Social Media Effects On Body Image

According to recent research, the tremendous exposure to the media has a negative impact in the consumers and their health, as well as their body image. The ideal body image that is seen by today’s society is tall, thin, muscular, and fit. It is constantly advertised in various forms of media including, such as televisions, magazines, internet, and smartphone devices, which make others feel insecure about appearance and health. The constant reinforcement of the ideal body image throughout the media negatively impacts society through self-esteem, rise of self-enhancements, and health. There are many different factors that play a role in obtaining the ideal body image that meets the society’s norm.

In today’s world everywhere you look there are images of what our society considers beautiful. Television uses pretty skinny girls for the popular TV shows, magazines use pictures of skinny women in the articles, store windows use pictures of skinny models modeling the stores clothes, and billboards use young skinny pretty models modeling jewelry or other products. In reality, these women do not look like what these pictures portray them as. These

As a little girl I had much confidence about myself and felt I looked the best from my school as well as many other girls from my school. Nowadays, many girls are pressured into being perfect in a way they feel they will never accomplish. Little girls such as ten year olds have started to show low self-esteem and hate to their body image because of the models that are being constantly promoted. As 10TV stated, “When you were 10 or 11, you probably didn’t give much thought to body image. Today, kids that age are worried more about looking like Barbie than playing Barbie.” Girls are punishing themselves with cutting, going on extreme diets, and often kill themselves because they hate themselves. Girls are also seen wearing makeup at a young age to improve their facial features and think they will now finally be accepted in society as being perfect. A recent Mintel survey showed that six out of ten seven-year-olds wear lipstick, and two in five use eyeshadows. (“Pretty-Pressure: Girls-it pays to be pretty, but not too pretty.”) So even though social media is showing off beautiful women to give good advertisement, girls are being affected by constantly feeling down and wanting to fit into society and be accepted and seen as perfect, they hate themselves for not being pretty enough as celebrities that have gone through many surgeries to get that "perfect" image, and some cases have led to issues such as depression, cutting, eating problem, and

Throughout history, of ancient civilizations to modern advertising, bodies or women have been associated as objects of beauty. Currently children are maturing faster by wearing makeup at earlier ages. Walking the streets of Manhattan and Queens i see young girls experimenting with wearing makeup and different fashion trends due to the current ads of fashion. The fashion industry today is promoting the generation of today that looks are more important than personality or skill. Eating disorders are rising to new heights day by day. Among women, feeling fat is becoming a metaphor for feeling powerless. Shockingly, girls who start wearing makeup at an early age are also at high risk of developing cancer such as breast cancer being the highest. Childhood is no longer being

Beauty is no longer defined by what a person has within themselves but what society deems valuable based on their appearance. Society and social media has vastly influenced the ways in which young girls today identify and value their selves and their bodies. Sadly this influence though is a negative one. Anorexia, bulimia, depression, and suicide are negative effects caused by the skewed image of self-perception young girls build of themselves based upon what society defines as beauty.

We all want to have a skinny, toned, tanned, perfect body. A ‘perfect body’ being created by the media and fashion industry. Frederique van der Wa, a former Victoria's Secret model, even says that the runway models today have an “unnatural thinness” and that it is not a good message to sent to “young, impressionable women.” Each year a new image of a perfect body is released and the models keep getting skinnier. This makes young women develop eating disorders. Seeing the unnaturally skinny models gives them the idea that ‘this is what we are supposed to look like.’ The media and fashion industry does contribute to eating disorders in youth and the thought of a perfect body image.

The beauty industry promotes unrealistic standards, instead of promoting body positivity and encouraging girls and boys to embrace their flaws and imperfections. Teenagers in this generation are given false impressions through media of what the “ perfect body” looks like and is putting a tremendous strain on today’s society. “ Although this has always been the case, the modern media is relentless in advertising ideal figures, represented by male and female supermodels and action heroes. The barrage of images of ultrathin women and extremely muscular men has led to a general dissatisfaction among consumers, and might be the cause of depression, low self esteem, and eating disorders”. ( Derenne, Beresin) “ in fact the media’s ideal women often

Did you know that 90% of women dislike the way they look? And it’s all because of the media and their emphasis on the “ideal” figure of a woman. Supermodels like Kate Moss and other Barbie-doll-figure-inspired women grace the cover of magazines all over the world promoting a “perfect” shape. Girls of all ages think that this is what people want to see. They think that this is what they should look like and try to set impossible goals for themselves to look like covergirls. As a result, many women in North America suffer from psychological illnesses. Among the most common are eating disorders such as Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa. Anorexia and Bulimia generally arise in young women, but may also occur in older females and occasionally in

In today's society the picture of beauty is a rail thin super model with the body of a goddess posted on billboards all around the world. Children are brought up playing with Barbie dolls with the body measurements of would be 39, 18, 38. Because of these pictures and other figures of beauties projected all over, today teenagers are convinced to believe that to be beautiful and happy they must look like these images. According to a survey by Bliss Magazine, Four in ten teenage girls have considered plastic surgery and two thirds of the 2,000 girls quizzed, average age 14, said the pressure came from celebrities with perfect bodies and boys. (BBC news)

