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The negative effects social media has on body image
The negative effects social media has on body image
The negative effects social media has on body image
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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
Society today is more harsh n teens than your average bullies. Teenagers in our culture are constantly forced to act, feel, or more so pretend to feel a certain way. Society enjoys dictating how our youth should behave. The pressures placed on teens to meet a certain standard often lead to harmful outcomes. Although some pressures are only experienced by one gender and not the other, some are endured by both and it is only fair to say that both boys and girls feel the pressure of fitting into society’s norms.
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 this article it is examined how the media exposure of a thin body image can affect how women see themselves. It can affect women’s body satisfaction, self esteem, and cause eating disorder symptoms. The “thin-idea” of women are usually unrealistic for most women to achieve. This makes women think they don’t have the right body for the society norm.
Anorexia survivor Erin Treloar said “my eating disorder was perpetuated by retouched magazine photos”. Beauty standards has such a giant effect on women emotionally, psychologically and physically. The pressure on women to be thin leads to unhealthy weight loss practices (Battle & Brownell, 1996), eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1998) and low self-esteem (Tiggeman & Stevens,
He relates it to stress because stress results in less achievement, so women with negative body image would stress themselves to look better and would concentrate on their academic performance. This also shows that as women who pursue their higher education are not bothered about the body image issues and are satisfied with their looks and body type and do not try to fit into the societal definition of the ideal women. They are most likely to have a very position body image (Miles, 2009) Alasker and Flammer in their book on the adolescent experiences among the American and Europeans say that a lot of changes come in an adolescent’s body during the age of poverty and the change brings along a lot of consciousness. The way a child perceives the change at that times forms their self-esteem and the way they look at their bodies. They go through the process of accepting change and building a whole new self which is very crucial in the development of the Body Image.
For instance, the photoshopped-perfect-thin bodies of women who are being sexually portrayed in cars, liquor, and clothing advertisements, giving women the wrong notion about how their bodies should look to be considered culturally attractive in today’s society. And because a self-objectifying woman see herself as a sex-object, she defines her worth based on her look and sexual appeal to men. Consequently, she will obsessively monitor herself in the mirror, and if she's not happy with what she sees, she may starve herself which could put her health at risk for self-inflicted starvation a.k.a.
The media and celebrities leave a large negative impact on how we view our physical appearance and people need to be aware of the media’s mindset when it comes to this issue. Whether it is continuous articles, photoshop, the fashion industry, or even as simple as the ideas of being perfect rubbing off on children, the ideal body image is an ever-present topic that no one wants to talk about. Is it because they do not want to offend anyone by saying something? Are they too trapped in their own web of body issues and are ashamed of the downward spiral that has claimed their life over something as superficial as body image?
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.
In today’s modern culture, almost all forms of popular media play a significant role in bombarding young people, particularly young females, with what happens to be society’s idea of the “ideal body”. This ideal is displayed all throughout different media platforms such as magazine adds, television and social media – the idea of feminine beauty being strictly a flawless thin model. The images the media displays send a distinct message that in order to be beautiful you must look a certain way. This ideal creates and puts pressure on the young female population viewing these images to attempt and be obsessed with obtaining this “ideal body”. In the process of doing so this unrealistic image causes body dissatisfaction, lack of self-confidence
In the 21st century, social media has turned into an immense influence on teenagers self-perception. Social platforms such as Instagram, have acquired colossal power over people's minds, especially on society's view on the ideal way of looking. Insta-famous bloggers negatively affect teenager’s body image due to that Adolescents are usually the most vulnerable to peer pressure, they seek for endorsement in the way they look and what they do on the grounds that they have a tendency to yearn for social acceptance. Insta-Famous bloggers have created unrealistic body images that, teens and many individuals aspire to reach due to the pressure imposed upon them daily. Most Insta-famous bloggers’ presence on social media is shaking up the definition
Body image issues are compounded by unrealistic portrayals of women in the media. 1. Nichter & Nichter (1991) found that the ideal teenage girl was described as being 5’7”, 100 pounds, and size 5 with long blonde hair and blue eyes. If this were a real person, she would represent a body mass index lower than 16, which is extremely unrealistic and bordering on anorexic. On the same note, the average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’1 1” and 120 pounds.
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.
Body image has been a topic in today's society that has been widely discussed. Body image takes place no matter the gender, race, or even age. Body image can influence a person's life as silly it may seem since usually, the people who are not experiencing this issue see it as nonexistent. But today I want to talk about how the yet “body image” has affected my life. And yes body image has been in my life since childhood, later transition to my teenage years, and it still affects me to this day.
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.
