Media's Interference With Adolescent Girls Images example essay topic

What if you were surrounded by media messages telling you that, "people will like you more if you have the perfect body" or "being perfect makes people like you"? How do you think young female teenagers would interpret these messages that the media are portraying? 81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat, of being considered ugly. Why do you think ten year olds would ever care about how they look? It's because of the media implying that being slim is beauty. Due to the media's brainwashing, poor self-image is one of the main causes of eating disorders in adolescent girls.

The media sells products, not opinions nor facts. They will sell you anything, telling you that it will make you slimmer and that being skinny is the way to go. When we see models and celebrities on commercials and in movies, we often wish that that was us in that body, because the media has made everyone so obsessed with their own bodies. The media makes young female teenagers feel guilty if they are slightly overweight. Models are beautiful, skinny, they have the right size thighs, hips, and butt. They are models but they are not role models.

They are everything teenagers want to be, because of the television they watch and the magazines that they read. The media are always telling them that being thin is considered beautiful. This sends a wrath between females and their impression of what beauty really is. Some females will go to any length to try to be that perfect body weight person. Such a person doesn't even exist.

For there is no perfect weight for which females should strive to achieve. Although there are many young females who will restrict what they are allowed to eat & when they are allowed to eat it. They will exercise compulsively and self effectuate vomiting. Eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating are three of the major eating disorders that infatuate young minds. Female teenagers see bingeing, dieting and vomiting, a way out of actually doing a workout and getting into shape. There is a widening gap between girl's self-image and society's messages about what girls should be like.

The media uses television, magazines and subliminal messages to attract people. They have playboy models advertising for cars, boats and body lotion. They use a women's body to advertise for their products. The media doesn't care about those millions of teenage girls out there who have a problem with their weight, they are just focused on getting the message across that being thin is beauty. In television, movies and teen magazines, the media portrays full body images of desperately thin female figures. The media promotes thinness as a measure of female beauty.

Researchers have reported that women's magazines have ten and one half times more ads and articles promoting how women should look like regarding to weight loss as opposed to men magazines. Television and movies (media) reinforce the importance of a thin body as a measure of a woman's worth. The media brainwashes young female minds all the time, telling them that beauty isn't for everyone. The media is in charge of the bombardment of messages about thinness, dieting and beauty, telling "ordinary" women that they are always in need of adjustment and that the female body is an object to be perfected.

These kinds of ongoing messages are always facing some poor girl in the face, urging her to start a new diet, or convince her that there's something wrong with her body weight, causing her to go into deep depression and start changing her eating habits for the worse. In a magazine called Teen Vogue, they tell us that, "Finding yourself and what makes you feel happy and healthy is always in fashion". But also runs an advertisement for breast enhancements, "for you to feel more beautiful and sexier than ever" and that you " ll have more self esteem and confidence. Why does the media tells us it's ok to just be happy like how we are and that beauty is only skin deep, but then they go on giving us all these products that are supposed to give us self esteem and confidence.

When really it's us who has confidence on our own, rather than the products we use. By the media's increasing disposition to render very young girls in sexual ways, that gives off an immense pressure on girls to have that nice thin body. The media brainwashes adolescent girls, making them believe that beauty is only on the outside, rather than being on both sides. Media perception of women in sports is also very different from the familiar pictures of male athletes in action. Female athletes are increasingly photographed in "hyper sexual ized poses" still revealing a sense that to be muscular, skinny and beautiful is what men are looking for and this is how a young women should look. The media's foretelling requires us to apprehend a women by her looks rather than what she has to say.

"What women suffer, then, is more insidious than invisibility. It is deliberate erasure". - Louise Armstrong. Women and adolescent girls suffer through their own emotions and thoughts of how they feel they should look.

They forget everything they know and they go on about listening to the media. The media which tells them that they should lose ten pounds because to the eyes of the media they are excessively fat, even though they are not. They are letting the media think for them, of how they should live and it's not right. "We don't need Afghan style burqas to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse -by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty".

- Robin Gerber. By portraying ourselves to meet the media's imposed vision of adolescent girls, we are disappearing through the effects that we put on to put together a sample of what the media want's us to be. By not revealing ourselves for who we truly are, we are setting a poor example of a good self-image for every adolescent girl out there. Although there have been some magazine industries like the Coup de Pouce who try to oppose a trend.

Coup de Pouce magazine has routinely included full-sized women in their fashion pages. Also Chatelaine magazine has vowed not to touch up photos and not to include models less than twenty-five years of age. At least there are some magazines out there that are trying to set a good example for adolescent teenage girls, who need a good role model, apart from every load of tosh the media hands out. Adolescents nowadays need good solid role models so that they can relate to them in a good way, not just looking to see if they have the same shape body as them. The media causes many depression problems for adolescent girls.

In fact, in such a world where perception is everything, reality is not much of an importance. There are many adolescent females who are insecure about their bodies and the number of adolescent females who seek a similarly underweight body is epidemic and they can suffer equally devastating health consequences like eating disorders. Compulsive overeating, restricting of foods, excessive exercise, bingeing, dieting and vomiting are all symptoms of anorexic and bulimic individuals. The media causes self depression to many female individuals who result to bulimia symptoms to try and lose weight because they feel "fat". An anorexic believes that they are fat even though they aren't.

They will always see themselves as a fat looking person. Bulimics see themselves as fat individuals also but to an extent. Bulimics and anorexics always find something wrong with themselves and that's why they result to dieting, bingeing and the restricting of the foods. 30% of adolescents chose an ideal body shape that is 20% underweight and an additional 44% chose an ideal body shape 10% underweight. Everyone whether they have an eating disorder or not, are concerned and obsessive about their own weight. Anorexics and bulimics are constantly looking at themselves to see the "fat" that's there even though there isn't any.

Most adolescent girls are dissatisfied with their appearance and so they take drastic measures to try and redeem themselves, try to make themselves happy. If they only knew that appearances aren't everything. The most superficial inspection of media confirms that young girls are being bombarded with preconceptions of sexuality, often dominated by stereotypical portrayals of adolescent girls as powerless, passive victims. The media only shows us what an adolescent girl should be like to them, with the thinness of the body and the lack of confidence and self esteem that they don't believe we should use. The media bombards adolescent girls with messages and perceptions of what an adolescent girl should look like and be like. Television, movies and magazines are always telling adolescent girls what to do to stay in style, what to do about split ends and most of all telling them what beauty really is, instead of just sending messages saying, "your beautiful just the way you are".

The media causes severe depression for many adolescent girls, because they are always trying to tell girls how they should be like and what's expected of them. Adolescent girls have enough on their minds without having to stay in this thinness shape that the media want's them to be. They have other effects which they need to resolve, like the depression of not being happy with themselves. Of going through many procedures to make them look "thin" or "ordinary" because they can no longer be happy with themselves because of the media's interference with adolescent girls images. Anorexia and bulimia are one of the main causes along with the media as to why adolescent girls are always slightly underweight and devastating skinny.

If the media didn't interfere with adolescent perceptions, maybe one half of fourth grade girls wouldn't be on a diet. Intense fear of becoming fat and distorted body images aren't the kinds of thing we want our adolescents girls to become. To think about their appearance and weight 24/7 isn't right. The media should stop publicizing young female bodies and telling them what beauty is perceived to them. They should think of all those adolescents girls that they send into depression or force to become bulimic, just because they wish to make money. The media brainwashes too many of adolescent girls, making them think about their body in relation to models who have unmistakably the "perfect body".

Making them think that you have to be thin in order to be beautiful..