The Media 's Impact On Self Image

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.

Media is a Leading Cause of Eating Disorders The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds (Chojnacki, 2017). Those models’ digitally enhanced pictures are published in magazines, posted online, and shown on television. Individuals scroll past filtered images of the “thin ideal”, flip through the pages and images of magazines as they stand in check out lines, and are drawn to advertisements of beautiful, happy, and skinny people. All of these encounters happen several times daily without even thinking twice about the message that is being sent. The enormous audience that the media can now reach due to advancing technology is both a blessing and a curse. Technology has allowed the public to connect with people thousands of miles away at the touch of a button and

In the article “Never Just Pictures,” the author, Susan Bordo, addresses the cultural reasons behind the rise in eating disorders. She asserts that modern media and advertising campaigns have played an integral role in this increase. Though unfortunate, the media’s focus is not on the well-being of its viewers, but on the level of cash flow they provide. The advertising moguls use their agencies as double edged swords; they will make ads for McDonalds, then go in the next room and conduct a photo-shoot with a six-foot-two, eighty pound woman. The world of advertising needs to realize their work is being seen by millions of people and is affecting some of those people in extremely negative ways.

In other words, the more an individual is exposed to certain images – even alarmingly unhealthy ones – the more desensitized one becomes; in fact, what may have once been considered “ugly” may actually become desirable, if widely accepted and glamorized by the fashion industry. Furthermore, in the title of Bordo’s article, “Never Just Pictures,” we are given to understand that this prevailing cultural sickness is merely a “symptom” of more systemic issues. For example, Bordo touches on “deep anxieties” stemming from “Western philosophy and religion” which have been linked to eating disorders in America today; in fact, for those who are unfamiliar with her book, Unbearable Weight, a greater elaboration on this aspect would have been desirable. She also reveals other subtle messages underlying fashionable face-value images, many of which create powerful currents surrounding the development of eating disorders. According to Bordo, the endless barrage of images (regarding what the fashion industry deems perfection in appearance) serves to strongly communicate “fantasized solutions” to our challenges in life. It is a false narrative which goes something like this: “achieving the body- and beauty-ideal will magically make everything in my life right with the world; I’ll be beautiful, popular, strong, admired, in control, etc . . . .” Bordo’s point is that these types of fantasies may become potently motivational to the individual striving for “the cultural ideal” through starvation and other extreme

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

Summary of “Never Just Pictures” The article Never Just Pictures, written by Susan Bordo, is about how the media’s usage of images of beautiful people with no body fat or imperfections cause the youth to develop eating disorders, and feel insecure about their own image. Susan begins by telling us about how the media targeted the nineteen year old star of Clueless, Alicia Silverstone, when she attended an award show a little bit heavier then the public was used to. She says that we are led to believe that “fat is the devil” and that having any excess fat is bad. She claims commercials and ads staring people with ideal bodies embed the idea that being fat is bad in our minds. One way she proves this is she uses a study that asked ten and eleven

Marya Hornbacher’s memoir, Wasted, describes her lifelong battle with eating disturbances with focuses on anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In modern day society, thinness is associated with “wealth, upward mobility, and success” (Hornbacher, 1998, p. 46). Thinness is “an ideal symbolizing self-discipline, control, sexual liberation, assertiveness, competitiveness, and affiliation with

How Influential is The Media Affecting the Self-esteem of Adolescents 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.

The Media and How it is Killing America’s Future They grace the cover of magazines everywhere we look. Their beautiful tanned skin engulfs a slender “perfect” body. The men and women of Hollywood truly are striking, but also all look very much the same. There is an obvious trend in these magazines and on television that thin is in, and only skinny people are worthy of adorning magazine covers. Does this mean that only the thin are beautiful in today’s society? Whether they mean to or not, the media definitely indicates that this is the case, leaving a very unrealistic image of what is attractive in the minds of young people. Therefore, it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that eating disorders are becoming more and

The medias idea of healthy Media has greatly evolved since starting, but has bad evolved with it? Print media, digital media, and now social media surround everybody today. Media surround us when we go to the store and see magazines, when we sit and home and watch TV, and especially when we go online. Over time, media has created its own idea of beauty. Medias influence on body image can’t be overlooked. Media and eating disorders have a cause and effect relationship. In Helens article, “Eating Disorders: A growing problem on college campuses”, she expresses that, “In today’s media-saturated world, young women are bombarded with one message: be thin” (Helen, 2014, Paragraph 9). Today media shows that to beautiful you have to be an unhealthy weight. If media doesn’t change its view of beautiful, then the rate of eating disorders triggered by media will go up. We need to figure out a way to help now.

Teenage and college women are overly obsessing about their body images and constantly think that they need to be much skinnier, when they are not even fat. Many women today have the wrong idea of what the perfect body is, since there is no such thing as a perfect body. Every person is different and there can be no “perfect”. Being skinny is not the thing to strive for, but rather being healthy is. In this decade, women are constantly looking at models, T.V. shows and Instagram photos of girls that are stick-thin, or just very skinny, and they think that this is the way we as women in society must look. The problem is by excessively looking at these photos or T.V. shows, women become self-conscious, obsessive, unhealthy and simply unhappy.

Advertisements promote new products each year, yet how many of them really work? We as women we are an easy target to persuade, and we cannot tell when an advertisement is speaking the truth. A woman is constantly bombarded with advertisements about beauty. They will believe what they see in magazine covers, but the truth is that all those pictures of your favorite models and celebrities have been retouched. They will start comparing themselves with size 0 models. Women believe that to look good and to be pretty, they have to be the size of the models. Advertisements persuade us to buy unnecessary products. Their publicity is with the sole purpose for them to have faith in that product and go buy it. It distorts woman 's perception of beauty, and impacts women not only negatively in their self-image, but their health too. They make women believe that they will only reach perfection if they buy their products. I believe that media may contribute significantly in self-esteem issues.

Exploration into the media influence of elusive physical superiority encourages unfavorable reactions in women, however uncovering the fiction regarding the female media figure is essential to developing image contentment (Haas 2015). In the study published in “An Intervention for the Negative Influence of Media on Body Esteem”, it was contemplated that when a slim figure was exhibited to a female, her self-appreciation would decline, yet when media fallacies were presented, the female’s self-appreciation would increase (Haas 2015). For the analysis, 160 females, ages 18 to 45, were selected indiscriminately and divided into control and experiment groups (Haas 2015). For the purposes of this examination, standard media representations were

Anahi Perez Professor Park English 101 16 July 2015 Stop Media Promoting Eating Disorders Without even asking many young teens including adults will agree that having a good or a fit body will not only help them fit in society but also will help them be more confident about themselves. There are many ways to achieve this goal but most of the sources are found in media and propagandas which people look into. However, they do not really help them instead they introduce many types of eating disorders. For instance, social media affects people’s mind by having pro-eating disorders websites floating around the internet, American media values more thin women than any other size, TV including social media commercials promote many diet pills and laxatives that have harmful side effects.

“The attention-grabbing pictures of various high-flying supermodels and actors on different magazine covers and advertisements go a long way in influencing our choices” (Bagley). The media is highly affective to everyone, although they promote an improper image of living. Research proved says those with low self-esteem are most influenced by media. Media is not the only culprit behind eating disorders. However, that does not mean that they have no part in eating disorders. Media is omnipresent and challenging it can halt the constant pressure on people to be perfect (Bagley). Socio-cultural influences, like the false images of thin women have been researched to distort eating and cause un-satisfaction of an individual’s body. However, it