Do Teenagers Place Too Much Importance On Their Appearance?

Women’s Body Image (www.wellesley.edu/Health/BodyImage) helped demonstrates the young influence of magazines. Those days when girls strive to be something they weren’t, were probably the most crucial days in body imaging. They succumbed into the pressure of looking how everyone else wants them to look. Such teeny bopper magazines sell to many young girls the idea of beauty. Teen Magazine is the princess of that royal court. In every young woman, or man’s mind, there is this longing to be desired. To be desired, you must be attractive. To be attractive, you have to look like that girl on page seventy-one in the latest Teen Magazine (Women’s Body Image).

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).

Teenage girls are at an impressionable time in their lives. Mass Media is a key idea in one of the factors of socialization that become important to teenagers. Teenagers look to the media for a sense of entertainment. Whether it is movies, magazines, or even some aspects of social media, teenagers get a lot of influence from the media’s message. The problem with this is the media has a specific way of doing things and can be negative to a susceptible teenage girl. Media’s way of portraying a woman can be skewed and unrealistic way from what reality is. Teenage girls then have a desire for this look or way. In this essay the three ways I will describe as to why the media can negatively affect a teenage girls body image is by showing

Every day, millions of Americans view the front covers of magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and more. They see them while at grocery stores, on the television, and even in the waiting room at a doctor's office. The media offer advertisements with models that are seemingly slim with perfect skin, hair, and teeth. American propaganda leaves most young, adolescent girls between the ages of 5-18 to consider that the complexity of beauty is strict to be thin and perfect, though it is targeted to young adolescents, it does aim towards older female and male age ranges as well. An article states, “While the media attempt to target every person, the level of exposure is dictated by gender, and the majority of harmful messages is focused more toward women. For instance, in media such as magazines where a person relies on an image to relate a feeling, girls are often made to look inferior” (Chapman). When it comes to the media, specifically in the American culture, the popularity has massively increased over the years, turning to new weekly issues, becoming common to the society and civilization. This causes issues associated with eating disorders, depression and suicide, and self-esteem/confidence young girls.

Low self-esteem has been an issues with many people since before the 1970’s. This issue has gradually picked up since the 70’s and has progressed 37% in the last 200

Social media creates an ideal body image in an adolescent’s mind that affects them in various ways. Having an ideal body image can lower self-esteem in some adolescents’ creating eating disorders, and this idea of getting plastic surgery as they get older. Social media is steadily increasing and has heavily influenced adolescent’s to be more aware of their body figure. As a result, many adolescent’s have developed low self-esteem due to the fact that social media continues promoting fit women and creating the idea that women need to be thin to be loved or accepted by society; this can cause harm to adolescent’s because they feel the need to fit in to society.

Body image has become a topic of conversation, with girls as young as five years old. Their conversations consist of their freckled complexion, the color of their hair, and even worse, their weight compared to others. The fact that at such a young age they are already finding concern and dissatisfaction with looks, can be alarming. With images of unattainably thin and flawless bodies scattered all over the media, there is no wonder that our younger generation is questioning their beauty and image. These images appear all around; on bill boards, in magazines, on television

During the adolescent years, kids go through some of the toughest and most confusing stages of their life. These years are a time for self-discovery, for learning, and for growing up to become the future of our world. The pressure to grow into something that is accepted and praised by society can be one of the hardest challenges to overcome. The ideas that society enforce regarding beauty standards and gender norms can be some of the most damaging. Young boys grow up believing that crying is a weakness, that any form of emotion is weakness, and it teaches them to bottle up their feelings and creates an unhealthy upbringing. Young women grow up believing that a pretty face is everything. They

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

Approximately 14 million U.S. teenage girls don’t like how they look. The number of women who feel confident in their bodies is dwindling quickly and is being fueled by edited pictures they are comparing themselves to on social media. The Time magazine article “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror” by Rachel Simmons tells of the risk for everyone to feel self-conscious about their bodies. However, those most at risk are teenage girls who spend a significant amount of time on any form of social media. In response to the article, I agree with the negative effects social media has on the body image of teenage girls because I have seen girls trying to change their bodies. I also see the effects logos and pathos have on the strength of the article and what would make it a stronger and more credible source for information on teen body image.

Over the years a debate over who is to blame over the decline in how girls perceive themselves has arisen. With Photoshop being the societal norm concerning the media, it has become difficult for many to understand where the line between real and near impossible standards lies. Youths see an image edited to “perfection” and strive to reach the standards that they imagine due to the images displayed on magazines, television and social media. From Disney to magazines like Vogue the mass media bombards audiences with fake beauty that they, as normal people, will never be able to achieve. The mass media is responsible for causing the rise in the number of people with a poor body image, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgeries.

In this day and age, the epidemic of these so called ‘beauty’ standards is only getting worse and worse. Because of photo modification, low self esteem in regular everyday people is starting to become something that is nearly considered normal. Today, 42% of girls from age 5-8 want to be skinnier, 52% of girls aged 9 to 13 feel better when they are dieting and by the age of 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their own bodies. Think about

For some teens, striving for perfection has led to harming their own health and wellbeing such as living with depression and suicide. Teenagers today are relying on what they see in ads, T.V., magazines and on the internet for their input on appearances, the way they think not only comes from media sources, but from family and friends.

The challenge to adjust to high school life usually corresponds to other moments of development in the adolescent’s life with such changes taking place which include puberty and related concern about body image, changes in social cognition, increased responsibility and decreased dependency on parents (Santrock, 2016). These changes were observed in my teen through certain reports such as how at 13 she was nervous about the transition to high school and worried that her friendships would change. She also experienced physical changes and concern about her body image as at age 14 she expressed being teased about having a flat chest and requesting new kinds of bras to remedy this. This body concern also came as she began gaining some weight during puberty making her refuse to wear certain clothes that she felt accentuated her weight problem. These reports show that this newfound concern about body image that was developed is so significant to adolescents that it tends to

Dove’s Self Esteem project was made for young girls because more young girls struggle with having low self-esteem between the ages of seven to seventeen than most people realize. Not having good self-esteem takes a toll on young girls and causes them to miss out on many opportunities while growing up. Dove stated “six in ten girls avoid participating in fundamental life activities because of concerns about the way they look”. I found this very