing trend for woman to produce magazines, promoting healthy and realistic figures, empowering the female. The headline ‘Sick of impossible princesses, real girls fight back’, indicates to readers how fed up the author is with these unrealistic stereotypes. Stark informs the reader that the traditional content of glossy magazines, with “extreme dieting tips and air-brushed waifs in micro bikinis”, is being questioned by ‘real girls’ who are “fed up with images of emaciated models and a celebrity culture pushing them to be thin, sexy and silent.”. Confronted with these images, the reader is encouraged to sympathise with the author’s contention.
From an early age we have been shown with images and messages that reinforce the idea that to be happy and successful we must be thin. Even if someone reads magazines, newspaper, watch television it will say that being fat is very bad. The most frightening part is that this destructive message is reaching kids. Many of them feel bad that they don’t look like that actor or actresses. There is always a low self-image body against women by media.
Teenagers feel guilty about their bodies due to the media, and how they see themselves. In a short poem, Lang Day, the author, describes how she saw herself, “Flat-chested, ribs protruding, I always felt fat: bottom heavy. Oh, those massive, rippling thighs spreading whitely as bread dough on the car seat! At twelve I thought i'd die if my waist exceeded 21 inches”(9). This young girl had suffered from anorexia for years all because of how the media portrays “beautiful women.”.
Bad conformity can be found everywhere, especially in the media. TV shows and Advertisements depict people being perfect and beautiful looking when it’s mostly airbrushing that makes them look that way. The Youth then begin to think that’s what people should look like and they want to look like that. Knowing that they can’t look like the models in the Advertisement, the youth sometimes become depressed. The belief that Physical beauty is more important than intelligence is a very common habit throughout the world, especially in schools and as a result, people may often conform to accept values of appearances rather than focusing on the values of a persons gifts and talents.
Teens may be self-conscious of their delayed puberty a complication of Crohn’s disease. Additionally, a colostomy if required alters the teen’s identity because their appearance and body image becomes different from that of their peers. The overwhelming sensation of embarrassment that colostomy brings may be more difficult to deal with that the pain of the disease itself. Adolescents are conscious that they cannot just go swimming or participate in something as innocent as a sport where one team is skins and one is shirts, for the fear they will be on the skins team Crohn’s: Patient Education Plan 4 (Mackner, Sisson, & Crandell, 2005). The humiliation can be overwhelming
The article that I found to relate to sexism at its finest is about Miss America, Carrie Prejean and her new breast. Not only did she receive free breast implants, but they were organized and paid for by the pageant, weeks before the Miss USA competition. If this doesn’t create an image of what women should look like I don’t know what does. So her boobs weren’t big enough so in order to have her fit in she received implants? This is disappointing to me.
Anorexia: a sociocultural matter. Anorexia is a very serious eating disorder that develops when someone decides to stop eating. Many people have differing opinions on why and how this problem has developed. Some feel as though society and the media has played the impact for this. The teenage population all the way up to young women today ages 13-22 have been constantly brainwashed with the pressures that thin is beautiful.
However, factors other than attaining beauty play a part in this; sometimes changing your appearance is necessary. In Yasmine Farha’s article “Body Modification- A Positive Way to a Better You,” she discusses the positive impacts of body modifications. These include all kinds of reconstructive surgeries, such as scars or disfigurements from accidents or birth defects. She states that “plastic surgery will not only boost your self-esteem, but create a better body image for you that will help you cope with a
We also used the medias covers, which speak by themselves. Results, limitations According to some experts, it appears that teenage girls relate to icons such as models to build their style and personal life. The young generation’s obsession of being ultra thin results in the constant exposure to size-zero and the idea that it is the only synonym of beauty. Once this status is put into their mind, these girls have a potentially high risk of eating disorders. Recommendations The situation about eating disorders has become critical and it is primordial that the WHO establishes new rules and laws to the fashion industry.
Consistently, women are diminished by advertisers to pretty body parts used to sell products, a practice that perpetuates the glorification of this unreasonable ideal of beauty. Women’s bodies have not only become a huge money-maker for advertisers, businesses have picked up on women’s insecurities about their bodies and have capilatized on these insecurities. On one hand, advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present young anorexic models as the paradigm of ideal beauty; on the other hand, the media floods the airwaves and magazine pages with ads for junk food. In 1996, the diet industry (as in diet foods, diet programs, diet drugs) took in over $40 billion dollars, and that number is still climbing (Facts and Figures 1). Young women seem to be especially affected by our culture’s obsession with weight and beauty.