Bad Body Image

Media has become a significant component within society. While media provides many pros, it supplies various cons as well. One very prominent fault that the significance of media has is its visual depiction of women. There is an abundance of media portraying women to have ideal bodies, and this undoubtedly has a negative effect on adolescent girls. Two of the many effects of media on females are depression and self esteem issues, as well as eating disorders. Unfortunately, body dissatisfaction caused by media is becoming more and more common.

Mass media can have an adverse effect teenage girls by showing body types that are unrealistic as the normal and desirable type of body to have. Young women look to the mass media to see the societal norms for beauty, and what they see can influence the way that they view themselves. By portraying women who possess a body type that is uncommon, it shows teenage girls that they need to change themselves to reflect the images they are shown. Portraying body types that emphasize thinness and exaggerated features, the mass media try to establish what is socially acceptable. Teenage girls who see this message feel pressured to become what they see, often not realizing that the body types portrayed in media are unrealistic.

“Body image begins to form in grade school because that’s when children/people start comparing themselves to others,” said Dr. Gene Beresin, a child and adult psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical. Body image is how a person perceives themselves, including their imagination, emotional, and physical sensations (The Media and Body Image, 1). Teens that suffer from negative body image let the bad thoughts shatter their self-esteem, the sense of how valuable they are as people (Maynard, 1). The lowered self-esteem may lead to depression, eating disorders, or mental disorders. Bryan Karazsia, the associate professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, said, “Body dissatisfaction is not linked with health. It’s linked with a lot of negative things like eating disorders, unhealthy exercise habits, low self-esteem, and depression.”

The results of this study indicated a low effect size for all studies. The participants who were shown pictures in the media of thin models tended to think there was something wrong with their body weight. Other participants who viewed models who were overweight tended to have a positive outlook on their body image. Another study that was conducted by Han, 2003 looked at female Korean college students and the way in which media exposure affected the way they perceive body image. This experiment was conducted by using 42 college female college students who were exposed to images of thin models in magazine ads. After viewing the images for about 5 minutes the women were then asked to fill out a questionnaire. This questionnaire was built to see their indication on body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance based upon the pictures that were shown. Then an upward comparison was used to see whether they agreed or disagreed with the images of the models shown. As these results stated the females that were exposed to the pictures of the thin models showed a higher level of upward comparison then those who were not shown the models. Participants in the experimental group also perceived the thin models to be more practical than those who were participants of the control group. A second part of this experiment used 75 female college

Due to the rising epidemic of poor body image among young females within Australia, body image has been identified as a top personal concern for the 6th year in a row (King, 2011). According to Mission Australia’s 2015 National Youth Survey, this is an increasing trend that had risen by 26.5% in 2015 (King, 2011). Poor body image refers to the negative way in which someone perceives their body, and a significant public health issue, particularly among young females aged 14 to 25 (BMC Public Health, 2016). It is associated with a range of detrimental outcomes, including eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia (BMC Public Health, 2016). The fashion industry’s infatuation with unrealistic body size and subsequent manipulation of societies

As girls begin to hit puberty, their bodies start to change. Their bodies will gain fat and move away from this ideal thin body image (Kerr 2010). In a study done by Clay, Vignoles and Dittmar they showed three groups of adolescent girls magazine images. Two groups viewed magazine covers with female models who were somewhere between underweight or a little below average weight, while the third group viewed magazine covers with inanimate objects. The researchers found that the first two groups resulted in a less likely report of body satisfaction and self-esteem than the third group (2005). This demonstrates that when adolescent girls are exposed to the media’s thinness they feel like their size and shape is not good enough.

Media has developed to become omnipresent in the day to day lives of the westernized societies. The media is considered a gigantic umbrella that houses a plethora of different outlets underneath it such as television, music videos, magazines, commercials, video games and social media. In this paper, the effects of media and various media types are examined to understand their potential outcomes. Focusing on how and if media affects body image in girls and women, the themes of dieting awareness, thin-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction and behaviours are a few of the themes that reoccurred throughout various recent journal articles. Since the media is an ever-growing presence, it potentially has negative effects not only on our

All women should have a slim body and a big butt. All men should have washboard abs and big biceps. These are just expectations that society has built up of how one should look. Often when we don’t reach it, there are consequences of developing negative body image issues. So what is negative body image exactly? According to NEDA (Australia’s national eating disorder association), body image issue is the dissatisfaction someone may have of their body not meeting unrealistic criterias. It is the negative thoughts and emotion that result from someone’s perception of their physical self. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age this is an existing issue because we live in a world that promotes unrealistic body ideals. It becomes a challenge to not compare yourself to these ideals when you see images of instagram models floating around in your everyday life.

