Teens Need Positive Body Images Essay

Starting young, adolescent girls around the world are becoming self-conscious due to society’s influence upon what they should and shouldn’t look like. Many argue that The Barbie Doll plays a key influence in what young girls assume their bodies should look like. However, some will argue that the Barbie Doll toy is a good role model for young children, especially girls, because of her career choices, how she’s depicted in her movies, and her overall personality.

Young Women tend to feel that if they are not as skinny and beautiful as the women portrayed on television that they will be bullied or harassed by peers, for the lack of not following the rules of an “ideal” society. Bullying has become a large factor between peers over body image. It is what is called “The Mean Girls Effect”. Students are harassed by their peers because their are not the same size as them. Body image at a young age changes the outlook on young teens futures. If they are slightly overweight they are seen as “pudgy” or “thick”. Peer judgement is destructive to the self satisfaction of female adolescents. Many girls do not perceive their bodies as normal because of unrealistic, extremely thin images illustrated in the media. Reality is that the impractical images portrayed on the internet and in media has changed the “real” image of what women appear to be.

On top of this, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures and runway models influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (only 5% of the female population naturally has the body type portrayed as ideal in advertisement). This is obviously a problem because, growing up, girls everywhere are told that they’re pretty and that being pretty is the most important thing about them and they start basing their worth on their looks. But then, every single woman they see on TV, in movies, in magazines, any woman considered “hot” and “beautiful” doesn’t look like them anymore, which brings on deadly disorders like anorexia and bulumia that wreck the lives of young girls. Since 90% of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25, we should be asking ourselves “what is causing my child to develop destructive habits at such a young age?” The answer is that they’ve been told that the type of body

In fact, “...Barbie is so exceptionally thin that her weight and her body proportions are not only unattainable but also unhealthy”( Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). This fact creates potentially dangerous situation for young girl to be influenced to emulate an unattainable body type. One particular research study conducted by Helga Dittmar, Emma Halliwell, and Suzanne Ive in 2006, found out that young girls, ages 5 to 8-years-old, who were exposed to Barbie, experienced self-esteem and body issues. “This is the first study in which an experimental exposure paradigm has been used with young children, thus offering a methodologically rigorous examination of Barbies as a cause of girls’ feeling of unhappiness with their bodies and their desire to be thinner” (Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). When 162 U.K girls, ages 5 to 8, were given picture books with either no pictures of bodies whatsoever, images of Barbies, or images of Emme (a doll with realistic body proportion), they young girls who looked at the books were more unhappy with their body image than those girls who read Emme or non body books (Diep par.4-5). Their study did not find these same finding in the oldest girl, however the evidence that Barbie is not influencing this younger population of girls, still points to the need for some type of change as this early pattern of looking up to an unrealistic body image

Being a woman of twenty, I know how much this can affect young girls. Body image influences are everywhere, social media, television, magazine and unfortunately for us, the current presidential election. Kim, Kim and Moon describe body image as “a plastic, constantly changing concept, continually modified by bodily growth, trauma, or decline, and significantly influenced by the ever-changing interaction with the social environment” (Kim, Kim, Moon 2011). This is an extremely true statement for young girls in today’s society. With the shows on television today and social media such as Instagram and Facebook, everyone is forced to be at their peak physical fitness and look their best all the time. The only way someone can achieve a realistic body image is when their self perceived body weight is the same as their current body weight. An unrealistic body image is the result of their self perceived body weight being different than their current weight (Kim, Kim, Moon 2011). What some people fail to realize is how deeply body image can affect a persons emotional being. Having an unrealistic body image can cause people to contract eating disorders, emotional issues, anxiety, low self esteem and finally, depression (Kim, Kim, Moon 2011). These feelings can cause suicidal thoughts and behaviors especially in young adults. Multiple studies have presented evidence that adolescents who commit suicide are more likely to have different body attitudes than those who do not, though it is not always the case(Kim, Kim, Moon

Today’s society raises young women to conform to archaic practices with total disregard towards a child self-progression. In Barbie Doll poem by Marge Piercy it is portrayed a young girl who was attacked by society because of having unruly features on her appearance and body. To make clear, Piercy uses the title “Barbie Doll” in her poem to symbolize the cultural American traditions of making young girls live in a fairy tale world; where everything they see or do is perfect. The girl in this poem played with Barbie toys since she was little, but when she reached her puberty people started to criticize her of having imperfections on her face and body; which made her commit a really wrong decision for herself. In today’s society there are a large number of women having plastic surgery, because they do not feel comfortable or confident with their own appearances. Women are not just beauty queens and home makers; they should retreat from female stereotypes at a young age so they do not confront society pressure.

