Today’s media portrays the average women size as fat, overweight and obese. It manipulates young girls into thinking that they need to be size double zero in order to have the perfect body and to be accepted in society. However, what the viewers do not realize is that most of the models are photo shopped and having that “perfect” body is unrealistic.
This has become a major problem, especially in the last ten years. Media has become more and more common and people have quicker access to it. This causes girls to feel ugly and fat which can lead them to having anorexia and/or bulimia. In my hometown, I knew many people that had eating disorders. My best friend had really low self-esteem and she would always compare herself to women in magazines and on television. She began to develop bulimia and the signs were obvious to me. She would wear baggy clothes, skip meals, and go to the bathroom immediately after eating. Her self-confidence pummeled. She would say comments such as, “I need to lose weight” or “I look so fat in this outfit.” In reality she was less than 120 pounds and already looked too skinny. This shows how the media controls our mind to make us think we look fat because compared to the models we are. However, the models are so skinny it is unhealthy and our appearance is much more attractive then what we assume.
Eating disorders are common in both men and women. However, the media has a bigger impact on a women’s body image than it does on men. According to Health Care Communication, fifty percent of commercials directed to girls were about physical attractiveness while no commercials aimed at boys dealt with body image. This proves that the media targets women and their advertisements are convincing girls into thinking that they have to be skinnier.
There was a study done by the National Association of Anorexia Nervous and Associated Disorders. It proved that nearly seventy percent of girls from fifth to twelfth grade are influenced by magazines as to what the perfect body image is. Also, almost fifty percent of girls in that same age group reported that they wanted to lose weight. This was shocking to me, especially because these numbers are taken from children at a young age. It is more common for a high school student to struggle with their appearance but fifth and sixth graders should not be concerned with what they look like or how much they weigh.
Eating disorders are only going to become more common in the future. Girls are being exposed to the media at younger ages now and they are easily influenced to have slim body types from a young age. We need to somehow change the way society thinks of women and teach everyone that size double zero is not attainable for most women and bigger sizes are still beautiful. In addition to this, we need to make sure that the media does not start directing there advertisements at men. If the media targets men to change their body types, it can have the same negative effect as it does on women.
I think that the media is responsible for a lot of women and young girls’ poor body image and subsequent eating disorders. We grow up surrounded by magazines, TV shows, and other adds that portray women with “perfect” faces and bodies. This article: http://www.raderprograms.com/causes-statistics/media-eating-disorders.html goes into further detail describing how well over the majority of young girls have poor body image and have dieted or are dieting. This most often occurs during the teenage years when starving your body of nutrients and minerals could leave permanent damage for years after.
I think that a confounding variable that most people leave out when discussing this issue is life at home. Our self-esteem is not developed after reading an article, it evolves over the course of our life. In my personal experience my family always raised me to be comfortable in my own skin. My mom raised me to want to be healthy and active. It was always the little things like looking at runway models and my mom sighing about how unhealthy and un-natural the women looked. On the other hand I know not everyone is as lucky. Some people don’t know what being healthy is and some people have pressure from their families to look a certain way. Although the media does have some influence, it’s how we are raised that helps interpret what the pictures mean to us.
This really is a terrifying issue, especially with the increased usage of digital altering/manipulation softwares in todays society such as Photoshop. I actually did a paper on this issue for high school, and in doing so it is rather simple to see how easy it is for one to believe everything they see, and how individuals can be persuaded into a false mindset with constant exposure to such a slim definition of beauty (aka being skinny). There’s a really interesting video on this topic, its called Dove Evolution , you should check it out!
I absolutely agree that the media has created ridiculous standards for body image. Most girls face self esteem issues and once they obtain an eating disorder, they are going to struggle with that for the rest of their lives. The only positive thing that comes out of all the attention on losing weight and being thin is the decline of obesity. There is a big difference between being a little bit bigger than the “average” size today and being obese. Those who struggle with obesity are at an extremely higher risk for many diseases and are more common to have a stroke. The health risks are very scary and those people should take HEALTHY actions toward getting shape.
Wow, the study done by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders was extremely shocking. It is very common for our society to accuse only teenagers and younger adults to deal with the emotions and thoughts that arise from an eating disorder, but I think very few would even predict the disease is already affecting fifth graders. One positive outcome of all the media’s attention on body image is the resulting awareness of how serious the disorder can be and how many people it’s actually affecting. I know some companies such as Dove are encouraging their audience to love their own body no matter what shape or size. It’s nice to know that some major companies still care more about their consumers than the money they’ll make from a certain product with a certain popular image.
I believe that the media is 100% at fault for the rise of eating disorder problems in our country. Girls grow up seeing magazines and billboards with photo-shopped women on them, and think that is what they have to look like to be considered good-looking or beautiful. I think a good experiment to prove my hypothesis is to remove Photoshop from advertisements over the next 5-10 years, and see if eating disorder rates drop. Although the experiment is most probably impossible to conduct due to factors within society, it would absolutely show whether or not there was a correlation between the data.
My most recent paper for English class is based on this topic. I wrote my paper about Beyonce’s song “Pretty Hurts” which focuses on how society has such high standards for women to look “perfect”. The media is maybe the most influential factor as to why young girls believe they should change their selves to achieve this level of perfection that models and celebrities have. But what most young girls do not understand is that there is no “perfect woman”, every single person has a different body shape and form. Perfection is therefore achievable. Beyonce tries to send this message to young women through her song.