Media's Impact on Female Teenagers

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The Media’s Impact on Female Teenagers Media is everywhere! Whether it's on the internet, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a magazine or newspaper, media is the most popular way to communicate and it cannot be avoided. The term body image refers to an individual's perception of their physical appearance to others. Female teenagers are bombarded with images of female bodies every day. In this term paper adolescence is defined as the developmental stage that begins at puberty. Studying the effects that media has on teenagers is significant to sociology, the study of human social behaviour, organization, institutions, and development of human society. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sociology) Primary research was collected from databases, web and movie sources along with first hand survey results. Magazines are one of the biggest sources of media today. Magazines such as Us weekly, People, InTouch and Cosmo Girl are forced to be looked at in grocery stores, drug stores and convenient stores. These are all popular stores that any average person visits regularly. On almost every page or so, one feels bombarded with images of very thin, beautiful models wearing the latest and trendiest clothes, making almost anyone’s self-esteem very low. However, when these images are presented to young, vulnerable females the results can be harmful. When young girls see these models, they don’t see an airbrushed, and made up model with hours of work done to look the way they do but they see something they should aspire to be. As a result, they spend all of their time trying to lose weight and achieve society’s idea of a perfect body that it might end up leading to an eating disorder. In my survey, it is clearly shown that about ninety-five percent of teenagers want to lose weight and are fairly uncomfortable with their bodies in swimwear. It also shows that
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