The Bad Guy, or Not? Social Media Influence on Self-Perception

Malcolm X, a civil rights activist, stated that “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have to power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses.” Unfortunately, some people lose their lives trying to get an “ideal body.” From the article “NYC Girls Project - Media and Girls,” this organization conducted a study in 2010 that stated that “63 percent of girls think the body image represented by the fashion industry is unrealistic and 47% think it’s unhealthy. Due to these reasons and others, the media influences individuals in a negative way because of how it reinforces racial/gender stereotypes.

Mass media is effective in teaching us what we “should” look like. Women should be thin. Men should be muscular. The skinny and muscular ideals portrayed in advertising encourage men and women to look a certain way. The depiction of the female ideal has helped shaped society’s perspectives about beauty. The media pushes you to “improve your body” by buying their products but soon the road to a skinny and toned body leads to a self destructive path of self hatred. The powerful ideas that the media transmits through words, images, and movement can have lasting impacts on the human brain, affecting how we think and

In fact, media is contributing to many false advertisements and unrealistic images that cause eating disorders. Media gives us these false beauty standards by making teens think they have to be thin and tall. Meanwhile, many teens want to be like the models and they try to be thin but instead of doing it the healthy way. The way they do it is to skip meals and that develops eating disorders. For instance, Arnett says, “Marketing and advertisement agencies focus on models such as tall, thin women or a muscular man with a chiseled jawbone when casting for photo shoots and television commercial” (265.) Therefore, we experience and seen is that the media do give us a false beauty standard which makes teens want to do everything that is possible to become like models. This has contributed

“If we want to understand what is going on in our society in the 21st century, we have to understand media” (Newsom). Considering statistics publicized throughout the documentary, it is recorded that around 53 percent of girls in the age of 13 are displeased with their physiques. When they get to the age of 17, that number is augmented to 78 percent. This is a quarter percent increase in comparison, of kids not being content with who they are and their appearances. It is roughly projected that around two-thirds of females, girls and women similarly, have an eating disorder (Chicago Tribune). In addition, statistics are presented throughout the film to illustrate how much media has impacted the lives of many people. Since media is basically

Media is a significant force in modern culture, particularly in America. Sociologist refer to this as a mediated culture where media reflects and created culture. Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources. These messages promote not only products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is and is not important. The messages that the media portray are conflicting and it is impossibly hard to achieve both messages since one is orientated toward fast food consumption and the other it orientated toward an extremely thin ideal. Many researchers have hypothesized that the media may play a central role in creating and intensifying the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction and consequently,

The largest forms of media we encounter in our daily lives are the advertisements and commercials we see on TV, the Internet and in magazines. One of the key strategies used to reinforce the feminine image is to depict every woman to be “thin.” This strategy is used all over the media and this depiction of “women should be thin” is negative. For example, “Seventeen” magazine, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario is featured on the cover captioning, “Get an insane body – It’s hard, but you’ll look hot.” This idea that the media is portraying to all women and girls is publicized wrongly. Everyone thinks that being thin is hot and if you are not thin, you don’t belong to society. However, this happens because women and girls are too taken away by getting slim,

Images in the media are extremely powerful and affect the way women think about themselves and about their body. Hilary Rowland, author of “Media Images Are Unrealistic” states how the images shown everyday cause women to “feel insecure about their own bodies” even if they don't have anything to be ashamed of. It is evident that the media displays unrealistic images of beauty causing girls to feel insecure about their bodies and creates a false perception of how they should look. Due to this, women obsess so much over looking just like the “idealized” woman in the media that they create an obsession of losing weight because of lack of confidence. In the article, “The Media Drives Young Girls to Diet” by Jessica Hendrick, we see how women “diet obsessively” trying to “emulate the popular notion of beauty” that is being shown in the media.

