The Influence Of Negative Body Image

Body image is the way someone sees themselves and how everyone else looks at them. This is almost always influenced from family, friends, and the biggest influence of them all social media. Having negative body image about one-self can lead to lower self-esteem, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and depression.
The large majority believe that only teenage girls suffer from having negative body image, but in reality both men and women starting from their early teens suffer from perceiving a negative body image in themselves. According to jama pediatrics are concerned about the way they look. Also in a research made by “Campaign”, which surveyed one thousand and five boys aged between eight and eighteen, Out those one thousand and five boys
Stanley, Andrea says in her article in “Seventeen” magazine, As many as seventy percent of preschoolers say they don't like their body, according to research. Also forty two percent of first through third grade girls say they want to be skinnier. Eighty percent of girls ages eight to ten believe they are “overweight”; forty five have already started dieting. In the past decade, the number of girls under the age of ten that are hospitalized for eating disorders have
Society needs to recognize that the media is controlling how we feel about ourselves. The average person is exposed to five thousand ads, one hundred and eighty minutes of media PER DAY. Each week teen girls spend thirty hours watching TV, ten hours online, and about four hours looking through magazine articles. Eighty percent of women say that models in advertisements make them feel insecure about themselves. The average American woman is about 5’4 tall and weighs around one hundred and forty pounds. The average American model is twenty percent the ideal healthy weight measuring 5’11 tall and weighs one hundred and seventeen pounds. That's a difference of seven inches of height and 23 pounds. No wonder women across the country feel ashamed of their bodies. When a young fifteen year old girl asked Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and Former United States Secretary of State, about her view on body image and the media, she responded, "I am passionate about this too because we know that young women begin to get influenced at earlier and earlier ages by messages from the media," Clinton replied. "Forget your mind, forget your heart, care only about what you look because that's all we care about. And we have to stand up against that - women and men, mothers and fathers, teachers, everybody.” When we look directly into celebrities