How Does the Media Affect Teens’ Views

Of Their Body Image?

Media using visual rhetoric to influence young people

in our society.

Briana Anderson

May 23, 2012

Affects on Women’s Body Image Research suggests that disturbance in

body image, mainly in women, is due to mass media that advertises the ideal image of “perfection”. (American Psychological Association)

The media creates unrealistic expectations of young women through their advertisement of skinny sometimes anorexic models and celebrities that the media knows people look up to. (Amanda J. Holmstrom)

People Who Are Looked Up To Whose Bodies Are On Display By The Media.

IRONY?

Celebrity singers sing about beauty inside and out yet they appear on commercials promoting weight loss through diets and getting the thin body you see only on magazine covers that most of the time are photo-shopped. Is this helping society live healthier lives? Or is this really promoting a look that even celebrities have to photo-shop pictures of themselves to achieve?

Before and After Celebrities

Dangers

We are seeing more illness and death do to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia because of the preoccupation young people have with their body weight. Research indicates that the awareness of body shape and what the media advertises as “good looking” is leading to many deaths among teens.

The media’s version of the perfect body isn’t healthy, in many cases, and is leading teens to reach that “perfect weight” by vomiting or just not eating. Eventually this leads to depression or even suicide.

Illness, Depression, Death

The Numbers Survey of 2,500 American girls ages

13-18› 75% wanted to lose weight› 66% had dieted that year› 17% used diet pills› 8% had vomited to lose weight› 2% had used a diuretic (drug used to increase

urine discharge)

“Anorexia is very much like committing slow suicide”o (Maggie Wykes, Barrie Gunter)

Out of the 2,500 girls, 0.2%-7.6% could be considered anorexic

20% of college females in another survey claimed to self starve

Out of 37,500 girls ages 14-15, 60% felt overweight even though they were average or below weight

Most who were surveyed said they would feel happier about themselves and their appearance if they were skinny

More Numbers

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA QUOTES

Andy: So none of the girls here eat anything? Nigel: Not since two became new four and zero

became the new two. Andy: Well, I'm a six... Nigel: Which is the new fourteen.

Emily: I'm on this new diet. Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.

Nigel: Corn chowder. That's an interesting choice. You do know that cellulite is one of the main ingredients in corn chowder.

We’ve all heard the quotes before, but does this happen in real life?

Young people are pressured all the time to be a certain size or be buff. But is skinny the source of happiness and self-fulfillment?

Self-fulfillment comes from being pleased with how you feel about yourself no matter how big, small, symmetrical, or uneven you are.

Happiness doesn’t come from being perfect as the media tries to sell it as. Happiness comes from confidence that teens don’t have because the media puts them down for their body size.

Born This Way

Learn to love yourself not for the image on the outside or what perfection looks like, but for the image you exude from inside yourself.

The media should not have this affect on so many young people, but it does and it drives kids to hurting their bodies with starvation to be what they think is pretty or handsome.

Remember that it’s up to you to define what pretty is. Don’t let the media decide that for you, or you will be one of millions.

You control your self love. Don’t ever let anyone take that away from you.

BEAUTY IS INSIDE