Therefore, the commendation of such look and shape commercializes unhealthy body image and procreates eating disorders. Unfortunately, at present the commercialism of a perfect body is encountered by almost everyone on everyday basis. The public is bombarded daily with images of glamorously thin women in commercials, on billboards, in movies in magazines and etc?According to Melanie Katzman, a consultant psychologist from New York, the media has actively defined the thin ideal as success and treats the body as a commodity. (Rhona MacDonald, 2001) It is evident that the persistent advocating of the media and the society produced a constant pursuit of thinness, which became a new religion. A study conducted by Harvard researchers has revealed the effect of media and magazines on adolescent girls in high schools. The children were exposed to fashion magazines and television commercials, and a while after were given self-rating surveys. The study found that sixty-nine percent of the girls said that magazine pictures

People may say that while media is the root of the problem, the media itself cannot be stopped. But, if we take the spotlight and place it on media, we are allowing the effects to be unlimited. While media does play a part in causing negative body image disorders, Media is the easy blame for body image problems. By putting the blame on media, America fails to understand the body disorders and the complexity behind them because you can't stop the media but you can stop or try to understand the reasons that lead to feeling body

The Media has a big impact on Body Image is because we can see what celebrities or the cool kids like and we want to look like them because we won’t get bully and look at wried when we are going out, a school or work. This quote from National Eating Disorders Collaboration “The way you feel about your body is your affective body image. This relates to the amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction you feel about your shape, weight and individual body parts.” In this quote it is telling us it how we see our body. When we see the skinny kids in the TV shows or movies we think if we stop eating we will lose weight and look like that but we won’t because out body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs so it will hold on to that fat. The media makes us think that we are

The research question of this Psychology Extended Essay is “What is the Extent of the Media’s Influence Regarding Eating Disorders?” To further investigate this question, I researched what the media is and what it does, how people are affected by the media and many different studies and experiments. Through the use of several sources, mostly online and experiments, I was able to learn exactly what the media does to possibly be considered an influence on the development of eating disorders. I was able to find a multitude of experiments and studies deciding whether or not women are actually influenced by what the media has to say about body image. While typing this paper, I realized that, of course, the media was not the only

The media is guilty for causing body dissatisfaction among teenagers by promoting and advertising an idea that skinny, tall, and fair equals beautiful. Most of the women in this survey believed that the only beauty was the one that the media portrays. We live in a millennial age where technology and the media has a great influence on people in general, who is to blame for the insecurities that these younger women have when the media “beauty” is shoved down their throat

The findings found in the article Influence of Mass Media on Body Image and Eating Disordered Attitudes and Behaviors in Females: A Review of Effects and Processes by Lopez Guimera was the following, the cross-sectional studies found "that greater use of the mass media specifically fashion magazines and television music video shows is significantly correlated...with higher levels of body dissatisfaction and with higher scores on eating disorder" (Lopez-Guimera, 2010, p. 392). It was also found in the longitudinal prospective studies that the "greater exposure to the messages conveyed by media, particularly those that transmit messages in relation to thin ideal and how to achieve it from magazines, television, and radio, the more likely females are to develop disordered eating behaviors and concerns about weight" (Lopez-Guimera, 2010, p. 401). In which the article The effect of the media on body satisfaction in adolescent girls by Helen Champion and Adrian Furnham found that adolescent girls were unsatisfied with their body image, in which they felt a societally, or self imposed or both to be thinner/become thinner (Champion, H., & Furnham, A.,

When thinking of how the media can manipulate your idea of what a perfect body is, it makes since that it is the blame for women having eating disorders.

Within the media people start to compare themselves to whatever the perfect body type is that is shown on the cover of the magazine. In an interview, Hannah Smoot was asked if body shaming has affected her in any way. Smoot responded with, “Yeah. Because I am a bigger girl. I’d say, pressure from media has affected my self esteem. But, I’ve never had face to face confrontation, but I know they say it behind my back...” Smoot’s statement explains how media can affect how a person views themselves. In the article, “Why are People Unhappy with Their Bodies?”, the author states, “With these media images and body ideals, it’s little wonder that women and men feel inadequate, ashamed, and dissatisfied with how they look.” Before this, the author explained how unhealthy it would be if everyone was the ideal image the media portrays. The author explained the health risks this unhealthy image would pertain. But, people still tend to want to reflect what the media says is perfect.In, “Fat Talk and Your Self Image”, the the author enhances the idea of how unfair the media’s image is by stating, “ Women’s body image, however, seems to be more vulnerable to media portrayals of the “perfect” female form.” The media actively changes how people perceive the body. With photoshop being actively used within the media, people will start to body shame themselves. Which, due to media, is becoming more prevalent.