Media Negative Influence

On top of this, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures and runway models influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (only 5% of the female population naturally has the body type portrayed as ideal in advertisement). This is obviously a problem because, growing up, girls everywhere are told that they’re pretty and that being pretty is the most important thing about them and they start basing their worth on their looks. But then, every single woman they see on TV, in movies, in magazines, any woman considered “hot” and “beautiful” doesn’t look like them anymore, which brings on deadly disorders like anorexia and bulumia that wreck the lives of young girls. Since 90% of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25, we should be asking ourselves “what is causing my child to develop destructive habits at such a young age?” The answer is that they’ve been told that the type of body

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

In a recent survey done by the National institute on Media and the Family, fifth graders, ten year old boys and girls told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show “Friends.”(4) If this isn’t shocking enough, the research group reported that at the age of thirteen, fifty-three percent of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to seventy-eight percent by the time the girls reach seventeen. Also, eating disorders are beginning to start at an alarming young age. Statistics show that girls are developing eating disorders at the age of six.(1) Young girls that are exposed to appearance focused television programs, and magazine shows feel that they need to look like the models that they see. Most of these girls are not even have fully developed bodies yet and are already trying to perfect themselves. One girl had even shared how one of her best friends discovered that her fifth grade cousin was bulimic. Girls at that age should not even be concerned with their bodies yet and eating disorders being developed is a harsh wake up call as to how young girls everywhere are being effected by the media each and everyday.

Beauty standards in the media are one of many reasons feeding and eating disorders are a rising problem. The unrealistic body types of being extremely thin, in pop culture, are influential factors for many teens, especially teen girls. According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), anorexia nervosa is a “restriction of energy intake, intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in the perception of one’s body size” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Individuals diagnosed with anorexia tend to place a high value on their shape and weight, which can interfere with their daily lives. Individuals diagnosed tend to view of their body shape in a distorted representation. The motivation to become

The media plays a major role in the way our society sets certain standards and forms opinions. No matter where we go, the media is everywhere. The message that the media illustrates today is that “thin is in”. When was the last time you flipped through a magazine or through the television channels without seeing some type of advertisement promoting a new diet or new product being promoted by a super thin model or actress? Young girls are the main targets for new products. It is common for young girls to be obsessed with what is “in”. The message that young girls are getting from the media is that having bones sticking out is the way to look. They then become preoccupied with their bodies and self image. “ The exposure to ideal images coincides with a period in their lives where self regard and self efficacy is in decline, where body image is at its most fragile due to physical changes of puberty and where tendency for social comparison is at its peak” (www.eating-disorders.org.uk/docs/media.doc). The media illustrates to young girls an “idealized” shape which leads to being beautiful, popular, successful, and loved but which is not realistic to have unless you have the “idealized” shape. Therefore, they believe that their lives will be perfect as long as they are thin and have the “idealized” shape. The two main sources of media that reach young girls are television and magazines.

Children tend to absorb the contents with a sense of judgment. This is because their curiosity sometimes leads to terrible consequences, in this case, the addiction to alcohol. “A national study … concluded that greater exposure to alcohol advertising contributes to an increase in drinking among underage youth. Specifically, for each additional ad a young person saw … he or she drank 1% more. For each additional dollar per capita spent on alcohol advertising in a local market … young people drank 3% more” (Alcohol Advertising and Youth). Therefore, the commercials do have a great impact to the number of drinking adolescents, since the number of underage alcohol consumption rises as advertisement rates rise. If such commercials continue to display on the media without any types of appropriate-content filters, the number of teenage alcoholics will continue to rise as years pass by. As a result, we must greatly reduce the number of commercials referring to alcohol products, to minimize the possibility to create future drinkers under the legal age.

The subject of this article are young girls, mainly who are in their teenage years, but also the parents of teenage girls. However, anyone can be impacted and learn from this article. This article questions why society drills the idea of thinness into the minds of people, and every reader can take a different stance and have a different opinion on the issue. Some people may take a stance and say that individuals, themselves, are the only influence on their body image. However, others may take the stance and say that society, as a whole, has a huge influence on an individual and their body image. The author of this article, Erica Goode, includes many quotes from parents of teenage girls, who feel as if they need to go to extreme measures to fit in with society. In this case, the author is creating the stance that society plays a role when it comes to influencing an individual. Goode also provides many

Imagine waking up every morning, struggling to get out of bed and hating to look at yourself in the mirror. Girl’s will look into the mirror for hours and criticize every last inch of their body with the words “fat, ugly, worthless” echo in their head. They think their body isn’t good enough and want to look skinner like the other woman in magazines or people they see on TV. The media has a big part in self-image toward young woman. The message being sent to these women on the media is that they are not pretty enough or thin enough. Which results in people having an eating disorder.