The findings found in the article Influence of Mass Media on Body Image and Eating Disordered Attitudes and Behaviors in Females: A Review of Effects and Processes by Lopez Guimera was the following, the cross-sectional studies found "that greater use of the mass media specifically fashion magazines and television music video shows is significantly correlated...with higher levels of body dissatisfaction and with higher scores on eating disorder" (Lopez-Guimera, 2010, p. 392). It was also found in the longitudinal prospective studies that the "greater exposure to the messages conveyed by media, particularly those that transmit messages in relation to thin ideal and how to achieve it from magazines, television, and radio, the more likely females are to develop disordered eating behaviors and concerns about weight" (Lopez-Guimera, 2010, p. 401). In which the article The effect of the media on body satisfaction in adolescent girls by Helen Champion and Adrian Furnham found that adolescent girls were unsatisfied with their body image, in which they felt a societally, or self imposed or both to be thinner/become thinner (Champion, H., & Furnham, A.,

The importance of the body image and what is considered to be the ‘ideal’ body are two of the primary factors that contribute to the negative affect of the media on the teenage society of today.

In the article “Does Media Type Matter? The Role of Identification in Adolescent Girls’ Media Consumption and the Impact of Different Thin-Ideal Media on Body Image”, Bell and Dittmar argue that it is not the type of exposure that affects body image, but the extent of identification with the media models (Bell & Dittmar, 2011, p. 489). The authors’ first study aims to determine actual media consumption, identification with thin models, and different impacts of different media consumption on body dissatisfaction. In this study, 199 adolescent females completed a questionnaire outlining the number of hours spent consuming different media forms. Participants rated the thinness of models and desire to look like models portrayed on their favourite websites. The Physical Appearance State and Trait Anxiety Scale (PASTAS) measured participants weight-related body dissatisfaction and the Body Image State Scale (BISS) measured their appearance dissatisfaction. Results indicate that some media genres were more popular than others; however, body dissatisfaction was predicted by identification with the media models, rather than the amount of time spent consuming the media type (Bell & Dittmar, 2011, p. 480-484). The authors’ second study questions whether presentation of the beauty ideal affects body image. Participants viewed either two music videos, still images of the music

People with positive body images: accept and appreciate their natural body shape, understand that physical appearance does not determine their self-worth, they do not judge others for their body shape, weight, or eating habits, and understand physical appearances do not measure a person’s value in society (What is Body Image 2). A person with a negative body image: has a distorted perception of their body, they are convinced they have failed to live up to societies standards of beauty, they tend to be self-conscious and anxious, they constantly compare themselves to others and have negative thoughts about their own body (What is Body Image 3). Someone with a negative body image will be more prone to experiencing: anxiety, depression, emotional distress, and social withdrawal (What is Body Image 4). People with a negative body image can learn to focus on features or qualities they like about themselves in order to start gaining a more positive body image and

They also used a variety of materials to gain information such as T.V., magazines, pictures, and questions. In conclusion of this study, appearance satisfaction, self-esteem, and imitation of others decreased dramatically. The study also concluded that more exposure to media, decreased the appearance satisfaction in girls. For testing of desire for thinness, girls, as young as 6, were shown young female silhouette drawings, ranging from skinny to large shapes and asked which body shape would they like to have. This test was done once a year for two years in order to see if they would have a higher or lower rating of their body image as they aged. The experiment showed after a year their desire for thinness had a negative increase, but their satisfaction for body image was still relatively high. This may have been because the desire of thinness is not yet associated with their body image until older. In order to determine whether this is true or not, they needed to have a larger sample group with a variety of

They use cross-sectional studies, experimental studies, and longitudinal studies to strengthen their credibility amongst the audience. Each study fulfills a different purpose to cross-reference the correlations between television, images of thin beauty ideals, and “casual risk factors” to body dissatisfaction amongst adolescents (390-401). This allows the research to focus on different components of the media – television, magazines, billboards, radio etc. It is apparent that the authors and sponsors believe the mass media to be the primary factor of recent increases involving a female’s concern on her body and eating disorders. For example, the article describes how the fashion industry uses digital enhancement to obtain thinner sizes on their models. Thus, the norms of beauty become nearly impossible to achieve. The sponsors of the article created a review that considered both the nature and implications of media effects. More importantly, the article serves as a guide in minimizing the negative affects the media places on adolescent females.

Research indicates that exposure to thin ideal images in women's magazines is associated with heightened concerns for body shape and size in a number of young women, although the media's role in the psychopathology of body image disturbance is generally believed to be mediated by personality and socio-cultural factors. The purpose of this research study is to know and gather solid facts and reasons about fashion magazines affecting the teenagers’ body image in a form of research to self evaluation through careful accumulation of acceptable data and relevant resources for such data to be precise and spontaneous in its respected details to support results.