Adolescent Body Image

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Media is influential on the development of adolescent females. Media portrays the female image and adolescent females adhere to this image. The different medial views adolescent girls adhere to are magazines, television, and the Internet. Each form of media has adolescent girls questioning their body images. According to Slater and Tiggemann (2015), “media’s constant focus on female bodies and body parts seamlessly aligns viewers with an implicit sexualizing gaze” (p.377). These images can cause adolescent girls to view their image as bad and do things in order to achieve the “perfect body”. The media has led adolescent girls to be concerned with their weight and body shape, which has led many to dieting and abusing their body to be the perfect …show more content…

141).” Also, “body dissatisfaction is considered a risk factor for subsequent lower self-esteem, decreased psychological well-being, increased eating disorder symptomatology, dieting behaviors, obesity, and depression (Ricciardelli and Mccabe, 2001a; Smolak, 2004; Smolak and Levine, 2001) (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006, p.141. Although, media repeatedly presents images of an unrealistically thin ideal; they also provide information on ways to accomplish this ideal …show more content…

With the onset of puberty, adolescent females see these images portrayed by the media and see this as a means of being accepted, feeling attractive, and being liked by peers. Those adolescent females then go to the extremes to reach their destination of being attractive, accepted, and liked by creating a body image seen in the media. Adolescent females may choose to wear designer clothes, make-up, wear their hair a certain way that has been seen in the medial ads.
Additional research by Huon and Lim (2000) “found that emergence of dieting coincides with the beginning of puberty. With the onset of puberty, females experience weight gain and fat deposition that contribute to a rounded shape. The normal alterations in body shape frequently become the focus of dissatisfaction, and many young adolescent females try to counteract that change by dieting or by using other weight control methods” (Moss, 2003, p.3). Adolescent females need to be taught that no matter your appearance people will be attractive to you, you will be accepted, and liked by others. Gaining weight is a normal bodily process in adolescence. At some point you will lose the rounded shape, most call baby fat, and be ideal. If you are so unhappy with your weight make sure you eat right and exercise according to your BMI (body mass index), but do not take it to the