Body Image in Media

Media affects body image because in every TV show or movie the characters are healthy, lean, handsome, or beautiful. In ads they change the picture by editing the person’s body to make them look unrealistically skinny or muscular. This unrealistic image pushes people to the extreme to gain that image because the media makes it seen that you have to look like that to be attractive and to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. And when people can’t gain that image they then become depressed and/or kill themselves, because they can’t obtain the image that the media is evoking.

For girls and women, beauty has long been held up as a desirable trait. From infancy onward, when baby girls are described as “delicate”, “soft”, and “pretty”. Females are encouraged since birth to define themselves in term of their bodies. Many girls and young women aspire to the weight and shape of the super-thin, super-pretty fashion models. Eating disorders occur during the adolescent period of girls. Hormonal changes cause an increase in body fat in girls. Given that ads and movies emphasize thinness and beauty many girls become subconscious about their weight and appearence.

The media has less affected male body image. Men have historically been judged by strength and achievement; however, they are not immune to the media’s influence on appearance. Marketing and television shows have created an environment where a man’s physique has become as important as his possessions and his achievements. This causes men to want the ideal body a man should have that the media displays, so they would take medication’s or over work their body to try and attempt at gaining the “ideal” physique. As with women the ideal male body image has become unrealistic and impossible to achieve.

A person’s ethnicity or cultural group can also affect one’s body dissatisfaction. Generally white women have been reported to have greater body dissatisfaction. Ethnic minorities were believed to have less cultural