The Thin-Ideal

The average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, and the models shown on television and advertisements are 5-foot-11 and weigh 120 pounds. Women think that having a gaunt face and protruding ribs is attractive, and “it condemns them to a lifetime of unhealthy diets, expensive and often bizarre slimming aids and, most crucially, a complex about their body” (The Skinny Stereotypes). Models today on billboards, advertisements, movies, and magazines are the cause of these impractical potentials. In the movies, all of the pretty, thin girls get the boyfriends and hot dates. When men see models with slender waists and immense breasts, they go crazy, in a good way.

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.,

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,

From the multicultural body image norms, which suggests women overall are much more concerned with body idealism and are earlier adopters of slim ideals, women are expected to also express a great fat stigma. Females exposed to media images reflect on current societally standards of slenderness and fell a greater mood and have a better body image. Females who viewed a neutral, or not so slender image for the adverse outcomes of such media exposures.

Every day there are masses of women that are bombarded with today’s “thin-ideal media” of the so-called “picture-perfect” body. These unrealistic photos portray images in magazines all over the country to entice to our youth; which gives them the indication that they are skinny enough or pretty enough. The term “thin-ideal media” is a term that shows images and films that enclose unrealistically thin females as their centerfolds or lead characters. This is something that occurs habitually in the fashion industry, such as in magazines, clothing catalogs and television shows that appeal mostly to teens. Thin-ideal media gives the idea that being thin is a good thing and something that they should view as desirable and in some cases even strive to be like. Even if it could be potentially hazardous to one’s health by not

Images in the media change almost constantly, but in the last 30-40 years, models and actresses have been getting increasingly thinner as time goes on. Recently, research has shone a light on EDs and their possible connection to the media as anorexia and bulimia rate increased during the 1970s, questioning whether the media was the cause of this increase (Driscoll and Campbell 2). This research has brought the possible connection between images in the media and body image to the attention of the public. The attention brought to the topic has sparked the controversy as people jump to either defend or berate the media for their portrayals of people’s bodies. As previously stated, media ideals change all the time. Since the turn of the century, the ideal female form has fluctuated between voluptuous and curvy, such as Marilyn Monroe, and thin and boyish, such as the flappers of the 1920s, but since Twiggy’s debut in the ‘70s, the standards have focused on thinness (Chittom and Finley 2). Even with the constant change and fluctuation, there has, historically, been an equilibrium in what body shape or size is “beautiful.” Twiggy’s debut, which started the skinny trend in the media, lines up with when the increase in EDs reportedly began, furthering the question as to what effect mass media has on women’s self-esteem and body

“You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine does not even look like the girl in the magazine.”-Unknown. “According to the National Eating Disorders Association, eighty percent of women are unhappy with their appearance and approximately forty five percent are dieting on any given day.” (Chittom & Finley, 2017). Men and women everywhere are extremely influenced by the media on what their bodies should resemble in order to be considered thin or appealing. The people seen in the media influence these expectations. Although a few parents may be at fault for neglecting body issues at a young age, the media affects people’s body image negatively in several ways because it can cause several deaths, severe health problems,

When one encounters elements of the media including television, movies, ads, and magazines, he or she is likely to idolize the media’s presentation of individuals along with societal expectations. Body image affects various individuals regardless of age. Today’s society views the ideal body as one with an overall thin figure and flawless features. The media continually excerpts societal expectations that having the ideal body results in experiencing contentedness and acceptance. Normalizing altercations, encouraging individuals to engage in drastic behaviors, creating dissatisfaction with one’s body, and establishing false perceptions hallmark the media’s influence on body image.

Everyone is exposed to the media, and what the media presents to the public can have a powerful effect on the viewers. The media holds an influence over many subjects. For example, the media is a medium through which many social problems gain attention and support. The media plays such a prominent role in the circulation of social problems, however the media is also the cause of social problems that are detrimental to today’s youth. The media presents and promotes an image of beauty that is practically unachievable. This image of beauty is most often targeted towards women through exposure to commercials promoting weight loss, perfection, and a distorted depiction of what the female body should look like. Women’s magazines have an average of sixty-three diet ads, while in contrast men only have an average of one (Myers & Biocca 110). Myers states that body image is a mentally constructed self-schema, consisting of three parts. The objective body image is their true physical appearance, and their

This article examined the present study highlights self-objectification as a previously unexamined variable that may be involved in the female response to media stimuli. The central purpose of the study was to examine whether viewing thin-idealized media images would increase state self-objectification, negative affect and body dissatisfaction in young women. Then the article discussed the experiment done, which compared the effect of intensive exposure of thin models magazines and magazines advertising products without people. Also, the author presented comprehensive description of how those effects, self-objectification, appearance anxiety, negative mood and body dissatisfaction, were measured. In the last part, the author showed the results, which showed that the group which was exposed to the thin-idealized models scored much higher number in all the previously-stated measures compared to the group which was exposed to products’ images.

Mass media has encompassed us with images of the “thin ideal” since the 1920’s and 1950’s. Doctors Wendy Spettigue and Katherine Henderson fixated on social problems that supported Thompson and Heinberg’s concept of the internalization of attractiveness at the hand of the media. Both articles directly analyzed the internalization of attractiveness and perception of beauty. However, Spettigue and Henderson explicitly concentrated on the aspect of the media in developing eating disorders as well as the etiology of eating disorder pathology. This has fortified the notion that the “thin ideal” has a crucial detrimental repercussion on body satisfaction in men and women worldwide (Spettigue and

Decades ago televisions were a luxury few could afford and when they became more widely available computers came along and the advances have continued. Exposure that was once limited to magazines and television time has now increased to include the entire world at our fingertips via smartphones and tablets. This allows us unlimited access to people we may perceive as being better than ourselves in many ways but the prevalence of photographs would have the focus shifted to the physical appearance of these people. Along with this progression has come a change in the people we are exposing ourselves to: female celebrities are getting smaller. Grabe and Ward and Hyde present in their study The Role of the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental and Correlational Studies that “the images of women presented in the media today are thinner than past media images of women, thinner than the actual female population, and often thinner than the criteria for anorexia” (2008). Alongside the pressure on women to be thin there exists a pressure on men to be “more muscular. . .the media often portrays that it is the strong handsome men who are popular and who get the beautiful women” (Russello,

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

Women can be especially vulnerable to “thin- ideal media”. “The term thin-ideal media refers to media images, shows and films that contain very thin female leads”. Fashion magazines, clothing

With that said, women go to drastic measures such as following a strict diet in order to obtain the “ideal body image”. Eyal &Te’eni-Harari (2013), describe the ways in which the media portrays thin people and bigger individuals. Heavier character on TV shows appear to be unattractive and or not sexually desirable. Another key point that was brought from Eyal & Te’eni-Harari’s (2013) article is that women have been proven to unconsciously compare themselves to other women especially those that they praise(models/celebrities). With this knowledge, it is fair to place some blame on the media and its “thin unattainable ideal” and its influence on women and their low self-esteem which in turn may cause an eating disorder (Eyal & Te’eni-Harari 2013).