Essay on Health of the Female Population Endangered by Media

Ever since the development of the media such as television, the internet, various fashion magazines and commercial advertisements, society focused more and more on personal appearances. Not only were runway models becoming slimmer but the viewers that watched and read about them were becoming more concerned with their weight. In the past fifty years the number of adolescent girls developing eating disorders increased just as television, advertisements, and magazines were becoming a social norm that was easily and often available. Today, more than ever, adolescents are worrying about weight, shape, size and body image and. It does not help that these children are growing up in a world filled with media material emphasizing dangerously

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

Images in the media today project an unrealistic and even dangerous standard of feminine beauty that can have a powerful influence on the way women and young girls view themselves. From the perspective of the mass media, thinness is idealized and expected for women to be considered "attractive." Images in advertisements, television, and music usually portray the "ideal woman" as tall, white, and thin. In the documentary, "Girl Model," young Siberian girls look forward to leaving the lives of poverty and are promised the glamorous life of a model.

Eating disorders are the number one negative impact women experience from these advertisements. Not only are women experiencing serious eating disorders, but so are young media consumers. Studies show that “close to twenty percent of the individuals in the age range 17-20 are victims” of these serious eating disorders (Peterson 495). This is becoming a larger issue because at these ages women are truly finding themselves and can still be easily persuaded by the media. The two most common eating disorders effecting these women are bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa (Peterson

A female should not feel insecure with her body when she is comfortable in her own skin, whether or not she weights 130 pounds or 150 pounds at 5’5”. According to Rehab’s study of the evolution of the female figure over one hundred years, “the body shapes of the most admired models have remained consistently slimmer than that of the average American woman.” Due to the significant increase in mass media throughout the twentieth century of the United States, there has been a noteworthy impact on the popular image of women. A woman being dissatisfied with their body is a everyday trend around the world where as

Therefore, the commendation of such look and shape commercializes unhealthy body image and procreates eating disorders. Unfortunately, at present the commercialism of a perfect body is encountered by almost everyone on everyday basis. The public is bombarded daily with images of glamorously thin women in commercials, on billboards, in movies in magazines and etc?According to Melanie Katzman, a consultant psychologist from New York, the media has actively defined the thin ideal as success and treats the body as a commodity. (Rhona MacDonald, 2001) It is evident that the persistent advocating of the media and the society produced a constant pursuit of thinness, which became a new religion. A study conducted by Harvard researchers has revealed the effect of media and magazines on adolescent girls in high schools. The children were exposed to fashion magazines and television commercials, and a while after were given self-rating surveys. The study found that sixty-nine percent of the girls said that magazine pictures

Chronic dieting, low self-esteem, depression and, high levels of body dissatisfaction were among the major issues women face when addressing their body image (Gingras, Fitzpatrick, & McCargar, 2004). The severity of body image dissatisfaction have increased to such a dangerous state that it was added to the DSM-IV as a disorder now called body dysmorphic disorder (Suissa, 2008). One of the main reasons for the prevalence of these conditions in women was due to contemporary Western media, which serve as one of the major agent in enforcing an ultra-thin figure as the ideal for female beauty (Saraceni & Russell-Mayhew, 2007). These images and models presented by the media have become the epitome of beauty, pushing women who internalized these images to dangerous extent to attain these norms. According to evidence from previous studies, contemporary Western cultures have influenced women to an acquired normative state of discontent with their bodies, which have become the source of maladaptive eating practices, negative psychological outcomes, and, chronic health conditions associated with eating disorders (Snapp, Hensley-Choate, & Ryu, 2012). The seriousness of these body image conditions among youths and women have also led to congressional actions.

The media have constructed attractiveness for a long time many sociocultural standards of beauty and. Especially women’s body images have been a primary concern because the value of women has been measured how they look like. How women have similar body traits with the modern female body images has been a significant and essential issue, historically. The sociocultural standards of beauty which have been created by the greed of the media have dire impacts on young females. The current beauty level of the female body image in the media is thinness. In fact, the preferred female body images have been changed through the media. Throughout history, sometimes skinny women’s body images were loved, and sometimes over weighted women’s body images were preferred. Whenever the media have dictated the ideal female

"Why dissallow the trendy images of women from being plastered ubiquitously?" one may ask. Banning this perception of women, unhealthily thin, will save the women of this great nation from eating disorders. Our women will be more confident in their own skin and not feel as pressured to live up to this image. We, as people of this land, see this problem but choose not to do anything. The medical care for people with eating disorders is inadequit, and too expensive, as it is. With girls and women trying so hard today, to look like what the media portrays, it is no wonder that our country's health is in a downward spiral. Trying to live up to these unreal expectations can result in anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating.

