The Effects of Media on Women's Self Esteem Essay

Self-esteem is a global evaluative dimension of the self and determines if you are satisfied with certain aspects of your life. For example, your appearance, your personality, your abilities and your relationship with others. The media is a powerful source of tool to manipulate adolescents that portrays unrealistic images that affect the way they feel about themselves. I believe that the social media does affect the self-esteem of adolescent’s due to self-image.

“We tend not to write women as human beings. It’s cartoons we’re making.” - Paul Haggis. This is a quote that was explored in Miss Representation that especially impacts me. The impact of media on women and men is immense. Media shapes the way the genders view each other and themselves and therefore has the power to dictate how humans act, how they feel, and tell them what they want. I feel that with the constant, unregulated bombardment of media demonstrating the unrealistic and unfair treatment of the women, it’s not crazy to think that young women are harming themselves to fit these roles. The media being uncensored leads to harmful consequences including women being discouraged from positions of power and changing their body.

Under society’s norms for decades, young women have been put under the pressure and anticipation to have perfect bodies. That is, thin and curved, beautified by applying pounds of the makeup to their face but not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these standards imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model along the cover of Vogue being called flawless, it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the photocopy. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a pressing issue for young women. Advertisements and posters of skinny female models are all over. Young girls not only could be better but need to be more upright and feel driven to throw the perfect figure. Moreover, girls are evaluated and oppressed by their physical appearances. With supplements and apparel designed to enhance a facial expression; social media, magazines, and marketing campaigns and advertisements add to the burden of perfection. The fashion industry is a prime object of body image issues, as they believe clothes look better on tall and svelte women. Established on a survey participated by 13 to 17-year-old in the U.S., 90% “felt pressured by fashion and media industries to be skinny”, with more than 60% routinely compares themselves to models, while 46%

In her article “Never Just Pictures,” author Susan Bordo analyzes how deeply teenage girls of today are effectively told how to look by mass media. Girls of the 21st century are constantly struggling with their own confidence and overall happiness simply due to the celebrities they see on TV and in magazines. Today, women are subconsciously told what the ‘perfect body’ is and anything less than that means that they are unwanted and fat. Bordo specifically described the experience of the 19 year-old Clueless actress, Alicia Silverstone, whom the tabloids consistently referred to as ‘fatgirl’ and ‘buttgirl.’ Bordo described that once a young woman is told that she is not worthy or that she is fat, countless psychological issues arise and begin

In Susan Bordo’s article “Never Just Pictures,” she expresses her understanding of how images in the media alter the way our society sees itself. She starts off addressing how critical society has become about the weight of those in the spot light. This cruelty has emerged from critics comparing those in the media such as, athletes, actors, news castors, etc. to super models who are expected to remain at an extremely low weight percentage for fashion shows and photo shoots. In just about every magazine, there are advertisements for a weight loss products or promises, or show models glamorized while they look to be on the verge of starvation. She implies that magazine editors only care about selling products and do not consider the effect the

When Victoria’s Secret is allowed to have models prance around on screen but Lane Bryant Ads (lingerie for plus size women) is banned then there’s a problem. The media is portraying these models who are thin to the point where it is unhealthy. And the media is feeding society lies. A perfect example is of Gerran Tyler. Tyler was a 12 year old supermodel. She walks the run way for clients like Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, and Betsey Johnson. She’s tall, thin, the perfect model because she hasn’t hit puberty yet. She walked during New York Fashion Week and posed for these designer brands advertisements. This body type is unachievable for almost all adult women (Roberts). Somebody in their twenties or thirties doesn’t have the ability to look like a twelve year old girl, but this is how these designers are telling us to look. Tyler had an amazing career and high expectations but the fame didn’t last long. As she got older and hit puberty she began to develop boobs, hips, and curves. She began getting less and less bookings. Her supermodel career was virtually over. “Eighty percent of 10-year-old American girls say they have been on a diet” and the, “Number one magic wish for young girls 11-17 is to be thinner” (Missrepresentation). This self-esteem problem with young girls is a result of these unobtainable ideas of beauty. Jennifer Siebel, creator of the documentary Missrepresentation, says

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

As a direct result of the rapid advancement in technology over the past 50 years, the media has become ever-increasingly present in our everyday lives. The latest fashion editorials and the most exclusive celebrity selfies are always just a click away. Something so pervasive, however, should be intently studied and handled with extreme caution due to the vast influence it can have over its audience’s mind. Too much exposure to certain stimuli has previously been shown to affect cognition and behavior in adolescents. So why should media be any different? Social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are becoming increasingly popular in this day and age. However, being fed a constant visual stream of models and celebrities with perfect faces and bodies cannot be very good for one’s self-esteem. For some time now, there has been an ongoing debate on whether media has an effect on self-esteem and if so, whether its effect is positive or negative. Consequently, in this report I will discuss and analyze several studies which address the topic of media and its impact on self-esteem.

It is no wonder that American women are obsessed with thinness. From a very young age, it is emphasized to women how important it is to be pretty, and to be pretty by society’s standards means being thin. This blatant message is seen everywhere. Not only do images in magazimes, TV commercials and billboard posters put an exaggerated emphasis on women's bodies, they also hold up an ideal of thinness that is almost impossible to attain. Computer-enhanced photography employs techniques such as airbrushing blemishes and slenderizing the bodies of models. This adds to the creation of an ideal model that women strive to mimic.

Consider your own body. How have images of ideal beauty in magazines and on TV influenced your ideas about what constitutes an attractive body?

Photo editing to get the “perfect” body makes women turn to eating disorders to obtain that look

Today I’m going to talk about the Media and a women’s body image, and how the media could be harming you and your children. Have you ever read a magazine or watched TV and say wow I wish I look like her? The media sets out tons of images and videos of a way an average woman should look like when in reality what the media is showing is unrealistic goal to achieve. Whit the media showing off only one body image or what they would say “perfect,” body image they can cause serious problems mentally and physically in a women’s mind and body.

We, the American public are hit from every imaginable direction every waking moment of our lives by slick advertising agencies trying to coerce us into or tell us why we need to buy their products. Their products will make us happier or thinner, or prettier. The advertisers often use the picture of youth and vitality so that the public will associate that particular product or service with being young and beautiful. They do this because of course in our society youth and beauty are to be coveted. Everyone would like to be forever young and beautiful or for as long as they can anyway. So, everyone is trying to look younger or wants to look younger. The things that we can associate with youth are obvious. We see the picture of youth and

We live in a body-obsessed culture. Women feel pressured to have the perfect bodies, and we believe so many lies about what a perfect body is from the media. Women are today influenced by images that we see in the media, and sometimes the influence is so great that we risk our lives trying to portray what we see. Across the board throughout different civilizations, there have been so many distortions of what the perfect body looks like placed in our minds by the media. Many people between ages 19 - 50 become obsessed with looking like the images they see delineated by the media. Women and teenagers what to look like their favorite celebrity, so they do plastic surgeries to portray what they

While it’s fashion week in London, the size “zero” models start to prepare for the big show by purging to be as thin as possible. Most models starve themselves in order to achieve the “waif”, stick-thin figure; it becomes so addictive, almost like second nature that it further leads to serious eating disorders. From recent studies, today’s model weighs about 23% less than the normal woman. Clearly, most models do not depict the average woman. Men and women all over the world follow the influences that the fashion industry provides. They believe that the fashion industry depicts on what society should be acknowledged as, picture-perfect thin.