Negative Body Image In Adolescents

Advertising is an over 200$ billion industry and according to Jean Kilbourne, people are exposed to over 3000 advertisements a day. Advertisements are everywhere so there is no escaping them; they are on TV, magazines, billboards, etc. These ads tell women and girls that what’s most important is how they look, and they surround us with the image of "ideal female beauty". However, this flawlessness cannot be achieved. It’s a look that’s been created through Photoshop, airbrushing, cosmetics, and computer retouching. There have been many studies done that have found a clear link between exposure to the thin ideal in the mass media to body dissatisfaction, thin ideal internalization, and eating disorders among women. Body dissatisfaction is negative thoughts that a person has about his or her own body. Thin ideal internalization is when a person believes that thinness is equivalent to attractiveness and will lead to positive life outcomes. Less than 5% of women actually have the body type that is shown of

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.,

While these cases were obviously false, neither impacted the self-esteem of impressionable teenage girls like some of the advertisements of today. Many false advertising cases, which heavily impact teens, come from cosmetics and weight-loss supplement companies which promise immediate results. These results are fueled by the desire to have flawless skin and to be extremely thin, like the models are portrayed as in the advertisements, but what these susceptible young girls do not see is the airbrushing and photoshopping and intense editing that happens before any photos are published. The desire to be like the models in these false advertising cases has caused a spike in depression, eating disorders, and hyper-sexism in teen girls.

As a wise man once said, “To love yourself is to understand you don't need to be perfect to be good.” However young girls have so much pressure put on them to look in a way that is not only unrealistic but also unhealthy. As a result of this, young girls have a very negative body image and self-confidence.The problem is the unrealistic body standards that media and society have set for girls. According to SSCC, the average American woman is 5’4 and 140 pounds. There is a clear problem when the media is only advertising women that are 5’11 and 117 pounds, which is the average American model. Even though the body of a model is very rare and uncommon,girls are expected to look like they do. However, by promoting a positive body campaign, stopping the portrayal of fake and photoshopped models in the media, and expanding the diversity of models, we could lift unrealistic body standards and start accepting everybody as beautiful.

Body image is how a person feels toward their bodies, and how they picture what other people see them as. Stereotypes started by the media cause normal women to sometimes feel insecure. This can case eating and mental disorders. These disorders can be dismissed by people that think the victim is just seeking attention, but these problems are real. The media, magazines, advertisements, and other social practices are negatively affecting women and how they view themselves.

It is also thoughts and feelings a person experienced as a result of that perception

What is body image? A two-dimensional model of body image incorporates both perceptual and emotional components. It focuses on both how we feel about the size and shape of our bodies and how accurately we perceive our body size as well. A more recent cognitive approach suggests that body image is a complex set of cognitive schema. A schema is a grouped body of knowledge. Groups of schema are readily available for important tasks such as guiding behavior, circumstantial scripts (or dialogue), and evoking the appropriate emotional, somatic, visual, and auditory responses in certain situations. The cognitive schema for body image is an organized domain of knowledge about oneself and others.

All women should have a slim body and a big butt. All men should have washboard abs and big biceps. These are just expectations that society has built up of how one should look. Often when we don’t reach it, there are consequences of developing negative body image issues. So what is negative body image exactly? According to NEDA (Australia’s national eating disorder association), body image issue is the dissatisfaction someone may have of their body not meeting unrealistic criterias. It is the negative thoughts and emotion that result from someone’s perception of their physical self. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age this is an existing issue because we live in a world that promotes unrealistic body ideals. It becomes a challenge to not compare yourself to these ideals when you see images of instagram models floating around in your everyday life.

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

Teens who are in college have just as many problems with their body as people in high school. The media affecting people of all ages can consist of anything from people on social media, to celebrities on T.V., to the models who walk on runways. People who struggle with their body image are all over the world and are often closed off to other people. When girls look at magazines they see all of the models posing and then they compare themselves to them because the models are what society says is pretty, and they aren’t. Media is a great way for companies to get their products out there, but when adolescents compare themselves to models, they will start to have body image issues.

Body image can be defined as the picture one has in his mind about the appearance (i.e. size and shape) of his body, and the attitude that he forms toward these characteristics of his body. Thus there are two components of body image: the

Fashion articles, fitness magazines, and commercials drive a negative complex when it comes to body image in society. Studies have shown that commercialized beauty has caused muscle dissatisfaction to increase, appearance orientation to rise and positive comparisons to deplete.

According to Dictionary.com, body image is defined as “an intellectual or idealized image of what one 's body is or should be

The media is one of the leading causes of self esteem and body image issues in not only women but men as well. This is due to the fact that thousands of advertisements contain messages about physical attractiveness and beauty. Examples include: commercials for clothes, cosmetics, weight loss, hair removal, laser surgery and physical fitness. The effects of advertising on body image have been studied by researchers, psychologists, marketing professionals and more. Researchers, Mary Martin and James Gentry found that teen directed advertising negatively impacts self-esteem. The advertising industry is setting unrealistic expectations for teens about their physical appearances by using models with "perfect bodies." The modeling industry today has put many pressures on models, causing them disorders of both mental and physical illness. These disorders then creating the look of the “perfect body” have now lead to unrealistic expectations of body image for society.

Researchers are now realizing that issues with body image not only arise for older children but it begins in early childhood. For many years they have tested older children when it comes to body image but have discovered that now through play in early childhood is when children develop body awareness and want to look like the models they see in their culture. One of the first thing most children notice about body images is size, which for them positive characteristics are related to thin/small figures and negative characteristics for the larger body figures. Let’s take Barbie for instance, in the United States, she is the most popular doll every little girl wanted to have and most of all desired to look like because she was advertised as the most beautiful doll. This image put in the minds of most young girls that if they wanted to be pretty, they had to look like Barbie, small figure. According to the text book, “As early as 5 or 6 years of age, children in the United States have begun to take in the societal stereotypes Western culture offers for an ideal physique. Dissatisfaction with body image has been reported in children as young as 6 or 7 years of age (Birbeck & Drummond, 2005; Tiggmann, 2001). By age 5, children already an anti-fat bias (Smolak, 2004).”