Eating Disorders And Media Influence

What if you were surrounded by media messages telling you that, "people will like you more if you have the perfect body" or "being perfect makes people like you" ? How do you think young female teenagers would interpret these messages that the media are portraying? 81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat, of being considered ugly. Why do you think ten year olds would ever care about how they look? It's because of the media implying that being slim is beauty. Due to the media's brainwashing, poor self-image is one of the main causes of eating disorders in adolescent girls. The media sells products, not opinions nor facts. They will sell you anything, telling you that it will make you slimmer and that being skinny is the way to go. When we see models and celebrities on commercials and in movies, we often wish that that was us in that body, because the media has made everyone so obsessed with their own bodies. The media makes young female teenagers feel guilty if they are slightly overweight. Models are beautiful, skinny, they have the right size thighs, hips, and butt. They are models but they are not role models. They are everything teenagers want to be, because of the television they watch and the magazines that they read. The media are always telling them that being thin is considered beautiful. This sends a wrath between females and their impression of what beauty really is. Some females will go to any length to try to be that perfect body weight person. Such a person doesn't even exist. For there is no perfect weight for which females should strive to achieve. Although there are many young females who will restrict what they are allowed to eat & when they are allowed to eat it. They will exercise compulsively and self effectuate vomiting. Eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating are three of the major eating disorders that infatuate young minds. Female teenagers see bingeing, dieting and vomiting, a way out of actually doing a workout and getting into shape. There is a widening gap between girl's self-image and society's messages about what girls should be like.

The media uses television, magazines and subliminal messages to attract people. They have playboy models advertising for cars, boats and body lotion. They use a women's body to advertise for their products. The media doesn't care about those millions of teenage girls out there who have a problem with their weight, they are just focused on getting the message across that being thin is beauty. In television, movies and teen magazines, the media portrays full body images of desperately thin female figures. The media promotes thinness as a measure of female beauty. Researchers have reported that women's magazines have ten and one half times more ads and articles promoting how women should look like regarding to weight loss as opposed to men magazines. Television and movies (media) reinforce the importance of a thin body as a measure of a woman's worth. The media brainwashes young female minds all the time, telling them that beauty isn't for everyone. The media is in charge of the bombardment of messages about thinness, dieting and beauty, telling "ordinary" women that they are always in need of adjustment and that the female body is an object to be perfected. These kinds of ongoing messages are always facing some poor girl in the face, urging her to start a new diet, or convince her that there's something wrong with her body weight, causing her to go into deep depression and start changing her eating habits for the worse. In a magazine called Teen Vogue, they tell us that, "Finding yourself and what makes you feel happy and healthy is always in fashion". But also runs an advertisement for breast enhancements, "for you to feel more beautiful and sexier than ever" and that you'll have more self esteem and confidence. Why does the media tells us it's ok to just be happy like how we are and that beauty is only skin deep, but then they go on giving us all these products that are supposed to give us self esteem and confidence. When really it's us who has confidence on our own, rather than the products we use. By the media's increasing disposition to render very young girls in sexual ways, that gives off an immense pressure on girls to have that nice thin body. The media brainwashes adolescent girls, making them believe that beauty is only on the outside, rather than being on both sides.

Media perception of women in sports is also very different from the familiar pictures of male athletes in action. Female athletes are increasingly photographed in "hyper sexualized poses" still revealing a sense that to be muscular, skinny and beautiful is what men are looking for and this is how a young women should look. The media's foretelling requires us to apprehend a women by her looks rather than what she has to say. "What women suffer, then, is more insidious than invisibility. It is deliberate erasure." - Louise Armstrong. Women and adolescent girls suffer through their own emotions and thoughts of how they feel they should look. They forget everything they know and they go on about listening to the media. The media which tells them that they should lose ten pounds because to the eyes of the media they are excessively fat, even though they are not. They are letting the media think for them, of how they should live and it's not right. "We don't need Afghan style burquas to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse -by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty." - Robin Gerber. By portraying ourselves to meet the media's imposed vision of adolescent girls, we are disappearing through the effects that we put on to put together a sample of what the media want's us to be. By not revealing ourselves for who we truly are, we are setting a poor example of a good self-image for every adolescent girl out there. Although there have been some magazine industries like the Coup de Pouce who try to oppose a trend. Coup de Pouce magazine has routinely included full-sized women in their fashion pages. Also Chatelaine magazine has vowed not to touch up photos and not to include models less than twenty-five years of age. At least there are some magazines out there that are trying

...