The portrayal of women in the media is destroying positive body image in young girls. According to Sarah Grogan, body image is “a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings about his or her body”. The media sends the message, from very early on, that what is most important is the way women look to the heterosexual male gaze, and that their value and their worth depends on that. It is easy to understand that the media perpetuates an unattainable beauty standard, but what is more difficult is realising how that affects our adolescents.

Since the rise of mass media in America throughout the 20th century, the idea of feminine beauty has changed significantly, especially women’s body shape. American visual media has always been guilty of promoting the current “ideal” women’s body shape, despite these body shapes being virtually impossible for the average American woman to achieve. By analyzing the way that the “ideal” women’s body shape in America has changed, it becomes clear how the media has always kept a tight grasp on the American woman’s individuality. Between 1900 and 1910, popular culture made way for the “Gibson Girl,” who was created by the iconic artist Charles Dana Gibson.

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

Todays society has been raised to idolize unrealistic body figures; which in turn, causes harm to women’s lives through their low self esteem, as well as eating disorders, and earning less income for obese working women. Every little girls dream toy when they are young, is to own one, if not many, Barbie dolls. What many parents do not know, or think about, is they are setting their child up for a long battle of self doubt, and low self esteem. Children, without knowing it, look at Barbie and think that is what they should look like, but in reality Barbie is an unrealistic figure. If Barbie was real, she would be about five feet, nine inches tall, and one hundred and ten pounds.

Due to young women being constantly indoctrinated by being told how to look and act, it is no surprise that effects on a young woman’s body-image are primarily psychological. Within the group of young women, adolescent girls are targeted when it comes to thin-ideals and negative body-images. Throughout many psychological studies, it has been noted that this is because a young girl’s body is going through many psychological and physiological changes that make them more vulnerable to a negative body-image. Bell and Dittmar describe why adolescent girls are more defenseless by saying, “ During adolescence, a primary psychological task faced is that of identity formation, and being socially accepted by one’s peers becomes

74% of girls say they are under pressure to please everyone. 98% of girls feel there is an immense amount of pressure from society to look a certain way. 92% of young girls would like to change something about the way they look. 53% of American girls age thirteen are unhappy with their bodies which ends up growing to 78% by the time girls reach the age of seventeen. (CITE) The pressure towards young girls that comes from society to act and look a certain way can become overwhelming which in turn creates deep emotional issues. Today there are too many instances where young girls are bullied due to these unattainable standards. In the poem by Marge Piercy titled “Barbie Doll” she shows how a young girl who is

Today, people seem to be judged on outward appearance more than ever. The people who face this judgement the most are young women. With the constant bombardment of beauty standards that must be met, many young women turn towards the advice of magazines. However, most of us don’t recognize the perfect girl on the cover, she’s supposedly the product of listening to the magazine’s advice. However, to the dismay of many young women, she is pure fiction, edited beyond realistic expectation, and yet our young women are expected to emulate this image. The result of such pressures can prove to be too much to handle and young women often resort to pathogenic dieting and experience body image and eating disorders. The increase in mental health disorders associated with body image in teen girls attributed to the unrealistic standards set in magazines targeted toward young women, therefore magazines need to use images that reflect the realities of the target audience and should not be heavily edited.

As a child and even an adult now, I have constantly heard “you’re so skinny. You need some meat on your bones. Do you eat?” In today’s society, children as young a five experience negative comments and thoughts about their body image. According to an article written by Olivia Ferguson and Hayley Mitchell Haugen, entitled “The Sexualization of Girls Is Harmful”, “in child beauty pageants, girls as young as five wear fake teeth, make-up, and hair extensions” (np). They are purposely motivated by their parents to flirt with the audience by batting their false eyelashes and walk with their hands on their hips. As stated in the same article, “the sexual, ideal body image of a woman comes from the media and marketing” (np). Shows, movies, magazines, and music videos usually portray the ideal woman as being fit, in “perfect shape”, beautiful skin, and long, healthy hair. This article suggests that “the average child views over six hours of media per day” (np). Actually, in sports, “female athletes are more likely portrayed as sexual objects than male athletes” (np). Women are considered, by men, sexual at an early age. They try to make themselves look “perfect” just to please a

Jo Spence’s photo “How Do l Begin to Take Responsibility for My Body?” opens discussions on views on the ideal body, by demonstrating different parts of a woman’s figure being marked by each word of the own question she raises to her audience. In addition to several photos, Jo Spence includes a black and white image of herself, sitting naked in front of a mirror with what looks like a gun pointed against her chin. Upon seeing that one discolored image, I immediately felt the impact that her photos had on me, along with the message she was trying to portray through her photography. Society has consistently maintained the candid norm that an idealistic body is nothing short of a young, thin, and firm figure, otherwise known as the “Barbie Complex.”