The Negative Effects Of Body Stereotyping

As presented in the movie Miss Representation, media and technology are important because they work as powerful messengers that build many people’s way of thinking. As we live in a technologically advanced generation, being exposed to media is so easy. Both media and technology works as delivering any ideas that shapes our society. They shape our minds about politics, our emotions, and our importance. Then, it means that media can also manipulate our perception of gender role. Among all the ideas that media tries to indoctrinate, it can also portrait the importance of a woman to being all about physical beauty. Media presents a perfect woman’s image focusing on their bodily figure making their value, worth, or mind would depend on their physical appearances. Thus, it influences the way men think what is important about women is their bodily attractiveness. In any kinds of media such as advertisement, films, or video games, women are generally appreciated by their looks, not by their intellectuals or achievements. As media depicts an unrealistic body image of women’s beauty, many young girls’ value is set as to become someone else with attractive appearance, nothing like smart, powerful, or leader-like.

“ Over fifty percent of 9 and 10 year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet(3), even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that only 18 percent of adolescents are really overweight. About 80 percent of girls in this age group say that they have dieted in an attempt to lose weight.”--Mirror Mirror Eating Disorder Help. Unrealistic body images on social media can lead to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression in adolescents.

Do you want a thigh gap? Some girls do because one word about how a girl looks will mess with their heads, girls always check to see if they have a curvy body and will try to act like they have a great body and try to achieve this goal. Girls nowadays only care about how they look and it’s not healthy, they just don’t want to get made fun of because of their bodies. Girls always feel like they need to have perfect bodies because of all the pressure being put on them and/or being bullied into it or peer-pressured into it. The reason girls feel pressure on themselves is because everyone judges you on your body. Guys will only like you for your looks and not anything else like personality, interests, how nice you are. Everybody judges to soon about really nice people because they can’t see past their looks. Girls always judge other people like not so “popular” girls or people that are weird, not so social, socially akward, or people that don’t really fit in that much. Even guys get judged by girls because of looks, there’s too much pressure on girl’s to have perfect bodies because people expect you to be perfect, girls want to live up to those expectations, and that pressure is put on you.

To begin with, our club hosted several events in which we promoted anti-bullying awareness to students. We decorated the entire school with kind messages on classroom windows, like “Smile!

There is a lot about your story that expresses how I felt during high school. I avoided high heels then and I still do today because I could never figure out why anyone would go through that type of pain just to wear shoes. I wore make-up, but I never went as elaborate as my friends did. My hair had a mind of its own and it was always a curly mess that did whatever it wanted to do despite my many attempts to fix it. I wasn't called butch nor did I have problems with people spray painting negative words on my car; however, I do know what it's like to be looked at differently because of the way that I dressed. I think that stereotypes focus a lot on someone's physical appearances and I really wish that that would change. I’m pretty sure that

The Dream ideally allows individuals to succeed with little help from others. The person trying to succeed should not have to sacrifice their body to get what they want. Unfortunately, some bodies are valued less than others through out history and even in present day. Ta-Nehisi Coates really highlights the issues with “the body” in “Between the World and Me.” Many of the references to the body that he makes deal with individualism vs. stereotype of a whole race and oppression.

It wasn't because I was weird, creepy, nerdy, or any of those other reasons why middle schoolers around my time deemed it ‘OK’ to dismiss another. Well, scratch that I was weird, but that weird part of me was probably the only reason why I ever had friends. Being nerdy wasn't cool, being weird wasn't normal, and that's who I was. So who else was I supposed to be? The other thing I had a problem with was my hair, the one part of me I can't really get rid of unless I shaved it all off. I had hair that could be curly and straight (the best of both worlds to some people) but in middle school if I wanted to fit in every day, I'd have to straighten my hair so I didn't have to hear 'oh I love your straight hair, when's the next time you're going to straighten it' in high school, I did change, instead of straightening my hair and daily damaging it I wore my hair curly but the people were the same but instead they said 'Oh I love your hair curly have you ever straightened it before?' How am I supposed to escape? It's not that I want to escape who I am, but how can I ever be able to express myself if I'm forever judged. I can't figure out who I am because there's people always around me trying to change

Many young girls have to go through life being bombard with ads telling them they should look a certain way. Ads, music videos, TV shows, movies, and billboards all present one body type for woman to have. Photography has been used to preserve historical moments and to capture snap shots of life. Why now is it being used to give young girls a negative view point about their bodies? Several studies have been done to see if there is a connection between social media and negative body stereotypes. This paper will go over a handful of those studies to prove photography is being used to harm girls’ mental wellbeing.

