Essay#1 Final Draft (revised)
Professor Matsuno
English 0812 (804)
April 10, 2014
Negative Body Image Issues in Different Perspectives
Negative body image is a severe and inevitable topic for many teenagers and young adults. Many researchers and doctors present arguments about the cause and effects of negative body image. Jennifer L. Derenne and Eugene V. Beresin’s “Body Image , Media, and Eating Disorders”, a research report on body image, explains and discusses the broad phenomena of negative body image from then and now. On the other hand, Shari Graydon, who presents “How the Media keeps Us Hung Up on Body Image”, discusses and focuses more on the negative influences of media on women’s body image. Although both authors discuss the media influence on negative body image, Derenne and Beresin’s article is more effective and more persuasive than Graydon’s article since their article contains an objective argument, more convincing evidence, and more realistic solutions.
The whole concept in Graydon’s article is about criticizing and judging the media. In the article, Graydon describes the incident of negative body image as war-like and unwarranted influence (17). She considers teenage girls are the major targets in the problem and believes that media is responsible to the problem. Her main argument indicates that many industries make profit by manipulating the media such as magazines and television series that broadcast diet commercials and unrealistic female bodies. She also claims the concept of idea body image is generalized by media. Therefore, it creates severe negative body appearance to girls and women. She believes girls should unite together to fight against and to stand against business and companies for behaving unethically to the victims. Lastly, she appeals protests such as boycotting and avoiding using mainstream products that expose negative image (Graydon 16-19).
Derenne and Beresin demonstrate an academic study with real
Cited: Castle, David J., and Roberta Honigman. “The Looks Heritage.” Living With Your Looks. Australia: UWA Publishing, 2007 Derenne, Jennifer., and Eugene V. Beresin. “Body Image, Media, and Eating Disorders.”Academic Psychiatry, 30:3 (2006) : 257-261 Graydon, Shari. “How the Media Keeps us Hung Up on Body Image.” Horizons. (2008): 17-19 Women”. Journal of Communication. 14.3 (1992):108-133. Print. Tiggemann, Marika