INTRO

Growing up in a world filled with technology, I would say that it is fairly easy to be influenced by the media and how people are portrayed in the media. Somewhere along the way of “making lives easier” technology took a hard left and started concentrating on grabbing the public eye’s attention. To do so, the media started to use women’s greatest weakness: her insecurities about her looks. They started spewing out ads with paper-thin models wearing skimpy outfits pressed up against a hunky shirtless man, with the words “BUY OUR SOAP” splayed across the top. Really, though, written between the lines is “…and you will look like this model who we actually photo-shopped to look like this and you will also end up with a man who looks like this, all because you bought our soap!” Media today has a large impact on women’s, and even men’s, lives. The amount of ads that portray thin, beautiful, admirable women using their product has greatly risen over the years. How far is the media willing to go to sell their product? Far enough to push a women to starvation because of the eating disorder she developed because she didn’t look like a certain actress she saw in a movie or that model she saw in an ad? Because some women will take drastic measures such as that to look like the super skinny models they see in ads. So really, how far is the media willing to push women? Far enough, that there aren't going to be any women to sell their product to? The answer is too far, I’m afraid. 

Eating Disorders and Media Influence: Body Image

Eating Disorders and Media Influence: Body Image


After reading this article filled with statistics, I am absolutely disgusted. I am also ashamed to consider myself a part of these statistics. Most of the time, I am thinking about my weight, how I look, what other people are thinking of me, how I could lose more weight, etc. this is because of the amount of shit we receive through the media. If companies used REAL people in their ads, movies, shows, etc, instead of rail thin models who eat about 200 calories a day, then society wouldn't have as pressing of a problem with eating disorders and women hating their bodies. Today, the average U.S. woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds. In contrast the average U.S. model who is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds. Fifty years ago, models were the same size as the average women. Based on this information, I would definitely believe that women were a lot more happy with their bodies than women today. As the years passed by, the models got thinner and thinner, as real women got bigger and bigger. This results in women feeling depressed about their bodies, depressed about their lives, and just depressed in general. It also raises their anxiety levels and their outlooks on life. ALSO, women's priorities are completely backwards! I cannot understand why someone would be more concerned with their weight than how long they will live. Two out of five women and one out of five men would trade three to five years of their life to achieve their weight goals. What, is your life going to be that much better if you lose weight? Well enjoy your shortened life because you just traded five years of your life to the devil. In a recent study, they found that adolescent girls were more fearful of gaining weight, than getting cancer, nuclear war or losing their parents. That is simply wrong. No one should be more concerned with their weight than their family member's lives. I can imagine a teenage girl at her mother's funeral: "I'm going to miss you so much mom, I love you. But OMG I lost five pounds because I'm so depressed I can't eat since you died!" It's wrong and completely backwards. Society really needs to return to how it was in the time of Marilyn Monroe. She was a real role model, and was about as close to a real woman as you could get. I can guarantee that if models today looked like her, were her size (the size of a REAL woman) than the rate of eating disorders, depression, anxiety would be much lower. Women would be able to go about their lives without worrying about their weight. They would actually be able to concentrate on the important things in life, like family, work, love, finding actual happiness. If society continues to spit out rail thin models to the public, then pretty soon they won't have anyone to advertise TO. I have a bone to pick with society, and how it REALLY needs to change.

“Concern Over Strong Media Influence On Women’s Body Image”

"Concern Over Strong Media Influence On Women's Body Image"

In a 2008 article by Medical News Today, the negative impact media has on a woman’s view of her body was highly stressed as a problem. In the article, it stated that in previous studies, they found that exposure to media depicting ultra-thin models and actors increased women’s concerns about their own bodies. When they use the term ‘exposure to media’, it is somewhat vague. What you have to understand is that it can come from anywhere.  "…It doesn't matter what the exposure is, whether it's general TV watching in the evening, or magazines, or ads showing on a computer," says postdoctoral researcher Shelly Grabe. "If the image is appearance-focused and sends a clear message about a woman's body as an object, then it's going to affect women." So, you could happen to be watching your favorite TV show, when a commercial comes on depicting a young, beautiful, thin model urging you to buy company x’s new perfume. That’s not saying much, but just the flash of this thin woman creates a seed of worry in your mind that “wow, I need to lose weight.” And just like that, suddenly you’re not thin enough. All because of this woman trying to sell the general public a perfume. 

The effect also appears to be growing. On average, studies conducted in the 2000s show a larger influence of the media on women’s body image than do those from the 1990s. "This suggests that despite all our efforts to teach women and girls to be savvy about the media and have healthy body practices, the media's effect on how much they internalize the thin ideal is getting stronger," Grabe says. These results are worrisome, because the more influence media has on women, the higher her chances are on becoming depressed, establishing an eating disorder, and lowering her self esteem. What is even more worrisome is the fact that it is now considered normal for women to hate their bodies. I completely agree with Grabe when she says in the article: "I want to stress that it's totally normal for women to want to be attractive. But what's happening in our society is that many women are striving toward something that's not very realistic or obtainable, and that leads to a lot of health consequences." Researchers are trying their hardest to obtain a solution for the problem that is media. In France, the government is pushing towards gaining complete control over the media, and determining what can be advertised and shown on television and whatnot. I think that the French have the right idea with trying to eliminate this problem, but if women also learned to be a little less concerned with their looks, then this problem would be much easier solved.

How Media Effects Women's Views of Themselves

How Media Effects Women's Views of Themselves

For the majority of my life, i have believed that skinny = beautiful. This is because of how the media portrays what women should look like. And for some sick reason, women actually believe these ads. For example, a few of PETA's ads for getting people to turn to vegetarianism revolve solely around losing weight. And in order to lose weight, apparently one must become a vegetarian. This is not the kind of message that young women should be receiving. It is ads like these that really make an impact on women's lives. And not necessarily in a good way. Growing up with all of this hype about the importance of being thin impacted my life in a negative way. Seeing that I could only really be happy if I was skinny, I truly believed it and wanted nothing more than to be skinny. Other ads as well, for other companies, send out the same message. Sometimes with no words at all. Just an image. Like this Ralph Lauren ad, there are no words, and yet it says so much. The woman is thin and beautiful, and the man is also fit and attractive. What I got from this ad is that in wearing this perfume, I would be thin and beautiful and could possibly look like this and snag a hot dude. Which is just an ad scheme to get people to buy their product. Which you would think is a harmless way to make money. But it is seeing these ads with images of beautiful people that send subliminal messages to women everywhere that this is what you should look like. 

Of course, not ALL companies are like this. What with the increasing amount of eating disorders and extreme dieting seen in women, companies like Dove and Seventeen Magazine are campaigning to put REAL women on their covers and in their ads. They want to show people that the emaciated girl hugging the extremely good looking man is not what the majority of real girls look like. Through this campaign, hopefully it will send inspiration to girls to accept themselves as they are, and to not hate themselves for not looking like a Victoria's Secret model. I am absolutely in love with this ad campaign, because it's what I am hoping is a turning point in social media. A picture paints a thousand words, so companies should be careful with what they put out there, because it could change someone's life, for good OR for bad.