Media Effects On Women

Savannah Glasgow
Mrs. Watts, per. 3
AP Lang and Comp
24 Jan 2013
The Effects of Media on Adolescent Females She stands in front of her full length mirror sucking in her stomach and looking at her body from every angle. Taped to her mirror are cut outs from her favorite fashion magazines of impossibly thin models wearing clothes she can’t afford. She compares every part of her body to the women in the pictures, whom she idolizes, that exemplify a corrupt cultural definition of beauty. Her mother calls her in to the kitchen to eat dinner, and she ponders how she plans on finding another excuse to skip another meal and spend as little time with her family as possible. This girl is an example of one of the many girls feeling unnecessary pressure
in their lives as an effect of the media. Adolescent women are more susceptible to being affected emotionally and physically by the media in direct and indirect ways that harm their self-worth and health. To understand the effects of the media, it is necessary to understand the image of beauty that the media broadcasts. Simply stated, thin is in. Stick figure like women are displayed on the covers of magazines, in advertisements, and even fictional characters portrayed in movies are embodying the thin ideal. In the Dreamwork’s movie Shrek, the princess is portrayed as thin, with long hair, and fair skinned. She is ashamed of her natural self which is green, overweight, and more masculine. This sort of embarrassment directly teaches the youth, young girls especially, that they should be ashamed of their bodies if they do not fit in to this mold. As the years pass, the models are shrinking in size and elongating in height. The models of today have reached an incredible new level of thin because they fit the criteria for the eating disorder anorexia nervosa (Grabe, Hyde, and Ward 463). A study was conducted on the Playboy models of the past twenty years and it was found that their bust, waist, and hip measurements have decreased but their heights increased. The Playboy centerfolds are 13%-19% below the average body weight for women their age (Cusumano and Thompson 714). The definitions of “underweight” and “unhealthy” have morphed into our culture’s definitions of “sexy” and “beautiful,” and this sort of corruption is disastrous for those who believe in the validity of everything the media presents to its consumers. As children grow up, their role models expand as they begin to become consumers of the media. They used to want to grow up to be like their parental figure, but the media deifies celebrities, athletes, and models, causing the children to idolize these adults instead of their parents. In a survey conducted in 1988, the results found that 66% of adolescents, aged 12-15, said that their role model was a glamorous adult and can be compared to the 8% of children this age who chose their parents. Television and magazines are an early glimpse of what really goes on the world, and due to the naiveté of children, they begin to believe that the distorted deities created by the media are an accurate representation of reality (Anderson et al. 109). Due to their exposure to the media and their early idolization of women who embody the “ideal body type for women,” it is not surprising that teenage girls experience self-dissatisfaction. For the majority of women, it is nearly impossible to attain the body type portrayed by models. In one study, 5% of women with a normal weight distribution are even close to the media ideal. This leaves 95% of women who are at risk of harm to their self-worth because they are not like the pretty people (Anderson et al. 110). A later study was conducted and it was found that about 61% of all of teenage girls studied were unhappy with their height and 75% were unhappy with their weight after being exposed to an entertainment magazine for several minutes a day over a course of ten months (113). These statistics all demonstrate directly how the media’s definition of beauty affects the views of females on their bodies. These negative views of themselves that young women have, can result in disastrous physical health effects. The development of eating disorders, whether clinical or self-diagnosed, are hugely influenced by the media. Patton, Selzer, Coffey, Carlin, and Wolfe conducted a study on fifteen year old girls and the results found said that 60% of the pool had dieted at a moderate level and 8% of the pool had dieted at a severe level at least once in their life. All of the young women in the tested pool were of a healthy BMI. The results also demonstrated that, within twelve months, the girls who dieted severely were eighteen times more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who do not diet at all. In comparison, those who dieted moderately were five times more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who do not diet within the same twelve month period. These findings foster the idea that dieting is the gateway to an eating disorder within the teenage years for young women. These girls were completely healthy and not overweight by the standards of the body mass index (767). There has to be outside influences that triggered these young women to want to lose weight, and the media is a very likely cause. The young girls continue to compare themselves to these thin glamorous adults, therefore further triggering their desire to get thiner. If the media leads to dieting and diets often lead to eating disorders, the image that the media is portraying can trigger this kind of mindset within impressionable teens (Anderson et al. 117). In a society where being thin is praised and having a frail body represents in the eyes of the consumer the qualities such as “motivation, hard work, and strong moral character” (Haworth-Hoeppner 223).
Being thin is a value that adolescent and adult women alike share, and making a goal that involves the embodiment of this ideal is normal due to its exaggeration within the media. Members of the family raise thinness, especially as a form of femininity, and foster an environment with in the home that obsesses over weight being “crucial to identity” (223). As an effect of such, families that make being beautiful and thin a recognized value, are 2/3 more likely to have daughters that praise the thin ideal
(223). Magazines and other forms of media start to become such a necessity for teenage girls, that it starts to define their social status within their schools. Magazines such as Seventeen gives advice to young girls on how to “fit in” but contradicts itself by printing photos of women who do not fit in at all because they are not of normal stature. Also, these magazines affect their social circles because young girls discuss the content of these magazines at lunch, in the hallways, and even during class. If you are not up to date on the latest gossip, you are an outsider (Milkie 197). Magazine reading is a part of the culture within their peers and a large amount of their social interaction centered around the sharing, reading, and discussing of the magazines. The thin ideal presented by the media also effects the home life of adolescent girls. Parents can become so involved in the cultural norms that they begin to expect difficult-to-achieve and even completely unrealistic results from their daughters. Whether they be the ideal academic, athletic, or physical characteristics that they hope their daughters to embody, parents tend to become overly critical when their daughters fall short. Parents are supposed to be the most supportive people in a girl’s life, but when a critical environment develops in the home, low self-esteem develops (Haworth-Hoeppner 216). Parental criticisms emanated from parents occur regularly in a critical family environment. These criticisms involve weight, appearance, or general negative qualities the child possesses. Melissa, a self-diagnosed bulimic from the Haworth-Hoeppner study said, “My mom was always on me about “have you gained a little weight?” or “That doesn’t look good on you. Why don’t you go put some lipstick on? I don’t like your hair; go back upstairs and change your outfit,”” (Haworth-Hoeppner 216). Haworth-Hoeppner also says “coercive parental control, is characterized as behavior of the parent in a contest of wills, which results in considerable external pressure on the child to behave according to the parents' desires,” (216).
When the child rebels, corporal punishment is often involved and there are lots of rules within the household. Often, parents use coercive control to control the food given to the child. The children would be forced to eat, even if they are not hungry. During the teenage years, it is natural for children to rebel, and young girls would rebel by refusing to eat, resulting in weight loss. By having complete control of their bodies, especially the food they put in them, is power to the daughters, as well as a symptom of eating disorders (224). With a critical environment and coercive control being demonstrated within the household, food restriction or weight control can become a mode of self-improvement as well as a form of resistance to parental authority. In a society where the media says a thin body is the ideal body, this sort of food restriction can be considered as self-improvement. With this sort of home life, it seems legitimate that this is another aspect in which the family worships culture and the media
(224). As she continues to stare at the beautiful women plastered to her mirror, her self-critical nature comes alive. Her thighs are not thing enough, waist not small enough, legs not long enough, face not as angular as she would desire. She wants to feel hungry and appear emaciated. Her mother is attempting to assert control over her by forcing her to eat a flavorless gluten-free vegan mush so she can be skinny, but she refuses in order to assert her own control over body. Thin is in. She worships the magazines that print the pictures of the pretty people. The media has affected her directly, physically and emotionally, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.