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Social Media Affecting Women's Body Image

1702 Words7 Pages

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. Social media even makes girls compare themselves to their peers, instead of just to celebrities. In turn, it makes girls feel …show more content…

When women are uncomfortable with their body, they get taken advantage of by companies trying to sell their products varying from protein shakes, “magic pills”, to surgical procedures (Lin). But all of this can be prevented with six simple themes to address. First, with family, friends, and other relationships, we can further educate each other and work together to come up with alternatives to these linked issues with body image. Secondly, we can put an end to teasing and bullying. No one has the right to or entitlement to emotionally, mentally, or physically harm another person for the way they look. Thirdly, we can discuss the healthy and suitable way to achieve your own personal appearance goals. Fourth, we can change up the media and celebrity culture. By allowing a wider variety of figures into this industry it will allow women around the world to feel comfortable in their own skin. Fifth, we can eliminate the comparison and competition we have with one another to “look the best” and “be the sexier women.” Lastly, and this goes to all women, we must learn to have respect in ourselves and look after ourselves and one another to be beautiful individuals in our own, unique way (Ramsey). “Society indirectly limits many individuals freedom to enjoy life by promoting physical expectations they fail to meet” (Solomon, et al). But we can terminate this expectation, so that no woman would ever have to second guess her body

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This constant fixation on physical perfection has created unreasonable beauty standards for women, ones we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Such standards permeate all forms of popular media, particularly fashion magazines and advertisements. Women are bombarded with the notion that we must be thin in order to be desirable. These images project an

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The ideal of a women magazine model are full of photos with women who are typically white and very thin. Many women will agree that they may feel pressured to dress or look a certain way because of the way the models look. The media can make women feel insecure about themselves and have low self-esteem. The messages in the media says that women will always need to make an adjustment to fit the “ideal” look. Since, the media portrays such images and make women feel like beauty is important women need to make sure they love themselves.

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These expectations can cause insecurities in adults, teens, and even children who normally have little to no insecurities. Young children should not have to worry about the way they look or what they are wearing. Therefore, society needs to address the problem of creating negative body images. It can start by recognizing that unreal and unnatural body image can cause eating disorders and mental disorders. “50% of teenage girls and 30% of

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According to dosomething.org about 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies in the world today. In the world today many people struggle with the way their body looks, and bullies that often degrade people for the way they look. Being bullied, or having a negative body image can effect a persons life in many ways. Many people have a negative body image, even girls that appear to be "pretty and popular". Physical effects of bullying, and a negative body image could include anorexia, cutting, or purging.

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Even the most attractive, I’m willing to bet, had suffered over her body’s failure to fit the impossible American ideal” (paragraph 6). Women for years have been portrayed negatively through media, either by having an unrealistic body figure or facial features. Many people do not realize the power of photo shop and how it can drastically change one’s appearance to look a certain way. Most girls do not see that the models don’t actually look the way they do in the pictures. Although an individual may be confident about who they are, there is a grantee that they still have insecurities about them selves and are truly frustrated with their

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Men and women nowadays are starting to lose self-confidence in themselves and their body shape, which is negatively impacting the definition of how beauty and body shape are portrayed. “...97% of all women who had participated in a recent poll by Glamour magazine were self-deprecating about their body image at least once during their lives”(Lin 102). Studies have shown that women who occupy most of their time worrying about body image tend to have an eating disorder and distress which impairs the quality of life. Body image issues have recently started to become a problem in today’s society because of social media, magazines, and television.

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What is sociological imagination? C. Wright Mills defined the sociological imagination as the capacity for individuals to understand the relationship between their individual lives and the broad social forces that influence them. In other words, the sociological imagination helps people link their own individual biographies to the broader forces of social life: "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both" (Mills 1959). In this assignment. I will use the sociological imagination to analyze a situation which had a huge impact on me, which will be body image and how media and family affect it.

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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).

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“Body dissatisfaction, negative body image, concern with body size, and shape represent attitudes of body image. ”(Dixit 1), women are so obsessed with looking good that they are missing out on enjoying

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For example, girls will style their hair to “become more attractive” (Berger 2014), or they will purchase ‘minimizer,’ ‘maximizer,’ ‘training,’ or ‘shaping’ bras, hoping that their breasts will conform to their idealized body image” (Berger 2014). This all appears to be harmless activities, yet when body image is only addressed outwardly and not psychologically, there can be an increase in poor and destructive behaviors. For instance, body image dissatisfaction can lead to poor self-esteem, which can create a cycle of increased body dissatisfaction, followed by decreasing self-esteem (Stapleton et al., 2017). Ultimately, a teenage girl can find herself in a cycle of “depression, eating disorders and obesity” (Stapleton et al., 2017). On study in 2012 revealed, “Two-thirds of U.S. high school girls are trying to lose weight, even though only one-fourth are actually overweight or obese” (Berger 2014).

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The main points is: Humans have feeling; Humans have thinking; Humans have social media. Nancy Clark, who wrote for American Fitness, states that “comparing yourself to your friends, and friends of friends, on social media can easily put you in a bad mood, harboring negative thoughts about your body.” It is a quite evident why people go to social media, not all, but many. Many would never admit how social media really affects them mentally and emotionally. The risk factors of social media vs body image are frequently overlooked, npt by a variety of authors writing for International Journal Of Eating Disorders, they constructed and experiment to test out the effects of social media on, specifically, young girls; “Results showed that girls who regularly shared images on social media, relative to those who did not, reported significantly higher overvaluation of shape and weight, body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and internalization of the thin

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The media has such an influence on women that their mental perception of themselves can become distorted. Many of them see the pictures in magazines and social media and believe that they need to look like what they see to be counted as beautiful. The problem with this is that all the pictures they are looking at are photoshopped or retouched to perfection. This makes it impossible for girls to healthily look like these ideals because only 5% of the female population in America naturally comes close to portraying these “ ideal” body types. This highly affects females ideas of themselves and can lead to them using unsafe methods of weight control behaviors.

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