The Media and its effects on body image
In the United States, and in most western cultures the media’s effects on body image have been studied regularly. It has determined that there is a reliable correlation between negative body image and the media’s influence.1 With these studies came the term objectified body consciousness (OBC) where an individual objectifies their body to the sociocultural influence of the media to cause distorted body image, which has the possibility to lead to eating disturbances and disorders.1 Jackson et al., 2015 have reviewed large studies done in Eastern cultures to help fill to void of diversity in body image and media studies. With knowledge of how many young people (young adults 18-21 years old) that are affected by the media interventions can be written and set to prevent such mental pain.
The studies conducted over seas in china showed that both males and females had larger amounts of body dissatisfaction when they compared themselves to the standard presented within the media. The media has many influences of people of all ages, but in particular the younger generation. Images are constantly portrayed of perfection that in the real world cannot be achieved. This perfection of the human body has the potential to harm not only the self-esteem of children and young adults, but could potentially be harmful to both mental and physical health. Poor body image, and confidence have been shown many times to contribute to disorders such and anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. There is also another category of eating disorders classified under the DSM-V called binge eating disorder.
The media, which consists of news channels, newspapers, magazines, TV shows, flyers, billboards and much more. Reasonably there is no real way to eliminate all negative images from society, but there are steps that can be taken to lessen the effects. Educational campaigns can be put in place in order to show how human perfection is fake. There have been very effective movements to show this, but none have been worldwide. Since this issue of body image due to the medias influence is worldwide it is time to bring this issue worldwide. Trying the prevent issues will save much more time and money in the long run and the sooner a large campaign is started the more effects it will have.
The media and growing technology has its great advantages such as education for more people, but the negative affects are almost over shadowing all of the positive effects.2 Different beauty blogs, clothing campaigns, TV shows and more highlight models, actresses, and their perfection, which is done with an airbrush. This issue is not only in the US but has been shown to be global and small steps taken to fix these issues can lead to a large change.
Citations:
- Jackson, T., & Chen, H. (2015). Features of objectified body consciousness and sociocultural perspectives as risk factors for disordered eating among late-adolescent women and men. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 741-752.
2. Lesson 9 Commentary. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2015, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych424/001/content/10_lesson/04_page.html
Tags: Applied social psychology, media
You’re trying to make the connection on how the media can influence someone to bring bodily harm to themselves because of what they are either watching, or reading, from all of the media outlets that are available to them. Your argument seems to be more general though, and I was hoping you could have given more specifics because I would have liked to have learned a lot more from you.
Was one of your main talking points focusing around advertising? Portraying a certain image to coincide with a particular product or brand has been the main objective for advertisers since advertising was created. These advertisements come in all shapes and forms whether it would be a young basketball player wanting to drink Gatorade because he saw a Michael Jordan commercial or Ralph Lauren advertise his brand of clothing that just happens to coincide with a particular sport that is tailored to an image of a certain class of people. The same thing can be said about Mercedes or Lexus when it comes to automobiles, or on the flip side Chevy Pick-ups, and the audience to which the manufacture wants to appeal. If you’re talking about image and how beauty is exemplified, Cover Girl and Victoria Secret ads are just a couple examples of how companies attempt to focus on people who want to look and feel better about themselves. This concept is also apparent with the many infomercials that are continuously played over the airwaves that offer many, many different ways to help you get in the best shape of your life!
You mentioned a solution about launching educational campaigns to show that “human perfection is fake.” Would you be able to elaborate on some of the “effective movements” that have been shown so far?
You’re right though, and nobody is going to argue that the media doesn’t have an influence over certain thoughts or images that they’re hoping their target audience attempts to portray. This may cause people to act out, while involving themselves with certain activities that actually end up doing more harm than good in which could leave to a sustained negative effect on them both mentally and physically. But as long as people still believe in these images, and there’s still money to be made, I don’t believe that we’ll see an end to “human perfection” anytime soon. I believe that tennis great Andre Agassi summed it up in an ad years ago when he said “image is everything.”