The Psychological effect of Body Image on Adolescence

Women’s Body Image (www.wellesley.edu/Health/BodyImage) helped demonstrates the young influence of magazines. Those days when girls strive to be something they weren’t, were probably the most crucial days in body imaging. They succumbed into the pressure of looking how everyone else wants them to look. Such teeny bopper magazines sell to many young girls the idea of beauty. Teen Magazine is the princess of that royal court. In every young woman, or man’s mind, there is this longing to be desired. To be desired, you must be attractive. To be attractive, you have to look like that girl on page seventy-one in the latest Teen Magazine (Women’s Body Image).

Beauty standards in the media are one of many reasons feeding and eating disorders are a rising problem. The unrealistic body types of being extremely thin, in pop culture, are influential factors for many teens, especially teen girls. According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), anorexia nervosa is a “restriction of energy intake, intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in the perception of one’s body size” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Individuals diagnosed with anorexia tend to place a high value on their shape and weight, which can interfere with their daily lives. Individuals diagnosed tend to view of their body shape in a distorted representation. The motivation to become

Girls especially are told that they are supposed to look how famous people look, but are not told how vastly edited and corrected the models in the pictures are. Today, women as young as 11 and 12 have began developing eating disorders due to the constant media bombardment telling them to look a certain way—incredibly skinny—which forces them into starvation. Psychologists have coined the new disorder ‘”body image disturbance syndrome” or BIDS. BIDS is characterized by the incessant feeling of being ‘fat’ when someone is perfectly healthy usually turning to one of two options: anorexia or bulimia. Anorexia is the act of not eating to achieve a body image, but this often results in gross malnourishment. On the other hand, bulimia is characterized by binge eating large meals followed by self-induced vomiting. The motivation behind bulimia is that if they keep the food in their body just long enough to absorb the nutrients, they can vomit the actual bulk of the food that makes them look overweight. The sad reality of the fact is that not only are the nutrients not completely absorbed until they reach the intestines, but the stomach acid brought forth with their vomit virtually rots away their

The media is questioned if their presenting a healthy structure of body image for teenagers. The Majority of images portrayed on social media consists of slim, bright and/or flawless people which is known to impact teenagers personally and will feel different due to their difference in weight and appearance. This preview will indicate whether most body images shown online stand as a respectable size to teenagers viewing the image or impersonates a low point of view for the young audience. Over the decades’ social media has produced a substantial indication of how your body must look. The issue is where if this depiction is a healthy or unhealthy circumstance for the teenage perception.

Teens who are in college have just as many problems with their body as people in high school. The media affecting people of all ages can consist of anything from people on social media, to celebrities on T.V., to the models who walk on runways. People who struggle with their body image are all over the world and are often closed off to other people. When girls look at magazines they see all of the models posing and then they compare themselves to them because the models are what society says is pretty, and they aren’t. Media is a great way for companies to get their products out there, but when adolescents compare themselves to models, they will start to have body image issues.

In the article “Net Girls: The Internet, Facebook, and Body Image Concern in Adolescent Girls” Marika Tiggemann, Ph.D. and Amy Slater, Ph.D. (Clin Psych) questioned whether there is a connection between internet use and adolescent body image concern. These researchers also focused their study on one specific social networking site, Facebook.

Young people are more susceptible to media influences regarding body image. Every decade seems to favor a different body shape. The 50s’ were all about having a curvy, womanly figure, while the 20s’ favored extremely thin, boyish body shapes. Even today among different cultures and sub cultures one can notice differences in what figure is considered attractive. Media, being a form of communication, can transmit ideas and perceptions and even influence attributes and beliefs. Ending this mass self-esteem problem won’t be easy, but by increasing the variety in body shapes presented in media we can start to accept all bodies as beautiful and perhaps encourage young people to embrace what they were given rather than starving themselves to try to attain the impossible. However, since this doesn’t seem to be happening fast enough, helping people to develop a sense of self early on may play a huge role in their self-confidence and give them a stronger base of self-worth. By decreasing their vulnerably and teaching them to question media we will not only create well rounded adults, but ones who can think critically of the world around them and change it for the

