Sexual Objectification

A disturbing phenomenon has begun in today’s culture. Media expects women to look like girls and girls to look like women. This is caused by the media’s constant sexual objectification of women and young girls. They are portrayed as objects of desire with no discernable personality for men. The article, "Understanding Sexual Objectification: A Comprehensive Approach Toward Media Exposure and Girls ' Internalization of Beauty Ideals, Self-Objectification, And Body Surveillance," provides a diagram of the cycle of objectifying media and the reaction by female consumers. Sexually objectifying media is broadcast and leads to body surveillance, self-objectification, and the internalization of body ideals designed by fashion media. When people internalize ideas of how an individual’s body should look like according to the media, it becomes ingrained in them to the point that they might never be satisfied with their own body image. This leads to body dissatisfaction and further emphasis on developing unsafe habits of becoming a replica of the thinner, and photoshopped, models in the fashion and beauty magazines (Vandenbosch, 873).

The young girls who have these disorder could possibly develop negative attitudes towards food. This causes a dysfunctional and abnormal thought process when it comes to eating that can severely affect an individual for years. The psychological damage that eating disorders cause is harmful and lasting. Eating disorders usually start at an early age; adolescence and early adulthood, when girls are old enough to understand and internalize the societal pressures of women’s bodies (Thomsen, 3). Another aspect of the psychological damages of eating disorder is how they see their own body. Younger girls, high school age girls, who were exposed to thin models in fashion magazines are more likely to report instances of body dissatisfaction and lower self-esteem (Thomsen,