Body Images In Media's Influence On Women

The media has an obsession with perfection, and sends subliminal messages that often lead to a negative effect on a person’s body image. The greatest influence that the media has is on body image.

A body image is a subjective combination of all the thoughts, emotions, and judgments that an individual may perceive about his or her own body. Each individual has a unique perception of his or her own body. This image is strongly influenced and often times skewed due to the increasing pressure created from outside, societal factors. With a world that is continuously creating new forms of social media and entertainment, individuals are constantly exposed to images that supposedly define bodily perfection and are then expected to resemble these images in order to fit in and/or please society. The expectations that have been put in place by society has created unwanted pressure on individuals who feel as if they need to resemble these images to get society’s approval.

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

The media use subliminal messages to get the viewers’ attention by using ads, commercials, and other sources of media. For example, when siting in a hairdresser you’re flipping through a magazine all you may see is a young beautiful model who’s thin, perfect skin and just perfect in every way. “The idealization and pursuit of thinness are seen as the main drivers of body dissatisfaction, with the media primarily setting thin body ideals” (Hill 2006). The media doesn’t realize how they cause women, especially young girls to have low self-esteem. Stated in the

The media plays a tremendous part in our everyday lives. It affects how we eat, how we dress, and our self-esteem. Whether it’s a heavily photo shopped model in a magazine, or a fad diet that encourages unhealthy beauty standards. The stress that these standards place on men and women have been heavily correlated with increases in eating disorders. The perpetuation of being extremely thin in the media has a huge impact on young people and children especially, because they are still learning what is considered normal, and will attempt to copy the esthetics of what they see in magazines if they aren’t taught what is a healthy body to have. Mass media portrays men and women to impossible standards that could never be reached

Decades ago televisions were a luxury few could afford and when they became more widely available computers came along and the advances have continued. Exposure that was once limited to magazines and television time has now increased to include the entire world at our fingertips via smartphones and tablets. This allows us unlimited access to people we may perceive as being better than ourselves in many ways but the prevalence of photographs would have the focus shifted to the physical appearance of these people. Along with this progression has come a change in the people we are exposing ourselves to: female celebrities are getting smaller. Grabe and Ward and Hyde present in their study The Role of the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental and Correlational Studies that “the images of women presented in the media today are thinner than past media images of women, thinner than the actual female population, and often thinner than the criteria for anorexia” (2008). Alongside the pressure on women to be thin there exists a pressure on men to be “more muscular. . .the media often portrays that it is the strong handsome men who are popular and who get the beautiful women” (Russello,

Mass media is designed to reach large audiences through the use of technology. Its purpose is meant to give information we need to function as a society. Mass media is everywhere; there is no escaping from it. From the moment you wake until you fall asleep you are confronted with media. Almost every home in America has at least one television, access to the internet, and cell phones. Someone cannot drive down the highway without seeing billboard signs. Checking out at the grocery store can be tricky if trying to avoid magazines. The media portrays what is considered to be normal for how a female acts and looks, and therefore affects what women in society feel they should look and act like. The media's

With eating disorders on the rise today, the media plays an important role in affecting self-esteem, leading a large amount of young adults to develop eating disorders. Many adolescents see the overbearing thin celebrities and try to reach media's level of thinness and ideal body weight. "Sixty-nine of the girls reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of the perfect body shape" (Field). Not only is being thin associated with other positive characteristics such as, lovable, popular, beautiful, and sexy, but being overweight is connected with negative characteristics like fat, ugly, unpopular, and lazy. Therefore media is the distinct social pressure of operating to influence people to be thin and causing eating disorders.

On November 16, 2015, Dr. Anna Rogers, Professor for English 393 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, formally asked her students to do research on a topic of their choice and create a recommendation report on that. I chose to conduct my research on how the role of media affects how women perceive body image. I was interested in knowing the ways in which the media influenced the ways in which they perceive themselves and their beauty. In order to perform my research, I conducted surveys of female students ranging from ages 18-28, carried out experimental research on them to test whether they feel worse about their bodies after being exposed to thin media models than after being exposed to other types of images as well as conducting secondary research from articles, books, and magazines. After conducting this research, I found that the media really has a stronghold effect on how women define beauty and body image. About half of the students acknowledged comparing their appearance to the appearance of people in magazines. In addition to that, more than half of the students acknowledged feeling pressure from society and the media to have a perfect body. Over 60 percent of the students acknowledged thinking of wanting to get some sort of plastic surgery done to enhance or adjust “problem areas”. I recommend that parents should try to build a strong foundation of self-esteem and self-identity in their children at a very young age in order to in build positive

It is impossible to flip through a magazine without seeing advertisements or articles with slender models trying to manipulate readers into bettering their body. Due to the consistent viewing of articles and advertisements covered with half-naked, bony models, the idea that being thin is the typical body image of women today is set into the minds of the readers. The images of thinness are used to symbolize such things as happiness, success, and beauty.

     Television and Magazines have a high impact on women today. In television the majority of female characters on T.V. are thin (Media’s not). Statistics show that the average adolescent girl’s unrealistic body images are due to the three to four hours of T.V. they watch (WVU). After women watch at least thirty minutes of T.V. or advertisements with thin women, they show signs of guilt, depression, shame, and body dissatisfaction (Media’s Negative). According

In today’s day and age, more and more individuals are changing their perspectives to match that of the media’s current ideals. Concern over the media’s influence on body image has recently risen, striking the notion that many people regard the images shown throughout media as ‘real’. However, unbeknownst to them, such unbelievably thin body types are not quite attainable in reality, and therefore, individuals’ own beauty ideals and body images become unrealistic. The mass media’s ideal image of thinness has greatly impacted the overall body image of today, and has been linked to negative consequences such as appearance dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and depression.

Society shapes the individual in many ways, more than one realizes. Advertisements highlight what a desirable body is and individuals unknowingly believe it to be true. “Advertisements emphasize thinness as a standard for female beauty, and the bodies idealized in the media are frequently atypical of normal, healthy women”(Body Image and Advertising, “Eating Disorders: Body Image and Advertising”). Young female teenagers all over the world care about their physical appearance and want to look attractive and be the most beautiful girl out there. “Being thin, toned and muscular has become associated with the hard-working, successful, popular, beautiful, strong and the disciplined” (Live Life Get Active, “Body image, self-esteem and the influence of society”). By labeling thin women as beautiful, advertisements recklessly label fat people as lazy,

This paper will assess several articles, literature reviews, and papers that relate to the media’s portrayal of the “ideal” women’s body being extremely thin. Each source elaborates on the dissatisfaction women have with their bodies as a result of the content released in the media. Irving (2008) defines media as a “Tool used to transmit ideas, images, messages, or information to the public.”

Media is a tool that has been seen to control much of the world. More specifically it has the power to make people second guess themselves. Many images on today’s media are affecting the way people think. There seems to be an unrealistic body image the media presents, which affects the viewing public greatly.