Teenage Girl's Self Image example essay topic

"Thin is Beautiful " How many times have you looked in a magazine and envied the models pictured? Have you ever watched a TV show or a movie and wished you looked like one of the stars? Many teenage girls are often targeted by magazines, movies, and TV and are made to believe that "thin is beautiful". The media has negatively affected teenage girls's elf-image. From sit-come to magazines, thin, beautiful girls can be spotted, and this can cause a girl to feel that she is not thin enough to be accepted by society. Many shows on TV can cause a teenage girl's self-image to be a very negative one; that she is too fat.

Sit-come are examples of this. On the hit TV show "Friends", there are three thin, beautiful girls starring in it, who wear skimpy, stylish clothes, have beautiful hair, and always look gorgeous. In a few episodes, there are flashbacks to when Monica, one of the characters on the show, was in high school and was a little bit overweight. Monica's friends on the show make fun of her because she was much heavier than she currently is. Surely, any girl who is slightly heavier will feel negative about her image because the "popular" and "cool" characters on the show are making fun of her weight. Most any other sit-com has the same gorgeous style of women.

On Will & Grace for example, the star playing Grace has a beautiful slim body and flaunts it from time to time. On Dharma and Greg, the star also has a thin body and wears smaller clothes as well. Search mostly any sit-com and surely, one will have a difficult time finding an "average" sized person. On Mtv, and the other music channels, thin pretty girls are seen everywhere. From the singers, like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, to the back up dancers prancing around in thongs and tiny bathing suits.

They sing about how sexy the girls are that have smooth, silky skin and thin, muscular, nearly fat-less bodies. If a girl is subjected to this enough, she will want to have that body, and if she does not, will feel badly about herself and may go to the extremes to have it, with bulimia or anorexia. Diet ads, shaving commercials, and exercise programs are also seen all over the TV in infomercials and commercials. "Thin is beautiful" is the message that it preaches. Thin is not always beautiful. Healthy is what is truly beautiful.

In teen-movies, all of the girl characters are thin and popular and it is very hard to find one that is a "nerd" or "fat". In the movie She's All That, the plot is the most popular boy in the school must transform one of the biggest nerds into the most popular girl. The art student with the glasses is the one labeled as a "nerd", and this could hurt any student who falls into this category. This could be the foundation of a poor self-image and self-doubt. In other movies like Cruel Intentions, Boys and Girls, and Forty Days and Forty Nights, many naked, thin women are seen throughout. Any teenage girl who is struggling with her self-image in a world of super models and diet fads is prone to make herself look more like the girls she sees in these movies in a potentially dangerous manner.

In teen and women magazines, models and supermodels that are on a strict diet of heavy exercise and light eating are seen doing the activities that normal women do. Ads for shaving products, clothing lines, dieting products, cosmetics, all contain slender women. Thinness is shoved in girls that read the magazine's faces. Page after page of ads with thin bodies will begin to subliminally etch a "thin is beautiful" image in their minds. If they see this long enough, it may begin to have adverse affects- like bulimia or anorexia. "Cosmopolitan", "Seventeen", "Vogue", "YM", and "Teen People" are all magazines that have these ads with the thin models.

They even have feature articles about becoming more thin and becoming more beautiful. It is sickening what it does to a girl's sense of self. The media has had a large affect on the way teen-age girls perceive themselves. TV, movies, and magazines are the main culprits that ruin a young, impressionable girl's self-image.

A girl's self-image is so distorted from the pressure put on them to be thin that serious health concerns may arise such as anorexia or bulimia. Corporations should find a way to fix this problem, perhaps by using more averagely proportioned models and actors instead of stick-thin ones. This way, a girl will not feel the need to become thinner, reach an ideal weight, or fit into a certain sized pair of jeans. If the media can change the way they run their ad campaigns, maybe a few years into the future the average teen-age girl's opinion of herself will be more positive than it is for the average teen-age girl of today..