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Negative body image in the media
How the media effects body image
How the media effects body image
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Negative body image in the media
How the media effects body image
How the media effects body image
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Tina Fey’s book Bossypants caught many by storm. This amazing comedian started from the bottom and worked her way to the top. From working at a theater to becoming one of the best to appear on one of America’s favorite television shows Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey has become one of the biggest women’s advocates. This came immediately after Mrs. Fey released her book Bossypants. In this book, she discusses many lessons and past experiences with her audience.
Everyday females are exposed to how media views the female body, whether in a work place, television ads, and magazines. Women tend to judge themselves on how they look just to make sure there keeping up with what society see as an idyllic women, when women are exposed to this idea that they have to keep a perfect image just to keep up with media, it teaches women that they do not have the right look because they feel as if they don’t add up to societies expectations of what women should look like, it makes them thing there not acceptable to society. This can cause huge impacts on a women self-appearance and self-respect dramatically. Women who become obsessed about their body image can be at high risk of developing anorexia or already have
I realized that society determines what it means to be beautiful, through social media, Hollywood, and advertisement. In her essay, McIntosh discuesses her personal experiences and with it she invites the reader to partake in her apprehensions and fears of what it means to have privilege. While reading the essay, It has been brought to my attention about how I am being viewed within a different standard because of the way I look. McIntosh illustrates how she was “as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture” (31). Sometimes, I too have even been put on a pedestal, not because my have made an accomplishment, but because I stand out doing so.
According to a survey done by Jesse Fox, Ph.D., 80% of women feel bad about themselves just by looking in the mirror (Dreisbach). This has happened because of social media being changed to make girls feel like they need to have a certain body shape. Models and celebrities in magazines and media show unrealistic beauty and it contributes to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and much more (Seventeen magazine). Media has put lots of stress on women throughout history with changing body shapes. A survey done by Dove found results that 9 out of 10 women want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance.
In modern society we are surrounded by a common body image discourse that surrounds itself with the idea that physical appearance is not related with our individual identity. By projecting this rhetoric we are attempting to articulate that it’s “what’s on the inside that counts”. Though it’s true that society and the media hold too much value on our appearances, it’s vital to understand that though it is “what’s on the inside that counts” it is also naïve to believe that the outside social world has caught up to that mindset.
Social media plays a big role in how society portrays body image. “Alternatively, an increased number of Facebook friends may provide girls with greater opportunity to rapidly make multiple social comparisons, itself shown to be associated with body image concern”(Tiggemann and Slater 82). According to the survey that was taken by Marika Tiggemann and Amy Slater, the more Facebook friends the girls had, the more likely it was that they had body image concerns. They were able to compare themselves to the other girls that they were friends with, which led to them to have an increase in their drive for thinness. “Further, these comparisons are likely to be with somewhat idealised images, in that girls mostly post photographs in which they look good or are doing something ‘cool’ (and can be digitally altered)”(Tiggemann and Slater 82).
The majority of modern society’s advertising conveys an oppressive message to American women. In advertisement campaigns, women are typically only considered and marketed as beautiful if they fit a very specific mold that society has created. Women who don’t fit this mold of being feminine, thin, and pretty are shamed and encouraged to change. However, it isn’t just the “ugly” women who are shamed in the media. There is a consistent message that runs throughout advertisements that suggests that women are lesser than men, and that they exist solely for the benefit of men.
In 1998, people did not realize what they were doing to girl’s confidence and ability to feel beautiful in their own skin. They were showing the world what women could now look like through photo shop. For many years this trend continued, fortunately, in the year 2015 everything changed for the
There are no images that feature the real skin, curves, or hair of a woman that has not been significantly altered. This retoucher wants people to realize that the ‘perfect’ models they see on the Internet or on magazine are far from perfect, but the industry has gone so off base that it does not matter anymore. They just redefine look and create images with their own idea of perfection (4) With that being said it makes it clearer as to why the standards of beauty is set at a very high bar as it is not even real. How can women want to compete with a standard of beauty that only came to be because of technology?
The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).
Ask anyone and they will say that we have done a lot of damage to the Earth, but what have we done to ourselves. Today’s society is full of overweight or obese people and it’s killing us at a fast pace. Someone is considered overweight if they have a BMI (Body Mass Index) between 25 and 29 and obese if there BMI is 30 or higher (World Health Organization, n.d.). That being said at least 2.8 million people die each year because they are overweight or obese (World Health Organization, n.d.).
As you know, exercise is very important for your physical health. Exercising regularly helps keep your heart healthy, lowers your risk for type 2 diabetes as well as some cancers, and helps you get stronger muscles and bones. This is common knowledge for most people, but what if I told you that exercise has even more benefits that aren’t just physical? Today I will be informing you about the benefits of exercise on your mental health, resiliency and academic performance.
So when people look and see that they don’t look like they’re favorite super-model it can put a downer on their self-confidence. This causes many girls feeling that they aren’t good enough in society, society won’t accept them because they aren’t perfect and they start to not like their body. When for many females they can’t lose as much weight as their friend can just because of their genes and how they were born. “The lack of connection between the real and ideal perception of their own body and firm willingness to modify their own body and shape so as to standardize them to social concept of thinness…” (Dixit 1), being focused on unrealistic expectations can cause women to lose themselves and change their attitude on how they view their body, and not for the better.
Meaghan Ramsey's TED Talk "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you" is a powerful speech about low body confidence. Ramsey talks about how society's pressure to be perfect is one of the main reason for young girls' (and boys') low body confidence and how these feelings of low esteem can impact their lives and futures. I chose to analyze this speech because I have experienced low body confidence and I have felt those feelings of low self-esteem. In Meaghan Ramsey's speech "Why thinking you're ugly is bad for you", she discusses how low body confidence is undermining academic achievement, damaging health, and limiting the economic potential of today's youth who are growing up in a world of social media. Ramsey has a strong start to her speech, using a photo and a story about her niece to gain the attention of the audience.
Today everyone is obsessed with social media. People are easily influenced by almost everything they come across on the internet including appearance and body image. In todays generation it is so common to be unhappy with the way you look. All this is due to societies high standards on the way we “should” look. With social media you can do many things, including pretending to be someone you are not.