Objectification In Mass Media

Depression is when an individual has feelings of hopelessness and has very little energy to accomplish tasks; many people have tremendous trouble sustaining an interest in life. In today’s culture, girls have become more depressed in adolescence compared to boys (Stice and Bearman). One of the major influences on why girls are frequently more depressed than boys, is that girls struggle to obtain the perfect body in their own eyes. Findings show that, compared to teen boys, teen girls have higher body shame. Fifty-three percent of adolescent girls reported being dissatisfied with their body after the study (Knauss). Low-self esteem, combined with depression, can potentially be very dangerous for young women.

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.

The media is our source of constant information, and is presented in many forms such as, daily newscasts, social media like Facebook, and the magazines strategically placed in our doctor’s office. There is no surprise that it is also the dominant influence when it comes to society’s beauty standard either. Unfortunately media isn’t a positive influence all the time, and is the main force behind negative body image epidemic that plagues women, especially the 18-25 age group. In order to fully understand the severity of what some call a “Vanity” issue we must look into the facts of how exactly the media damages women’s perception of their own bodies, and then observe the extent of the damage done to the physical and mental states of these women

To be sociologically mindful is to look for patterns in the society, observe all sides of the social life, ask questions, and seek answers. Being sociologically mindful can lead us to looking into matters that are complex and allow us the opportunity to understand the mechanism behind the division of our society. Race and gender seems to be the most obvious divide lines for this society. While race can sometimes be overlooked in society, discrimination based on gender is hardly absent, whether consciously or unconsciously, on the behaviors of society. In such a society that values masculinity, being born a male is like a rain check to so many privileges in life. In return, this social

There has been a growing trend of hypersexualization of women over the span of all forms of media. The women within these images are made to look perfectly flawless. They are extremely thin without a trace of fat or cellulite to be found. The people who consume this media are exposed to the idea that the women they are observing are models for true physical beauty. These standards are accompanied by an alternate message from the media that pushes the idea that women’s value comes from their beauty. While some women may understand that the messages about the ideal woman are unrealistic and false, it is found that adolescent girls are vulnerable to the media’s strategies due to their lack of media literacy as well as the search for their own identity during this developmental stage in their lives. The exposure to these standards of beauty can have several negative effects on the girls such as lower self-esteem, higher body dissatisfaction, depression, and eating disorders. SPARK and 4 Every Girl are two of a growing number of campaigns that are working to fight against the sexualized images of women in the media and the negative effects it can have on the viewers.

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.

As a result of many cultural factors, self-objectification has become a common trend for many women and girls. Self-objectification is defined by Caroline Heldman in her article as “…viewing one’s body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze” (52). Although there have been successes for the women’s movement, self-objectification has increased, in part, because of backlash against their progress. Not only is self-objectification a constant mental state for many women and girls, but it is reinforced by the powerful influences of popular culture, including advertisements, television shows, and films. These sources place added pressure on women to see themselves through the eyes of men, forcing them to be aware of their physical appearance

The media, today, continues to falsely portray the image of the ideal woman. This misrepresentation adversely affects the self-esteem of women and young girls. After evaluating their physical appearances and comparing them to edited pictures, females develop unrealistic expectations of how they should appear physically to others. This misconception can cause great concern about their bodies and very low self-esteem. Young girls will abuse their bodies by starving themselves to be thinner and properly proportioned according to society’s expectations. Body Dysphoria has become a growing concern in very young girls because of unrealistic images of women. The media also seems to have no concern of the images they are displaying of men. In magazines

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.

　　　Being constantly bombarded with these images of false perfection causes girls to have low self esteem. A persons body image is closely related to their self-esteem (Huebscher, 2014). During adolescence is when girls bodies go through puberty and they gain more body fat (Rierdan, Koff, 1997). During this time the rates of depression in adolescence increase (Rierdan, Koff, 1997). According to Huebscher paper,"concerns about the body have been documented as widespread among female populations, with adolescence considered an especially vulnerable period

In society, female’s views on themselves have changed tremendously. Their perspectives have always been to look like others whom they admire, one example of which includes Marilyn Monroe in the 1950's. Women admired her greatly for being curvy and having a perfect figure (Fought). However, in the current culture, girls and women are going to great lengths in order to become the person that they imagine themselves as being. With this being said, they can develop eating disorders and depression because they want to get to their desired self image. These girls are losing their perspective of that if they want to look like a model, they will be affecting their health. Although American culture is continuously changing, by creating more positive

Another article, “Effects of Sexually Objectifying Media on Self-Objectification and Body Surveillance in Undergraduates: Results of a 2-year panel study focuses on investigating the objectification of women’s body parts. The theory used here was the objectification theory where individuals values themselves based only on their physical appearance and not intellectual or emotional qualities. In this theory, looks are what really only matter. The methodology that was used included young women arranging and unscrambling sentences with purely physical and body related words like hotness, skinny, etc. The reports showed that even doing simple task as reading and mixing up sentences causes women to feel self-conscious and

Article One. An impressive set of researchers, Antonios Dakanalis, Giuseppe Carrà, Rachel Calogero, Roberta Fida, Massimo Clerici, Maria Assunta Zanetti, and Giuseppe Riva, hypothesized that societal standards of beauty are leading to self-objectification and subsequent eating disorders. Specifically, there experiment attempts to answer the question of whether the internalization of media-idealized images result in negative body images and self-objectification among middle adolescents that can lead to eating disorders (Dakanalis et al., 2014, p. 1). The question is interesting because it aims to measure the possible physical health risk factors resulting from

Females of all ages come under immense pressure from the media, friends, partners and even parents to maintain a great body shape. The body images portrayed in the media can then push a female to go on a diet to begin a journey to gaining a similar body shape like that of the model, but low self-esteem and lack of confidence generally contributes to any issues or difficulties in life; workplace or school, relationships etc. to which can make an individual extremely unhappy and vulnerable. Research shows depression, low self-esteem and the development of eating disorders can be related to the unrealistic, unachievable body images exposed through the mass media.

The hyper-sexualization of women is beginning to start disturbingly young. Young girls are becoming increasingly aware of their body image through the image of models in advertising and image-centered ideals portrayed in the media. Researchers have proven that advertising and media all do indeed have negative influences on young girls’ self-esteem, body image and ideas of self worth. Unfortunately, this constant consciousness is pushing young girls to seek unhealthy behaviors such as eating disorders. At least 30 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder, just in the United States.