Although different adolescents may view their body image differently, the way the adolescent views their body image may influence their school performance and their interaction with family members. Some adolescents may view their body as inadequate compared to what the media portrays as the perfect body. These perceptions may affect school performance because these adolescents may

Teenagers negative body image can be caused by many factors and have many different outcomes. But, teenagers should be able to feel appreciative of themselves without being slammed by the fashion world. Would you like to feel like you have no control over the way you see yourself, because of the content you see on social media? There are many factors into why teenagers develop body dysmorphia. For examples, “These can include any of the following; family environment, ability or disability, and peer attitudes”. (Raising Children Association, 2006) This reasoning is a logical source that is medically proven by health professionals that work with Eating Disorders and Mentally Disabled patients. There are statistics to prove the accusations, “such as professional research that have be run by

When flipping through a Victoria’s Secret magazine, one of the things that come out of every teenage girls mouth is “ Why can’t I look like that?” “I wish I looked like that”. According to the National Institute on Media and the Family “ at age thirteen, 53% of American girls are unhappy with their bodies, this grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.” Sometimes most of us struggle to understand our feeling towards our bodies and our appearances. That is normal because of all of us have a body image. Body image is how we look at ourselves and also how we think people see us.

What is body image? A two-dimensional model of body image incorporates both perceptual and emotional components. It focuses on both how we feel about the size and shape of our bodies and how accurately we perceive our body size as well. A more recent cognitive approach suggests that body image is a complex set of cognitive schema. A schema is a grouped body of knowledge. Groups of schema are readily available for important tasks such as guiding behavior, circumstantial scripts (or dialogue), and evoking the appropriate emotional, somatic, visual, and auditory responses in certain situations. The cognitive schema for body image is an organized domain of knowledge about oneself and others.

In today’s society, body image is one of the reasons why people have a lack of self-confidence. This is a problem that has been exploited by the media, over the years, tearing through the minds of people everywhere. Although this problem affects everyone, it tends to hit the younger populaces the fastest and hardest.

Every day, teenagers are surrounded by different messages from different sources that impact the way they feel about the way they look. For some, poor body image is a sign of a serious problem: an eating disorder. Eating disorders are not just about food.The eating disorders contain anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder, and their variants, all feature serious disturbances in eating behavior and weight regulation. They are often a way to cope with difficult problems or regain a sense of control. They are complicated illnesses that affect a person’s sense of identity, worth, and self-esteem. The risks of eating disorders for teenagers are in physical health, mental health, substance abuse and negative self-esteem/self worth. ​

According to the DSM-5, anorexia nervosa is characterized by “distorted body image and excessive dieting that leads to severe weight loss with a pathological fear of becoming fat” while bulimia nervosa is characterized by “frequent episodes of binge eating followed by inappropriate behaviors such as self-induced vomiting to avoid weight gain” (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013). These two disorders most often affect adolescent girls and young women. There are many factors that can cause body dysmorphia such as behavioral, genetic, and sociocultural. These factors can ultimately onset eating disorders. According to a study by Emily A. Young, James R. Clopton,

In our day and age, teenagers are subject to numerous tasks that are supposed to take place before adulthood. This includes dealing with harder schoolwork, worrying about their future, trying to impress the opposite sex, trying to fit in, all while trying to find themselves. One of the main objectives of being a teenager is developing a sense of self and a positive body image. Often times, teenagers feel insecure about their bodies due to the ideals that are placed upon them. Everywhere that they go and every social media site they log into, they see people who are prettier, skinnier, tanner, taller, or more stylish than them. Unsurprisingly, this can take a toll on their emotional and mental health. To adults this may seem unimportant, but