1. Introduction
Advertisements and media images are of great importance in our day to day life. The effects of media images on body images has been an issue of significant value in numerus disciplines. In relation to the cause, researchers agreed that media are, even to some extent, responsible for body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating habits among women. Media messages tend to conceptualize beauty in a detrimental and distorted manner. Young women are usually more affected by these potentially harmful messages for they are exposed to these at very young age, therefore, impacts of those messages persist all through their lives. In reality, nobody knows for sure what real beauty really is, enabling advertisers to form the unrealistic picture
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Objectives
The main objective of this study is to examine the effects of advertisements and media portrayals of women, specifically young women, in terms of body image, self-esteem, ideally thin body type and unhealthy living style. Furthermore, it will examine how women and beauty is portrayed in the media in relation to the idealized images and what kind of negative effects media can inflict on women
1.5. Research Questions
RQ1: Do participants believe that media is responsible for showing harmful messages about body image?
RQ2: What image do participants choose showing a body type as media’s ideal body image? RQ3: What image do participants choose showing a body type as their own ideal body image?
RQ4: What are the factors that contribute to participants’ body image satisfaction?
RQ5: What are participants’ pre-test level of self-esteem on Gutenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale?
RQ6: What are participants’ pre-test level of self-esteem on Gutenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale?
1.6. Hypothesis:
H1: Participants exposed to ultra-thin models show considerably lower levels of body satisfaction than participants exposed to average-size models.
H2: Participants exposed to ultra-thin models show significantly lower levels of self-esteem than participants exposed to average size
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Significance of the study
This topic is important for the reason that it holds material for social work, as it is related to the well-being of masses affected by distorted and negative imagery in media and advertising. Also it attempts to reassure positive influences on people. Social work holds within the values like gender equality, human rights and human dignity, contributing to the significance of the topic to social work.
This study focuses on the distorted and unrealistic messages advertisements send about the expected appearance of men and women. Equality, along with human dignity and human rights, is relevant to social work. Self-image is the salient subject in advertising industry all through the world, for the reason that the pressure to look beautiful and desirable is always present there which results self-esteem issues with women. This thesis will, primarily, explore self-esteem of young women.
1.8. Limitations of study
The findings of this study can be limited by the following: 1. The data is gathered through self-report and there might be some pressure on women to answer in specific way, therefore, answering