The stringent standard Barbie-doll proportions of body image and what is considered beautiful in today’s media has resulted in devastating effects on adolescent women. The images displayed of women who have long beautiful legs, thin waist lines and smooth flawless skin are very hard to ignore. Throughout history the female body has been on display as a selling tool to coerce people into buying that new fancy car or the latest new appliance that can make their everyday lives easier. Commercials of the extremely thin Kelly Ripa can act as a mantra of what a modern day picture perfect house wife should look like standing beside her magical ovens and washing machines. There are also constant ads on

The United States of America has always had this ideal of what the perfect women should look like in today’s world has this idea that being the perfect women is the most essential inquiry in today’s world. Photographers in the fashion industry spend hours and hours editing pictures, taking off beauty marks, shrinking curves, and taking away women’s flaws, changing their looks to the ideal body we all have in our minds, completely flawless. There’s this stereotype of the white perfect girl having a slim figure, no curves, crystal clear blue eyes, ravishing silky long wavy hair, and sculptured cheekbones. This is the main reason why women have self-esteem and body image struggles. They look around at today’s supermodels and start question their true identity and if they’re enough. Eating disorders start rising from here; females try to reach a certain number in the scale and look up to a model so much that they try to copy their body figure and starve themselves until they reach that goal. Weight loss, vitamins to lose weight, diet pill and plans, and many more of these are turning into commercials streaming on TV worldwide. The rate of eating disorders has been rising since 1950 and 69% of elementary school girls that read and look at magazines have reported that these pictures do influence how they feel about their body and their ideal body image while 47% of them said these pictures make them want to lose weight and indulge in a weight loss plan. (Martin) Your identity also

Some people argue the fact that social media is a positive influence on body image and self-perceptions. The problem with that though is that there is not enough body inclusive and positive body images or messages out there at the moment, some of the few are really just ploys to sell products and others just miss the mark completely. There is the potential for this to become the norm rather than the damaging and destructive messages that are sent as of right now. When bringing up the positive side of social media the evidence used is Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” as their sole point but just one campaign isn’t enough to completely change the way social media is used. On the other end, there was the Victoria Secret “Love Your Body” campaign that used stick-thin supermodels to promote loving your body just the way it is. They didn’t want to change their branding or approach enough and ended up receiving backlash as it still perpetuated an unrealistic beauty standard. Even Lane Bryant got in the action and decided to attack Victoria Secret by launching their “I’m No Angel” campaign. Including 0-12 sized models in the campaign to promote equality between all sizes. “The advertising executives at Lane Bryant may believe the body-positive message behind the campaign, but they're still hawking a product at the end of the day. And there's something disingenuous about fabricating cultural talking points to sell bras” (Crocker).

Beauty is a concept that can be different everywhere, but it has changed heaps of times in America’s history. There are a multitude of videos and articles that show trends have changed over the years, and the second someone is on a fashion magazine, consumers flock to look exactly like the models on the cover. Everyone wants to look like Kim Kardashian or the hottest Instagram model with a thin waist, ample breasts and a large rear end. This can lead to a whole slow of issues with young girls and boys viewing these people and wanting to look like them, and they will accomplish whatever they can to look like these people. Beauty trends and body trends cause a negative outlook that the people, chiefly teens, have of ourselves, depression, and the thought that there is a need to look a certain way to be beautiful.

The ‘standard of beauty’ and ‘body image’ are everywhere; magazines, TV ads, Newspapers. 8 out of 10 of the most popular magazines in America promote weight loss tips or secret to losing weight. Instagram and Snapchat news feeds are flooded of daily exercise routines or meal plans with skinny toned individuals promoting them. It is so rare now a days, to see an ‘imperfect’ person advertising anything. Instead, we have models with flawless skin, long legs and toned abs. These unrealistic images that we encounter everyday, is what creates out desire to be skinny and perfectly toned, eventually developing a sense of self-destruct. Studies show that 70% of normal weighted women in America want to be thinner along side with 34% of men that are dissatisfied with their body.

As far back as I can remember, ever since I started puberty to my teenage years, thinness has been considered and perceived as the “ideal” and optimum standard of beauty. Thin models, especially female models, are everywhere you look. This particular look of taught skin and bones and the depiction of a women whose measurements fall far from the category of what we consider to be healthy and “normal”, is what dominates our society’s perception of beauty today. Eating disorders and our culture’s obsession with weight loss and its pressure to conform to an ideal standard of beauty are everywhere you look. They have inserted their way into our televisions, the foods we eat, the magazines we read, tv commercials, and even on the plastic mannequins that we see in our favorite clothing stores. Growing up as a child who was overweight and struggled for most of my high school years trying to achieve an ideal standard of thinness, is one of the many reasons why this topic is interesting to me.