Promotion by the media of the extraordinarily thin body types has been linked to the steady rise of eating disorders, especially among adolescents (Ballaro & Wagner, 2017). Experts believe that there are more than ten million females suffering from some sort of eating disorder and that the problems are happening in patients of younger and younger ages. The gap between the average woman’s body and the ideal body is much larger than before (Spitzer, Henderson, & Zivian, 1999). Ninety four percent of characters in the United States media, are thinner than the average woman (Gonzalez-Lavin & Smolak, 1995). The average American woman is only 5’4” tall and weighs approximately 165 pounds (Martin 2010). The media depicts happiness, wealth and success associated to unrealistic body types (Tiggemann, 2002). Not only does the media display this image, it also exhaustively provides information to encourage achievement of it as well. Whether through dieting, exercise or mild to extreme cosmetic surgery for body sculpting, women are feeling the pressure that they need to be thin and often take even the most dangerous methods to obtain this. Considering that these delusional ideals are nearly impossible for most average women, without choosing unhealthy and harmful behaviors, eating disorder theorists have proclaimed that media is supporting these habits (Levine & Smolak, 1998). It is estimated that 10-15% of girls and women between the ages of 9 and 19 are affected by eating disorders. Though the death rates vary from different studies, one thing is for sure; eating disorders can have many health risks, including death. With the unrealistic ability to achieve the super thin body image many women are still turning to these harmful methods in order to try; thus resulting in death of someone every 62 minutes as a result (Eating Disorders Coalition,

Images in the media are extremely powerful and affect the way women think about themselves and about their body. Hilary Rowland, author of “Media Images Are Unrealistic” states how the images shown everyday cause women to “feel insecure about their own bodies” even if they don't have anything to be ashamed of. It is evident that the media displays unrealistic images of beauty causing girls to feel insecure about their bodies and creates a false perception of how they should look. Due to this, women obsess so much over looking just like the “idealized” woman in the media that they create an obsession of losing weight because of lack of confidence. In the article, “The Media Drives Young Girls to Diet” by Jessica Hendrick, we see how women “diet obsessively” trying to “emulate the popular notion of beauty” that is being shown in the media.

By age six, girls start to think about their weight and become self-conscious. Forty to sixty percent of girls, ages six to twelve, are concerned about being too fat. This idea, caused by society is carried throughout their life, causing self-esteem issues, which can lead to depression. Sixty nine percent of girls who read magazines said that the pictures influenced their idea of an “ideal body”. Forty seven percent said the pictures made them want to lose weight. This idea, that you have to be skinny to the point of starvation, in order to be beautiful, is affecting girls. In fact, only five percent of American women naturally have the body type that is portrayed on advertisements. The average American women according to the NEDA is five foot four weighing 165 pounds, whereas the average Miss America winner is five foot seven weighing 121

In the United States alone, 40-60% of girls in elementary and middle school are worried about gaining too much weight and not being accepted by anyone ("Prevalence vs. Funding" 1). Adolescents and women are surrounded with the idea of culture’s “perfect body type” where girls are stick thin and gorgeous. Culture is obsessed with outer beauty and being as flawless as you can be, and often leave out how important inner beauty is. This idea of outer beauty often results in women trying to warp their body image to please the people around them ("Prevalence vs. Funding" 4). Adolescent girls use the media to help figure out how they should look and act, which consequently mirrors how their eating patterns change and evolve. Adolescent girls are targeted by culture, pressured by their peers surrounding them, and taunted by their own self-consciousness, often leading up to acquiring an eating disorder. When the eating disorder is acquired, it often had many damaging physical effects on the person’s body.

As many as 20 percent of those who suffer from anorexia will die early from complications related to their eating disorder, including suicide and heart problems. While there are many possible causes and triggers for these disorders, the media’s influence on body image cannot be overlooked. "My problem is the top of my legs and my bottom, which sticks out. I would like a smaller bottom because I find it difficult to fit into some jeans." Harriet’s obsession with her body scares her mother, sadly Harriet is not the only one who faces this problem daily. 40% of girls aged between 6 and 12 want to change their appearance. Don’t you think this is wrong? Kids who should be worried more about spelling words and math problems are being wrapped into the Medias image of a perfect body. Teens are more afraid of gaining weight than they are of cancer, nuclear war, or losing a parent.

We live in a media-saturated world especially, in western society that provides a significantly influential context for people to learn about body ideals and the value placed on attractiveness that influences the way they perceive themselves. Media invades our lives through television, radio, magazines, newspapers, cinema, advertisements and internet and is very influential on vulnerable adolescents who cannot distinguish what is real and what is not Lopez-Guimera, Levine, Sanchez-Carracedo, & Fauquet, (2010). Mass media contributes to the promotion of the thin ideal as a way to achieve social approval, recognition, and success; in addition, it promotes dieting and food restriction as a socially agreeable practice. In America, body dissatisfaction has reached normative levels among girls and young women. Approximately 50% of girls and undergraduate women report being dissatisfied with their bodies, these perceptions begin at an early age of 7 and exist

Exposure to alcohol advertising is an everyday occurrence. Alcohol advertising is persuasive not only to adults but to those who are too young to buy alcohol legally. Although parents and peers have a large impact on youth decisions to drink, marketing also has a significant impact by influencing the attitudes of parents and peers and helping to create an environment that promotes underage drinking. Alcohol companies focus billions of dollars on advertising their products and still claim that the effect is minimal. I pose a few questions that are; who are the targets of alcohol advertising? How does alcohol advertising affect the people targeted by alcohol companies? Finally what actions are being taken to