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Women's Body Image: An Annotated Bibliography

886 Words4 Pages

Kate Merlock
Ms. Lemos
ENGL 104 - 514
7 November 2014
The Effect of Media on Women’s Body Image: An Annotated Bibliography
Hawkins, Nicole, P. Scott Richards, H. Mac Granley, and David M. Stein. "The Impact of Exposure to the Thin-Ideal Media Image on Women." Eating Disorders12.1 (2004): 35-50. Web.
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. So because of this, the article examined college women in a study who were exposed to either …show more content…

In this study half of the participants viewed fashion magazines while the other half viewed news magazines. They found in the results that majority of the girls who read the fashion magazines were less satisfied with their body weight and desired to be thinner, compared to the others who read the news magazines they were more afraid of getting fat.
Serdar, Kasey L. "Female Body Image and the Mass Media: Perspectives on How Women Internalize the Ideal Beauty Standard." The Myriad: Westminster's Undergraduate Academic Journal. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.
In this article it is examined how popular media sets the standard for women’s body image and how they are usually unattainable for most women and well below the healthy body weight. Which then sends this message that in order for woman to be pretty she must be unhealthy. It is also discussed in this article that for most girls weight appearance issues start at an early age and will continue throughout their life. Thus, if girls are unsatisfied with their bodies they will tend to start to have bad eating habits and eventually lead up to an eating …show more content…

As a result most women put themselves through diets and self-loathing thoughts because they can’t achieve the “perfect” body. In the article a YouTube video show that Photoshop can do so much for a person that might be considered unattractive to become attractive. Yet girls still hold to unrealistic standards even though they know these photos are Photoshopped. This brings back that because of popular media such as popular covers of magazines set unattainable standards for women’s body image and yet women try to achieve it. Thus making them unhealthy and unhappy with who they

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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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424 Words | 2 Pages

Moreover, Body Image, Media and Eating Disorders states that 30% of children are dissatisfied with their body image due to being overweight and 15% are dealing with obesity (Derene & Beresin, 2006). This demonstrates that the number of children watching television and the number of overweight, obese children are involving their selves more into the media rather than more crucial events. Correspondingly, the average model is 23% thinner compared to 25 years ago (Ravelli & Webber, 2012). Today’s media has an impacting effect on how women should appeal themselves to others in society. This guides them to behave a certain way and not truly be themselves.

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735 Words | 3 Pages

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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244 Words | 1 Pages

Everyday females are exposed to how media views the female body, whether in a work place, television ads, and magazines. Women tend to judge themselves on how they look just to make sure there keeping up with what society see as an idyllic women, when women are exposed to this idea that they have to keep a perfect image just to keep up with media, it teaches women that they do not have the right look because they feel as if they don’t add up to societies expectations of what women should look like, it makes them thing there not acceptable to society. This can cause huge impacts on a women self-appearance and self-respect dramatically. Women who become obsessed about their body image can be at high risk of developing anorexia or already have

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1012 Words | 5 Pages

These days, advertisements are made with the aid of photoshop which creates an unattainable image of beauty and thus, puts pressure on women to achieve these standards. Photoshop in the beauty industry involves manipulating a picture to make it flawless. Magazines photoshop these images by toning the abdomen, removing every facial blemish, defining the cheekbones, etc. In 2003, actress Kate Winslet criticized GQ magazine for photoshopping her picture saying, “The retouching is excessive, I do not look like that and more importantly, I don’t desire to look like that”. Many women are bothered by the seemingly perfect models they see on the billboards, in television adverts and on magazine covers.

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1692 Words | 7 Pages

The majority of girls in today’s society have looked at a model in a magazine or on television and wished they looked like them. The media presented in this generation has impacted women on how they feel towards their body image. Media presents unrealistic women as the “ideal,” making this culture of girls feel dissatisfied with themselves. This is a problem because with plenty of girls already feeling unsatisfied with their body, by using unrealistic models, it creates a further problem with wanting to change themselves by doing dangerous actions such as eating disorders. It’s difficult to cut out the media impact but surely, something can be changed.

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1525 Words | 7 Pages

From an early age, we are exposed to the western culture of the “thin-ideal” and that looks matter (Shapiro 9). Images on modern television spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful. Often, television portrays the thin women as successful and powerful whereas the overweight characters are portrayed as “lazy” and the one with no friends (“The Media”). Furthermore, most images we see on the media are heavily edited and airbrushed

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In order to answer the question of how magazines can contribute to the development of a negative body image leading to eating disorders the essay examines several theories that have attempted to describe the ways media (magazines) influence the development of a negative body image which is related to eating disorders. Social comparison theory, cultivation theory and self schema theory are presented. In the conclusion the theories are evaluated as to how they can answer the research question. Theoretical explanations of why women are influenced by magazine models Throughout the years, researchers have pointed out the fact that the way women are portrayed to the media negatively

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1152 Words | 5 Pages

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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133 Words | 1 Pages

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

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1304 Words | 6 Pages

Countless advertisements feature thin, beautiful women as either over-sexualized objects, or as subordinates to their male counterparts. The mold created by society and advertisers for women to fit into is not entirely attainable. More often than not, models are Photoshopped and altered to the point that they don’t even resemble themselves. W. Charisse Goodman suggests, “The mass media do not

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1411 Words | 6 Pages

Many struggle with their weight, and with a media culture that only features underweight models as normal, it can create a abnormal image of what we think people are supposed to look like. Cash explains that “While thinness might symbolize control and success in the minds of women who try to emulate the ideal, its unrealistic nature means that women’s energies are wasted. Women’s high levels of body dissatisfaction and the highest levels of eating disorders at any point signify problems with this cultural prescription. ”(Cash 438)

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552 Words | 3 Pages

Credibility Statement: I use to tell myself this when I was in high school, after looking at a music video or reading a magazine. Seeing women who were 100 pounds with zero body fat made me look at myself differently. Reveal Topic/Thesis: In today's society, the media plays a part in how we perceive our body. The way the media's advertisements portray body images rarely resemble our own, but what they consider beauty.

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201 Words | 1 Pages

In contemporary times, one of the main aspects of its culture is the media. The media has developed a powerful influence on many teens and young adults. One of the messages the media endlessly sends out is body image. The media conditions what “beautiful” or “attractive” women are supposed to look like, and consequently, many young women now establish their body image in accordance with the standards the media has promoted. Because of the significant emphasis on body image, countless girls and women are now struggling with self-esteem, eating disorders, depression, and other harmful effects caused by the impossible body standards of society.

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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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