“11 facts about body image”, concludes that approximately 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal body shape and only 5% of women naturally possess the body type often portrayed by Americans in the media. The women who do not portray the “ideal” body type decide to do fads, diets, and if those don’t work, some women/girls decide to go to the extreme. Anorexia and bulimia, are a few of the major things women/girls decide to do if diets don’t work for them. Media, not only makes girls feel bad about themselves, but it makes them go to the extreme to reach that “Body Goal” type of body. According to “What is Body Image?

You keep flipping the pages of this magazine and almost every other page of this magazine there is a dieting or body enhancing product. Society and media promote body enhancing and dieting in every way possible such as commercials, magazine pages, billboards, etc. There was a study done with 366 male and female participants. The study showed that exposure to a thin-rewarded portrayal activated ideal discrepancies whereas exposure to fat-punished portrayal activated negative discrepancies. Both of these discrepancies is an increase of negative emotions which can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia. Society has drastically increased the number of dieting, weight loss, and body enhancing products of the years. There was a study done that showed the increase in the number of dieting products and foods between the years of 1973 and 1991. It also showed that women's magazines as 10.5 times as many dieting foods and products as men. While dieting products have increased, the weight of Playboy centerfolds, Miss America contestants, fashion models and female actresses have decreased. These are some women who young women of today look up to and if society and media makes them this unobtainable size these young women are going to want to use these dieting foods and products to get to be that size which can lead to anorexia and multiple other eating disorders. Surveys suggest that 83% of adolescent girls read fashion magazines for an average of 4.3 hours per week and that “Seventeen” magazine has an estimated readership of 11,000,000. A survey was taken by young girls between the ages of eleven and thirteen; they were asked if they could have three wishes what would it be, and the number one response of the girls was to lose weight and keep it off. This survey shows us that media and society have placed body

“In contemporary media and culture, women’s and men’s social desirability and gender have often been defined in terms of their bodies. For women, this has often involved comparing themselves to and even replicating the ‘‘thin ideal’’, altering their bodies to heighten perceived sexuality or youthfulness, or conforming to traditional definitions of femininity including qualities such as submissiveness or sentimentality. For men, gender-based definitions of success frequently revolve around presenting or

Dissatisfaction and the feeling of uselessness overcome many women’s emotions and can develop serious mental, physical, and emotional changes to their body internally. “…exposure to magazine photographs of super-thin models produces depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, body-dissatisfaction, and increased endorsement of the thin-ideal stereotype” (Rationis). The effect that these standards are having on women is unacceptable because no one should feel stressed or guilty by the way their body looks. The Dove Real Beauty Campaign “promotes itself as a progressive force for women, aligns itself with certain feminist ideals and scholars, engages in ‘grass-roots’ partnering to raise millions of dollars for eating disorder organizations…” (Johnston 943). This logical campaign helps women all around to gain self-esteem and promote an accurate standardization of female beauty. Due to the dissatisfaction, many girls have suffered from eating disorders. Eating disorders can cause many malfunctions to the body on the inside and outside. Liver and digestion system problems are likely to occur and so is excessive thinness and skin conditions. 90% of girls suffer from eating disorders. The fact that that many girls suffer from eating disorders because they feel the need to change something about their

Advertisements may show to girls that in order for them to be beautiful, they need to look like the pencil thin models working with the clothing lines. As a result, most young women and teens would want to lose weight in order to look like them and be “beautiful”. In order to do so, women cut down their feeding and nutrition and encounter eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

In a society obsessed with appearance and numb to sexism, it comes as no surprise that women are expressing hate for their bodies more than ever before. Mass media’s portrayal of women is one of unattainable perfection— most models are stick thin with flawless complexions and pearl-white smiles. Consumers are bombarded with images of women being displayed as sex objects, valued for their physical appearance above all else. The evasiveness of media has led women to believe they must resemble the models pictured in advertisements, films, and television. When one falls short of physical perfection, she experiences feelings of inadequacy, which are often accompanied by both mental and physical health issues. Consequently, eighty percent of women in the United States are dissatisfied with their appearance and more than ten million women are suffering from eating disorders. Although other factors, such as criticism in relationships or being compared to others, may contribute to a person’s dissatisfaction with his or her appearance, the media is largely responsible for the rise of negative body image and low self-esteem, particularly in women. In order to implement change, both producers and consumers of media must realize that mass media can be used positively, as an instrument of change as opposed to destruction. By eliminating sexist and over-edited images of women from media, both sexes would begin to have more realistic expectations for their appearances and the appearances of