Psychological Effect On Adolescent Girls Body Image

Ideal beauty exists in every part of the world, however hard one may try, one cannot run away from the concepts of a perfect body. Ideal body image is created by celebrity beauty campaigns, cosmetic surgery endorsements, and the exploitation of beauty on television shows, advertisements, and other media platforms. Companies participate in celebrity beauty campaigns by featuring well-known celebrities who are considered to be at the essence of beauty, and then sell their products to consumers by using the celebrities’ looks. For example the Viva Glam beauty Campaign, “Wham! Bam! VIVA GLAM! Superstar Miley Cyrus is ready to make noise as this iconic campaign’s 2015 spokesperson.” (M•A•C Cosmetics). M•A•C Cosmetics has created a whole line of

These influences can be especially negative for developing or already developed adolescent girls. Due to “unrealistic” beauty in popular reality television programs such as “Extreme Makeover” and “Dr. 90210”, children and adolescents have become dissatisfied with their own bodies. Authors Eleni-Marina Ashikali and Helga Dittmar analyze this psychological effect in their article The Effect of Cosmetic Surgery Reality TV Shows on Adolescent Girls’ Body Image, and how “body dissatisfaction can arise irrespective of the presence of the prescribed media ideal. This could be due to the fact that these types of shows first present deviations from media ideals as flaws and then offer solutions to them. This might, in turn, act as a reminder of girls’ own deviations from idealized media beauty, making them feel worse about their appearance.” (149). From exposure to these shows, adolescents are reminded about their own bodily insecurities, leading them to act upon these insecurities through unconventional means. These means can include self-starvation, and the yearning to receive cosmetic surgeries themselves. For example, a young girl is very insecure about her teeth. She begins to watch one of the reality TV shows and sees that one person has the same insecurity as her, but in this episode the patient is able to fix their teeth. How might the girl feel

Authors, Shazia Aslam and Zahida Rani, explain the rise in the popularity of facial procedures because “Increased life expectancy, financial affluence and peer pressure, fueled by written media, TV shows, radio, and celebrity endorsement, all have set facial rejuvenation in vogue.” (Newer Trends in Facial Rejuvenation, para. 1). People have undergone increased amount of facial rejuvenating surgeries due to media influences, and societal peer pressure. Undergoing cosmetic surgery in order to appear younger has become a social normality. For example, if one person sees that all of the celebrities in the media, and the people in his or her social group undergo procedures to make their faces look younger, one cannot help but want to undergo those procedures as well. This is the nature of peer pressure, and it exists in the media and outside of the media, because of the simple fact that one doesn’t want to look worse than the people around them. Also in the article Newer Trends in Facial Rejuvenation, with new technology available specifically for the enhancement of physical appearance, it is almost impossible to resist beauty procedures. Authors, Shazia Aslam and Zahida Rani, state that nowadays “the dermatologists have many options in their armamentarium to rejuvenate the aging skin. These