Teenage Girls, the Media and Self-Image Essay

In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of

From the time they are born, girls are influenced by society as to who they should be, how they should look, and how they should act. Americans believe that women should be to a certain standard; pretty, feminine, and especially, thin. The pressures derive from family, media, and friends. Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll” depicts a girl who was never recognized for her character and spent her life trying to be accepted for who she was, rather than how she looked.

FOA – Representation of teenagers rebelliousness and the stereotypes that are associated with them through the media?

Media has become a significant component within society. While media provides many pros, it supplies various cons as well. One very prominent fault that the significance of media has is its visual depiction of women. There is an abundance of media portraying women to have ideal bodies, and this undoubtedly has a negative effect on adolescent girls. Two of the many effects of media on females are depression and self esteem issues, as well as eating disorders. Unfortunately, body dissatisfaction caused by media is becoming more and more common.

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

Teens are the most targeted by marketers because they are the age group that is mostly on their phones and online. The impact of today’s advertisement in the media and magazines is that life is perfect. Celebrities and persons of interest are portrayed as ideal people that many should want to be. Adolescents are heavily influenced by advertisement and their messages they send. sSxuality and body image has always been advertised, however, in today’s society it is increasing every day. For girls, perfect hair, perfect body, accessories, and trendy clothes are consistently marketed. As girls aspire to be like their favorite celebrities, they may do whatever is necessary to reach what they think is perfection. Their desire to get the have a great

The Netflix documentary Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom explores how the media contributes to influence the young girls and boys in America. Every day in America we are showed this unrealistic look of what the so-called perfect image of women is supposed to be from the TV shows we watch, the movies we see, to the magazines we read, to the online social media outlets we visit. This documentary shows the negative effects it's having on teenage boys and girls in America, Miss Representation interweaves between the stories of teenage girls, telling their own experiences and how the media has portrayed the image of women to them. They share their stories from pressures they feel they have to live up too from how the media shows them

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

Using the Social Structure and Personality perspective (SSP), we can view the media as an agent of socialization, a nexus between adolescent girls and society’s expectations of how the “ideal” adolescent girl (and/or woman) is supposed to look and behave by society’s standards. The Social Structure and Personality perspective states that our position in the strata affects our individual experiences and characteristics (Rohall, Milkie, and Lucas 2014:38-44). In this sense, we can correlate

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

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.

Reading Chapter 11: Gendered media reminded me why I majored in communications. The media has such a significant influence on all our lives. I wanted to be a part of that influence and to ultimately help turn the way society portrays people. The media’s influence can get into a person’s subconscious, and unwillingly it will control how we think and what we view as important. I would like to think I am not effected by the media, but I am. I tend to not settle for local news, I always make the effort to stay current on what is going on a global scale through different media outlets. With the rise of fake news I am constantly forced to question these sources and the agenda behind these new stories. It hurts me that in the United States we focus

Adolescence is a time where an individual’s sense of identity starts to emerge and a majority of their social norms are perceived. In this day and age, adolescents live in a world heavily submerged around media, which plays an important and habitual part of an adolescents' life. In a national survey conducted in 2009, adolescents on average spend more than 7.5 hours using some sort of media a day (Rideout, Foehr, Roberts, 2010). With this unprecedented access to the world, individuals are learning and connecting with many different people and ideas through the media (Brown & Bobkowsi, 2011). With different forms of media playing an influential part in an adolescents’ life, their perceived social norms may be seriously influenced.

The final magazine I will be examining is Marie Claire. This is another publication aimed at a more mature audience, with a deeper focus on beauty through materialism. Like Complete Woman, it contains more explicit sexual detail and a more serious focus on relationships. Also, because of its abundance of advertisements of expensive cosmetics and clothing, we may assume that this magazine is class-specific to a wealthier consumer. Marie Claire’s cover stories include “What Your Style Says About You”, “How to Get Perfect Skin: 44 Products that Really Work”, “How Often Do You Have Sex?”, “Men: What They Don’t Want You To Do”, and “428 Fashion and Beauty Ideas”.

I open up the “hottest” teen magazines on the market; Allure, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and Teen Vogue are a few at the top. As I flip through the magazine this holiday season I see pages of clothes that only the rich can afford, pictures of half-naked people draped over each other, articles about horoscopes and editorials talking about which teen star is the sexiest. Fashion, makeup, men, sex, celebrities, and exercising are the most popular topics I see as I peruse these magazines. These popular magazines take no time to tell me how beautiful I am, but only tell me the hundreds of things I need to do to improve. They tell me that I need more new, expensive makeup to look like a movie star. These magazines teach me how to seduce a man, but