Women And Women 's Magazines

Even though media vaunts an iridescent image of what every girl should look like, the simple fact is just, it is impossible. It is because the pictures in the media are not true—they all have gone through lots of Photoshop. Only 5 percent of women have the body type seen in almost all advertisements. Besides, most of fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women. However, women still continue to do whatever they can in order to fit into that idea of ‘perfection’. Eating disorders have harassed who want to feel like they are ‘beautiful’, for years. Women are willing to do anything even though it can cause harm to their own self due to low self-esteem. Do you want your sister, friends or girl friends always feel depressed and doing harm to themselves, as they feel dissatisfied about their

In our society, we tell little girls to love and to be true to oneself. As they grow up, this message begins to disappear because our culture contradicts this idea. As girls enter the world, they are already confined with how the media set unrealistic standards for the female population. This leads girls to harm their own body, including eating disorders such as bulimia, and anorexia. The most prominent cause of these acts is advertisements. Advertisements are everywhere and they have the power to promote, sell, encourage, and give unrealistic ideals of the common people. Advertisements and media images have a negative effect on the way women view their body image which leads to self-harm.

On top of this, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures and runway models influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (only 5% of the female population naturally has the body type portrayed as ideal in advertisement). This is obviously a problem because, growing up, girls everywhere are told that they’re pretty and that being pretty is the most important thing about them and they start basing their worth on their looks. But then, every single woman they see on TV, in movies, in magazines, any woman considered “hot” and “beautiful” doesn’t look like them anymore, which brings on deadly disorders like anorexia and bulumia that wreck the lives of young girls. Since 90% of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25, we should be asking ourselves “what is causing my child to develop destructive habits at such a young age?” The answer is that they’ve been told that the type of body

In a recent survey done by the National institute on Media and the Family, fifth graders, ten year old boys and girls told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show “Friends.”(4) If this isn’t shocking enough, the research group reported that at the age of thirteen, fifty-three percent of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to seventy-eight percent by the time the girls reach seventeen. Also, eating disorders are beginning to start at an alarming young age. Statistics show that girls are developing eating disorders at the age of six.(1) Young girls that are exposed to appearance focused television programs, and magazine shows feel that they need to look like the models that they see. Most of these girls are not even have fully developed bodies yet and are already trying to perfect themselves. One girl had even shared how one of her best friends discovered that her fifth grade cousin was bulimic. Girls at that age should not even be concerned with their bodies yet and eating disorders being developed is a harsh wake up call as to how young girls everywhere are being effected by the media each and everyday.

Right of the bat, the 1950s saw magazine and publishing companies facing an exponential growth in popularity. Due in part to the public’s fear of both the “Cold War” and the “Korean War”, family oriented magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Look continued to post articles highlighting current events, fictional stories, family life and illustration. As they grew to the top of the consumer market, women became the primary demographic for these magazines. The most prolific magazines in the women's market where Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s Day, Woman’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCall’s and Cosmopolitan. (www.illustrationhistory.org)

The media plays a huge part in the lives of teenage girls, from cheesy teen fashion magazines to model runway fashion shows, teens are constantly put under stress to look, dress, act, and even feel a certain way about themselves, but how can this actually affect them in the short term and the long term? Studies by Dr Nadia Micali, of the Institute of Child Health, University College, London show that up to one in ten girls from age 12-19 had an eating disorder, the pressures of modern day vain have almost consumed the mental health of a whole generation. "I know this is going to sound weird," Cassie confesses, "but when I eat too much junk food, I'm so guilty I actually hate myself. I'm the kind of person who has plenty

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%

The magazine Ladies Repository: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion is a magazine that was published in 1800 and was targeted towards young women. The magazine was a way to help teach and encourage women of the time on how to properly fit in and behave according to the rules that society had placed on them. It taught them how to be considered an ideal, cultured woman with high morals and spiritual standards. Although many readers today would argue that the teachings and ideas taught by this magazine are extremely outdated and outrageously sexist, one must realize that this was society’s standard for women during the 1800’s.

Model’s work so hard to have the perfect body for magazines and other things but it is not enough for people they have to photoshop everything that is natural for a girl and it makes girls self conscious about themselves. The interest in this topic is that this is a serious problem,girls should be proud of there body but people think that if a girl is fat then that girl does not care and if a girl is too skinny that girl is trying too hard. In the 1840’s people were fat because it showed that that person was wealthy and could eat a lot, and if a person is skinny you could not afford to eat. But by the 1920’s dieting and calorie counting were apart of daily life. There is way too much pressure on girls to have the perfect body because girls think they are not as pretty as the girls in magazines, society is also the problem because society thinks if a girl is not skinny that girl is not pretty, they always try to change girls because nothing is

Imagine waking up every morning, struggling to get out of bed and hating to look at yourself in the mirror. Girl’s will look into the mirror for hours and criticize every last inch of their body with the words “fat, ugly, worthless” echo in their head. They think their body isn’t good enough and want to look skinner like the other woman in magazines or people they see on TV. The media has a big part in self-image toward young woman. The message being sent to these women on the media is that they are not pretty enough or thin enough. Which results in people having an eating disorder.

According to the article entitled, The Fashion Industry May Be Linked to Poor Body Image and Eating Disorders, psychologists and eating disorder experts say the fashion industry has gone too far in pushing thin image ideals on women and young girls. Professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago and Vice President of the American Psychiatric Association states “we know seeing super-thin models can play a role in causing anorexia.” This article argues that the common thin, sexy ideal in our culture and society has caused many women and girls to dislike their bodies and have poor self image, a body dissatisfaction that can lead to unhealthy weight control behaviors and

Girls are pressured at increasingly younger ages to be thin. In her piece New Recruits For The Cult Of Thinness, Sharlene Hagy states “Eating disorders are increasing in the United States. They are no longer confines to a particular class, or ethnic group, and are affecting females at younger ages” (Hagy, 188). Girls are striving to meet the expectations of thinness that these ads portray, even if it’s through unhealthy means, such as anorexia and bulimia.

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

Teenager's already addled brains are rewired to think like the narcissists the fashion experts are. Rewired to think of themselves as worthless. They are then inevitably shoved into a wallowing pit of self shame and insecurity to the point at which they take drastic measures to alter their appearance. Starvation, excessive exercise, purging, self harm and binging. All grim but part of the wildfire that is ignited by the spark: the simple comparison made between their bodies and models'. Young women's desire to look like what has been beautiful cannot be suppressed. But the suppression of the idea that 'skinny only is beautiful' is

There is something obviously wrong with these statistics. Women who subject themselves to these circumstances are fighting against their own body make-ups in order to fulfill the standards put out by the media. In order to change these staggering statistics in the future, we must examine what the media does to make girls and women obtain eating disorders.