How Media Influences Women Essay example

The report adds: "Advertising, in particular, may influence young people's perception of fashion and beauty and attitudes towards food. Young women may compare themselves to extremely thin models, working in the fashion industry or advertising products, and perceive themselves as fat in comparison, rather than healthy and attractive."

Anorexia is an eating disorder that struggles with the fear of gaining weight and refuses to be healthy. Another eating disorder is Bulimia, which is when you overeat followed by forced vomiting and excessive exercise. Binge Eating is one of the most common eating disorders along with Anorexia and Bulimia, Binge eating is when you lose control over one’s eating. All of these common eating disorders all suffer from guilt or depression. “Individuals with bulimia and binge eating eat large amounts of food to reduce stress” (CEDC). They also could have risky behaviors, such as dealing with drugs or alcohol or even death. People with Anorexia or Bulimia are very concerned with being overweight or in other words fat.

Throughout their lives, women of all ages are constantly being bombarded with advertisements convincing them they must meet an ideal of the perfect body image. This is all thanks to companies that share a common goal to influence the mainstream population into believing they need to purchase certain products in order to compare to the impossible standards set by the beauty industry. In Dave Barry’s “Beauty and the Beast” he displays that it is planted in young girls minds that they need to look, dress, feel, and even act a certain way. However, men aren’t as affected by these capitalistic marketing schemes. In short, the media has affected the way women think of themselves.

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

While women have made historical strides in the past decades, the culture at large is bound to the narcissistic constraints about how women should look. These unattainable beauty standards, largely proliferated through the media, have drastic impacts on women and their body image. Societal standards of feminine beauty are presented in all forms of popular and alternative media, bombarding women with images that portray the ideal body. Such standards of beauty are almost completely far-fetched for most women. A majority of the celebrities and models seen on television and in advertisements are well below what is considered normal for American women. “The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American

The sexualization and beauty standards of women in media gives girls and women unrealistic body expectations. “The 2000s brought us the reign of the Victoria’s Secret Angel - tall, thin, and leggy models with big breasts, flowing hair, and toned bodies” (Huffingtonpost). Girls grow up seeing these flawless and beautiful women on T.v., commercials, and magazines.

Our world is surrounded by media. Media plays an enormous role in affecting the way we perceive gender and gender roles. Media as well as communications are known to be the key elements of how people live their life in the modern age. The media can be a very inviting place, since it has so many things inside of it that appeals to people worldwide. At the same time, the media can be a cruel, judging and corrupt area that can be scary to involve yourself with. That being said, the mass media has had its history with harsh stereotyping, particularly when dealing with women. Many people within the media view women as a gender that is only allowed to be at home, whether it is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or being a slave to their male counterpart. Even with women who work inside of the media are usually overlooked, bashed by their appearance and do not get an equal opportunity as men do in order to succeed in life. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but there are still a myriad of problems that women face today, whether in the media or life in general.

The facts are haunting. The American research group Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc. says that one in every four college-aged women use unhealthy methods of weight and diet control – including fasting, skipping meals, and laxative abuse. The pressure to be thin is also affecting young girls; the Canadian Women’s Health Network warns that weight control measures are now being taken by girls as young as 5 and 6. In 2003, Teen Magazine reported that 35% of girls 6 to 12 years of age have already been on at least one diet. It is estimated that up to 450,000 young girls and women were/are affected by an eating disorder; Women’s magazines have over 10 times more ads promoting dieting and weight loss than men’s magazines. Women’s

Those media with tendentious views always lead to people deepen misconceptions. The media prefer to use hyper-sexualized images to sell products, ideas, and services keep people’s eyes. In fact, using hyper-sexualized images to sell products, ideas, and services is just good for enterprise, but it will change people’s idea, and keep women in an unfair state. In addition, the media catch people’s mentality, which are people are more interested in what did not know before, or they do not have. For men, the easiest way to realize female figure is from the Internet. Even the media will representation directly by advertising, music, and something else. Men will consider the fact thing is what they see. For women, when they see a woman with great figure, they will consider themselves, and also want to be like what they see. Therefor, they will think the important point is appearance for women. All things like values also depend on her appearance. Due to the media can change people mind little by little, for a woman, I think the most useful way to avoid change personal view by media is having women role models and mentors. Models will save women who are in adversity. When a woman lack of understanding, she can use the model’s experience to motivate herself. E4I have a role model whose name is Christine Lagarde. I known her was from once I do my assignment, and I searched lot of background information about her. I found her is really excellent. Based on International Monetary Fund,

Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder consist of emotions, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding weight and food issues. Up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder in the U.S (ANAD, n.d.) bulimia nervosa as well as the other eating disorders are considered to be a female eating disorder, a disorder that only affects women which limits males to seek treatment let alone make aware to other that they suffer from bulimia nervosa. Individuals who suffer from bulimia nervosa tend to eat big amounts of food which experience a lack of control of over eating. They tend to undertake improper purging behaviors such as vomiting, laxative use, excessive exercise and/or starvation. Individuals with bulimia nervosa display their unsuitable adaptive eating patterns a minimum of two times per week for three months and are excessively sensitive to weight gain (Ray, 2004).

Bulimia nervosa is mental illness where a person has a distortion of body image and has an obsession with wanting to lose weight. Someone with bulimia will over eat and purge, what will follow is a period of depression, and they will induce vomiting. After they consume a large amount of food, they will have feelings of guilt or shame. This disease is self-diagnosable. A person will binge eat then take steps to avoid gaining weight. Although they usually purge, they can exercise excessively and fast.

If you believe the media, the perfect body for women should be under 21% body fat, and have curves in all the right places. For decades, the media has influenced the way women identify themselves and their bodies. At an early age, I started to compare myself to the women I saw in the media. I wanted to look like them so I bought the right makeup, and wore the trendiest clothes. None of which made me look like the women I wanted to copy. When I looked in a mirror, I began hating what I saw. Some days I wished I could just peel out of my skin and take someone else’s thinner body. Since I would never look like a model, I started to abuse my body. I smoked cigarettes, ate excessive junk food, (or nothing at all), and lacked sleep for years. I wasn’t

In the recent years eating disorders have become to an increasing public concern. The two most common types of eating disorders are called Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa. Body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and unhappiness combined with the fear to gain weight can be determinants. Anorexia nervosa has been defined as a medical condition since the late 19th century and is characterized by an extreme weight loss. Bulimia nervosa has been accepted as medical condition since 1987. It is associated with ‘binge-eating’ in which people are not able to control their food consumption. First they tend to eat an excessive amount of food, afterwards they feel guilty and sufferers drift into excessive dieting, exercising and self-induced purging.

Today society has never been more aware of the impact the media has on what is considered to be an attractive person. Those who are most vulnerable by what they observe as the American standard of attractiveness and beauty are young females. Their quest to imitate such artificial images of beauty has challenged their health and their lives and has become the concern of many. As a result, advertisements used in the media are featuring more realistic looking people.

programs, and the list goes on, all presenting a typical stereo type of how one should look, or how one should strive to look. Most commonly, when a person views such media, he or she may feel not good enough or not up to societies standards. This response is the exact goal of such medial advertisement, causing people to purchase their product. When looking at a photo or commercial on television advertising anti-wrinkle cream, one sees someone with perfect skin that claims to be older then they may actually be, and one may assume, by using that certain product, their results will be the same. Advertisements such as this, emit unrealistic illusions of a younger self, manipulating viewers into buying their product. Sadly, with the superficial concerns of today’s world, these ads continue to work and these types of products are sold by the millions.