Media 's Impacts On Adolescent Girls

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

I can remember her standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. How she thought she was beautiful, I don’t know. Because the image I saw was of a person who looked like a living corpse. She had to have weighed only 100 pounds, her hair so thin, the black bags under her eyes, and her overall grayish complexion made her look as if she were a dead. As she saw me staring at her in the corner of her eye, she slammed the door in my face. That was the big sister that I knew now. She was no longer the big sister that I could go to and get advice from or have a good laugh with. No, she was too busy with her own schedule and not to mention her terrible mood swings. My older sister

As a middle school student, I was oblivious to the unrealistic portrayals in the media, but I was not able to escape its harmful grasp. It seemed every girl at the school suffered with body image issues because their perception of beauty is what they had been taught by society. Anorexia and bulimia were far too common, while self-esteem and confidence were very hard to find. Not only were the girls trying to become “beautiful,” they were also trying to act older than they were. Starting at the extreme, drugs, alcohol, and sex seemed normal; far less extreme were the excessive amounts of makeup, skimpy outfits, and usage of the proper slang. These girls were merely doing what the media had taught them; they were being, or trying to be,

(Heubeck 2006) For many young people, especially girls, the ideal continues to chase them as they grow into young women. Young girls begin to internalize the stereotypes and judge themselves by media’s impossible standards. The power that the media holds in impacting the lives of young girls is detrimental and eventually affects their body image, their satisfaction of their own body, and portrayal of their body as an object.

As you’re walking down a street you may notice a young group of girls or women walking and they see a huge billboard of a beautiful model. They might stop and stare at her and then discuss about her perfect her body is. Not knowing in the next five minutes they’ll be comparing their bodies to the model and feeling bad about themselves wishing that they had her body. Not to mention, that the photo may be photoshopped to make it seem as her body is perfect, or she had plastic surgery to fit the idea of having the perfect body. The fact that the media thinks they’re encouraging young girls and women to embrace their beauty, they’re influencing them that they have to have a perfect body in order to get attention. The media has put a lot of pressure on young girls and women to look perfect and second guess their bodies, when plastic surgery is never the answer to build their self-esteem up.

Sexualization in girls is sadly alive and well, especially when it comes to the influence of pop culture on a young child’s confidence. The reason pop culture is so effective in the line of manipulating a young woman’s mind negatively is the media and all that it portrays. In general, the media can wreak havoc on a young woman’s self-esteem by showing overly processed, and photo shopped women on the cover of magazines and social media.

From music videos and television, to billboards and magazines, the media has continued to grow and evolve over time into the monstrosity it is today. Everyone sees the media, and it cannot be escaped. Defined by its easy access, media exposure to billboards, magazines, T.V., and movies reach all over the world. Because of the influence in the media, many younger ladies feel the need to attract attention by showing off their bodies, trying new styles of clothes, shoes, makeup and trying to be unique as possible, while still trying to “fit in” with the popular. The media has an extreme impact on the society of younger women that is both positive and negative on  what they believe, and how they appear and behave.

“ The media needs to take responsibility for the effect it has on our younger generation....why aren’t we regulating things like calling people fat”(Lawrence)? The actress Jennifer Lawrence expressed her opinion on what she believes, that the media is responsible for the damaging body image that has affected the younger generation. Considering this, recently there have been more studies and research on what has formed this ideal body.Also, the research conducted uncovered that the famous doll Barbie is one of the main reasons for the desire to have an unrealistic body. The negative body image in female adolescents has been affected by the influence of impossible body types in the media such as the doll “Barbie” and characters in popular

Media has many negative affects on a girls personality. From young ages girls are seeing girls with what media calls the perfect body thin with big boobs a gap

The barrage of sexulized women in media is trashing teen girls mental health. Research by the American Psychology Association shows that, “through the constant exposure to sexulized images of women and girls, females learn that their primary value comes from their physical appearance.” This is just not healthy. Teenage

Every time you open a magazine or watch a commercial, individuals of both genders are wearing minimal clothing and promoting sexuality. This is especially true for women. Research conducted by Sarah Murnen and her colleagues at Kenyon College has found that over the last several years, there has been a steep increase in the pervasiveness of images in magazines that show young women in highly sexual ways. In the media, women are viewed as sex toys and captured in compromising positions. The hypersexualization of women in the media has a powerful effect on young girls. Girls grow up with an unrealistic body images. In addition, girls are turning to increasingly provocative clothing and using makeup earlier to imitate the women they seen in the media. Girls grow up trying to change themselves, not realizing that God already made them beautiful and perfect. Young men also gain a misconstrued perception of women. Rather than respecting and honoring the women in their lives, young men growing up believing that girls owe them something. In conclusion, the degradation of sex in the media is distorting normal relationship patterns for both

Todays media portrays a standard of beauty for women of an unrealistic weight and an overall appearance which leads people to believe they need to have an “ideal body”. In particular, girls, 91% of teen girls are unhappy with their bodies (Article: 11 facts about body image, Do something campaign). The teenage years are a time when people are naturally self conscious. Teens can be more vulnerable to media influences about body image and how they “should” look. In as single day we can be subjected by up to 500 advertisements. These ads portrayed perfectly airbrushed models that are unrealistically thin and have zero “flaws”. There are also numerous ads assuming we want and need to look like the models. They

The media and celebrities have an influence on teens and their self-esteem that cause them to undergo breast augmentation. Because of celebrities and the media, there are many reasons why a teenager might want to have this specific procedure done. Teens may undergo breast augmentation because they look up to celebrities, their classmates may tease them, and it is done so much that it is becoming the norm.

The media’s impact has a way of shaping the teenage mind in a ways that are very effective to their behavior. This behavior is not just seen with teens that live in harsh neighborhoods. These behaviors are seem in teens everywhere from every background and culture. Violence in today’s society is looked at as such a normal thing but it really has a huge effect on the violence that teenager encounter as well as a change in their cultural beliefs. Teen culture is changing in big ways as the media continues to provide more ways to show and encourage violence. The impact of the media’s view on violent crimes has a strong impact on teen culture and teen violence.