Medias Ideal Body Image

To be frank, I also once had a view that only people who are skinny can be considered as beautiful. However, there is one incidence that changes my perception on the idea of what is the meaning of beauty and ‘perfect’ body. When I was in high school, I had a best friend named Alice—she was chubby and curvy. She was so obsessed with the America’s next top model shows. One day she expressed her desire to lose weight to me and I supported her. She also said that her boyfriend asked her to lose some weight to be more beautiful. She said that she really wants to look like the models and also to fulfill her boyfriend’s wish. After three months, she was hospitalized and I was so shocked with that news. She was hospitalized because there was something wrong with her intestines caused by her unhealthy diet. When I went to visit her, she looked very different—she looked sunken and sick. Begin on that day; I realized that it is really impossible to be like the models that we see everyday in the media and I also afraid on how good media is in order to distort society’s idea of beauty.

In our society, we tell little girls to love and to be true to oneself. As they grow up, this message begins to disappear because our culture contradicts this idea. As girls enter the world, they are already confined with how the media set unrealistic standards for the female population. This leads girls to harm their own body, including eating disorders such as bulimia, and anorexia. The most prominent cause of these acts is advertisements. Advertisements are everywhere and they have the power to promote, sell, encourage, and give unrealistic ideals of the common people. Advertisements and media images have a negative effect on the way women view their body image which leads to self-harm.

The media has become a powerful source for changes in our society. There are so many factors and reasons for our society changing. Today I find most people obsessively worried about their body image. We all have a body and at one time or another, we worry about it. Women and men are both being affected by media sources such as television, advertising, magazines, music, and video games; not to mention the photo manipulation that goes along with it all. Questions can be asked; such as, “Is this the way our society should be leaning [obsessing over our bodies]? What could happen from here? Are there any solutions?”

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.

There are no questions to whether the media has influenced the self-consciousness people have on their body or not. Whether it is the front of a magazine cover or in a film or television show, the selection of models or actors are primarily thin or fit leading readers and viewers to worry or want to change the way their body looks. Body image is the way one sees oneself and imagine how one looks. Having a positive body image means that most of the time someone sees themselves accurately, and feels comfortable in their body; negative body image, what the media exemplifies for the majority of the time, is just the opposite. The media uses unrealistic standards of beauty and bodily perfection to drive ordinary people to be dissatisfied with their body image which can result in the search to obtain these unreachable goals.

In todays society media has many different represtionations of womens body ideals and they are portrayed in many different ways. The majority of body images are female and represented with negative connotations. Women are plasteted on billboards magazine covers and play an very important role in the way young women are viewed and how they feel they should look. Through out this essay I will look how media has such a massive impact on our lives and the power it has to control the ideals of young women and how the industries with in the use of media are exploting women of today and how they are benifitting from it to make multibillion companys with out the a second thought to the explotation and harm it is causing to our socity and health with in the new generorations. I will also explore how some organistions are fighting against this ideal and how this is creating a more healthy view of women and challenging what we have had drummed into since an early age.

Mental health is a big part of obesity many children are suffering from disorders like depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and even suicide attempts. With the way media portrays body image today it is hard for a child to not get discouraged. Women in magizes are photo shopped and air brushed to look as skinny as possible, men are photo shopped and air brushed to look toned and fit. Young men, women and children look at these photos and see an unrealistic person. With that they set unrealistic goals and end up harming themselves in the end. By forming eating disorders and mental disorders, eating disorders by trying to archive a body type that is not real and mental disorders by looking at the results of not having that body type. Children

The issue of distorting body image in the media and its effects on people is not a new concept to modern time. There is a long history of body image’s powerful place in society because of people’s impressions of each other based on body image. Research has been done on the effects and outcomes of this issue. Recently, consumers have fought with the media to try and achieve a safer way to spread information and let these media outlets be successful without having severe impacts on adolescents especially, among other age groups. The general ethical principle that the stakeholders use in this fight is similar to utilitarianism, because each stakeholder believes they are bringing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The stakeholders

Body image remains to be a very controversial topic in today’s society, because of how easy it is to become a hate crime over a small comment on how small or big someone’s body is. Today, it is unavoidable to see the look that it seems society wants us to look. Professor Susan Bordo writes the article, “Never Just Pictures”, describing her investigation between the media and its effects on how people view their bodies. She uses ethos, logos, and pathos to bring in the attention of the people, in order to get her message across to be aware of media and how they portray the ideal body image. Bordo notes the patterns of the different types of models that magazines and commercial ads use, to say that even though they have changed the face of beauty, they never really changed the body of it. And she analyzes the affects that these ads have on how people view their bodies, and alter what the ‘ideal’ body image is. Bordo uses other sources to prove her argument mainly allowing readers to have more reasons to side with her argument. Having reviewed this article, I think that we should publish this article in the Shorthorns, because it will attract the attention of most people, since right now young people still struggle with differentiating between what is a real body and what is a body that has been altered for the likes of what the media likes.

Today’s culture has placed women across the globe in a position where they are constantly flooded with idealistic images that depict what the media perceives as the “perfect body.” Quite often, young university-attending females, those who are involved in social identity formation, are exposed to numerous forms of media that fabricate various experiences relative to body image. In the past, researchers have surveyed women who are exposed to body-related standards using multiple forms of mass media as a unified entity, which has caused for limitations since each means -such as magazine advertisements- differs in relation to how a thin idealistic image is portrayed. In light of prior research, Harper and Tiggman established that

I agree with how the media depicts the body image because it is just a tool that was created by humans. It is always improving every day, every hour to convey to users with the desire as real as possible. It only does follows the idea or purpose of an individual or group of people, such as it describes in detail outside and inside the body image to serve the medical or entertainment industries. On the user side, we only select, track what is considered to be a good and match for us.

Although it is not easy to admit, there is a hidden pleasure in watching stick-thin models parade down the runway wearing the newest and hottest lingerie. As secretly amusing as this may be, should we really be supporting industries that make their revenue by exploiting women’s bodies in the media? Companies such as Victoria's Secret spend large amounts of money each year broadcasting these types of images on TV, in magazines, and on billboards. With the widespread access to media that exists today, Victoria’s Secret’s target audience is very large. In this paper, I will prove that the body image portrayed by Victoria Secret in the media changes body image ideals in society, supports racial stereotypes, and causes confidence issues in young women.

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.

How can you determine what body image should be? The desire for the perfect body has been prevalent throughout society for a vast majority of time. What makes teenage girls feel the need to strive for this “perfect body”? Some have asked, “…a rapidly growing body of research addresses the question of whether body perfect ideals in the mass media are a core risk factor for negative body image, particularly in women” (Dittmar, Helga)

Media such as the internet, broadcasting, and publishing is a way to express opinions and keep up to date with the latest fashion trends. While these trends continue to go on, new trends are thought of, the trends may be a little tricky to keep up with even for celebrities. While the thought of being perfect for society, cause many adolescents to breakdown for following the false beliefs of society. Some people may use the media to be updated on important news. On the other hand, others believe the media is a horrible setting, resulting in adolescent to do whatever it takes to become just like them, poisoning their minds to become something they are not. The media produces bad influences for body image and messes with adolescents’ minds.