Christyn Rivera Mr. Baca English 11 May 2nd, 2014 Does the Media Have a Negative Effect on Teen Girls Dieting Habits The way the media targets teen girls with overly photo-shopped models, can lead girls to feel pressured to be a certain way. I am writing this essay because I feel that the media is a bad influence to teen girls. I strongly feel that the media portrays these images that are photo-shopped to teen girls to be a certain way, or a certain size. It gets to a point where teen girls become anorexic, pressured, and can lead to depression. The focus of this research was to see what caused girls to be so pressured into being really thin or why some girls were anorexic.
Size zero puts pressure on young women who are overweight. By comparing themselves to “zeros” young women only achieve low self-esteem. They are made to think they are unattractive. They go through the stress of unsafe cosmetic surgeries such as tummy tucks, to appear like fashion icons. Celebrity nutritionist Dr Adam Carey says that, “I think the current vogue is macabre.
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.
Media targeting teenage girls are emphasizing the ideal of thinness as beauty. (See How do I teach my teen media literacy? When you stop and think about the fact that the average height and weight for a model is 5'10" and 110 lbs, and the height and weight for the average woman is 5'4" and 145 lbs, it's easy to see why this creates a tremendous health risk for young girls. The problem of the media using girls who are way too thin and not healthy has not gotten better over the years, even though the issues it causes for teen girls has become well known. Recently I watched a show called America's Top Model and was horrified at the bodies of those young women.
Jennifer a MComm 110 Dec. 9, 2011 Body Image in the Media Beauty and body image in the media concentrates on how thin women should be. Researchers suggests that media advertising negatively impacts women’s body image. Advertisements on young, beautiful, skinny people make the average person feel as if they can never add up to what they see. The average people are negatively affected by advertisements and constant exposure of thin models. From hairstyles to body shape to shoes on our feet, advertising tries to persuade us that to look our best, we must have the body that society now considers ideal.
Advertising media adversely impacts women's body image, which can lead to unhealthy behavior as women and girls strive for the ultra-thin body idealized by the media. Advertising images have also set unrealistic ideals for males, and men and boys are beginning to risk their health to achieve the well-built media standard. “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies,” Susan Bordo seeks to disrupt the unrelenting invasion of unhealthy and unrealistic beauty standards that hold sway in a media driven society. By using real life examples like how Susan Sarandon looks younger today than she did twenty years ago and how little girls are “vamping up”, Bordo emphasizes how the media saturates our environment with Hollywood standards of female beauty that dictate personal identity. Bordo demonstrates that women of all ages are strongly affected by the media; as such, women may feel pressure to attain and maintain a thin youthful figure and may endure surgical and cosmetic procedures or starvation to obtain it.
We live in a more "sexualized and media-saturated culture" where a girl's appearance is the only thing that seems to matter. She argues that girls in junior high are doing drugs and having sex because they are pressured to "be beautiful and sophisticated." The protected space we call childhood has grown shorter. We live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, "girl poisoning" culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence cause girls to stifle their creative spirit, and natural impulses, which ultimately destroys their self-esteem.
The constant exposure to these beauty-oriented advertisements can have a very negative influence on adolescent girls, causing them to become self-conscious of their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance. This obsession has led many women to become so insecure with themselves that it can lead to many unhealthy practices, with society and the media being the ones to blame. There are many damaging health effects that the media can have on adolescent girls; those
America is a country of contradictions, particularly when it comes to body image. There are countless advertisements with beautiful, thin people plastered on every street corner, magazine page and TV commercial yet we have the 9th highest obesity rate in the world. The focus in recent media has been moving towards an overall healthier lifestyle, however it is no surprise that many teenage girls would rather take the easy way out and turn to crash diets and even develop eating disorders. Females, teenage girls especially, are influenced by the media and the image of “beauty” that it glorifies. In this paper we will discuss the history of beauty, America’s current definition of beauty and its impact on teenage girls and what can be done in the future to help teenage girls have a better body image.
When taking a closer look, it is evident that many modern day forms of fashion and cosmetics play on both the insecurities as well as low self-esteem of the individual, by promising the ideal bodily image. Often times however, advertising companies back their claims with bogus testimonials that frequently lead