In general, when you think of a Doctor, are they male or female? It’s more likely that most people would say male. This is due to the stereotype that doctors are usually males, not females. This stereotype evolved from the idea that women do not excel in STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) courses compared to men. However, this is not the case men and women excel equally. Although at a young age, most girls are not encouraged to pursue an education in these fields. These ideologies cause many women to feel less confident in pursuing these fields or even being successful on tests such as math. This stereotype and many others create a feeling of insecurity in people.

I have always been interested in teenagers perception of perfection concerning their body image. Body image has become a big problem in some teenager’s lives and can affect them in everyday life, as teenagers are involved with the media and other advertisements promoting positive and negative ideas of the way you should look and feel in your own skin. I will research how teenagers are affected by advertisements such as magazines, newspapers and posters.

No one chooses to be stereotyped or categorized under a specific title, and no one wants to be the victim of an unfair judgment. Despite those statements, people stereotype others like it is their personal right to label another human being. We all know that its true and we all do it. Everyone in our society makes judgments on people they barely know; sizing up the way they walk, listening to how they talk, and noticing the clothes they wear. It doesn’t take long to pinpoint who we perceive as the less fortunate person wandering the streets, or the lush beauty surrounded by friends and paparazzi who constantly longs for attention. When a person creates a stigma—a disgrace or shameful name to something or someone who is regarded as socially unacceptable—they do not realize the seed that they have planted. When generating such a seemingly harmless idea, most people have no idea how they could or already have impacted a person’s life by potentially lowering their self-esteem, reducing work habits, or even dropping their health. When stereotyping someone, you need to take into account the damage you could be causing them. Stereotyping is a cruel way to base opinions on people because it can negatively affect their physical and mental health.

Throughout society there are many different cultural and social perceptions that allow people to form judgmental beliefs about society. Encompassed within these perceptions are stereotypes and prejudice. Stereotypes and prejudice are examples of categorizations of people which allow our brains to fill in the types or interactions that may happen with people. There are different positive and negative forms of stereo types and prejudice that effect our interaction with individuals resulting in judgmental affliction upon individuals or groups. This essay will analyze and provide examples of the positive and negative effects of gender stereotyping and prejudice.

Whether you are watching a show on television or reading your favorite magazine, you will notice that there is a specific body image of men and women portrayed in America today. Women are very tall, slender hourglass figures with no visual imperfections on their bodies. Men are muscular and have a general reputation of being powerful. Through body images seen on television, a trend has been set by Americans to achieve these body types, and the effect is detrimental to society today because it increases eating disorders, mental illnesses, chronic health issues, and unhealthy lifestyles with men and women.

Stereotypes are a typical thing in everyday lives of society. According to Urban Dictionary, “Stereotyping is when you judge a group of people who are different from you based on your own and/or others opinions and/or encounters” (Christina E.) Stereotyping is used by people everyday and most do not realize they do it. People use stereotyping as a mental shortcut to help free up other mental resources. Humans use many different categories to stereotype. Everyone stereotypes people and things to place them into certain categories. People want to be viewed in a certain way and they will represent themselves so that they are looked at in the way they desire. Humans do not quite understand others so in order to have a better understanding, they use stereotypes. Some individuals misrepresent themselves so that they are viewed in a certain way and placed in a group or in a category. Some individuals want to be someone they are not in order to be placed in a specific group. When a person pretends to be someone they are not in order to fit in, they lose sight of who they really are. People dress, talk and act different so the public will associate them with a group. Majority of society misrepresent themselves. Some white males wear their pants sagging and their ball caps backwards because they want to be viewed as a thug. Media plays a role in stereotyping. Individuals gather ideas from social media and television. For example, a girl may Echols 2 see a model and want to look like her, so in result she does everything she can to be placed under that category. People also stereotype others by their ethnic background. As David Childs states in his article “Let’s Talk About Race”: Exploring Racial Stereotypes Using Popular Culture in Social Studies Classrooms”, “ ...representations of African American women in music videos, portrayals of black males as violent in the media and the lack of visibly successful African American role models,” (Childs 292). This example shows how people can be stereotyped by race and how those representations are not always true. While others spend time trying to fit in, they end up losing their true identity. Although some people want to be stereotyped, others simply do not. These people want

Recently, UNICEF released a video to promote their campaign for needy children, however it presents a stereotype against the physical appearance rather than the campaign. In the video, a 6-year-old girl who dressed pretty and neatly stood alone on a street and many people asked her whether she was all right. Later, when the same girl had changed her appearance in dirty clothes and stood alone again in the same street, nobody asked her whether she was okay. The attitudes that people showed depended on the child’s physical appearance. I have a similar experience. The experience that I realized how people are offended by others who judge people based on the physical appearances was when I waited the delayed airplane to go to Korea, a manager ignored me since I didn’t dress up neatly, however he changed his attitude politely as soon as he noticed I was a VIP in his company.