The Thin-Ideal

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

This article examined the present study highlights self-objectification as a previously unexamined variable that may be involved in the female response to media stimuli. The central purpose of the study was to examine whether viewing thin-idealized media images would increase state self-objectification, negative affect and body dissatisfaction in young women. Then the article discussed the experiment done, which compared the effect of intensive exposure of thin models magazines and magazines advertising products without people. Also, the author presented comprehensive description of how those effects, self-objectification, appearance anxiety, negative mood and body dissatisfaction, were measured. In the last part, the author showed the results, which showed that the group which was exposed to the thin-idealized models scored much higher number in all the previously-stated measures compared to the group which was exposed to products’ images.

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

Mass media is effective in teaching us what we “should” look like. Women should be thin. Men should be muscular. The skinny and muscular ideals portrayed in advertising encourage men and women to look a certain way. The depiction of the female ideal has helped shaped society’s perspectives about beauty. The media pushes you to “improve your body” by buying their products but soon the road to a skinny and toned body leads to a self destructive path of self hatred. The powerful ideas that the media transmits through words, images, and movement can have lasting impacts on the human brain, affecting how we think and

The average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, and the models shown on television and advertisements are 5-foot-11 and weigh 120 pounds. Women think that having a gaunt face and protruding ribs is attractive, and “it condemns them to a lifetime of unhealthy diets, expensive and often bizarre slimming aids and, most crucially, a complex about their body” (The Skinny Stereotypes). Models today on billboards, advertisements, movies, and magazines are the cause of these impractical potentials. In the movies, all of the pretty, thin girls get the boyfriends and hot dates. When men see models with slender waists and immense breasts, they go crazy, in a good way.

Every day there are masses of women that are bombarded with today’s “thin-ideal media” of the so-called “picture-perfect” body. These unrealistic photos portray images in magazines all over the country to entice to our youth; which gives them the indication that they are skinny enough or pretty enough. The term “thin-ideal media” is a term that shows images and films that enclose unrealistically thin females as their centerfolds or lead characters. This is something that occurs habitually in the fashion industry, such as in magazines, clothing catalogs and television shows that appeal mostly to teens. Thin-ideal media gives the idea that being thin is a good thing and something that they should view as desirable and in some cases even strive to be like. Even if it could be potentially hazardous to one’s health by not

The largest forms of media we encounter in our daily lives are the advertisements and commercials we see on TV, the Internet and in magazines. One of the key strategies used to reinforce the feminine image is to depict every woman to be “thin.” This strategy is used all over the media and this depiction of “women should be thin” is negative. For example, “Seventeen” magazine, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario is featured on the cover captioning, “Get an insane body – It’s hard, but you’ll look hot.” This idea that the media is portraying to all women and girls is publicized wrongly. Everyone thinks that being thin is hot and if you are not thin, you don’t belong to society. However, this happens because women and girls are too taken away by getting slim,

Images in the media change almost constantly, but in the last 30-40 years, models and actresses have been getting increasingly thinner as time goes on. Recently, research has shone a light on EDs and their possible connection to the media as anorexia and bulimia rate increased during the 1970s, questioning whether the media was the cause of this increase (Driscoll and Campbell 2). This research has brought the possible connection between images in the media and body image to the attention of the public. The attention brought to the topic has sparked the controversy as people jump to either defend or berate the media for their portrayals of people’s bodies. As previously stated, media ideals change all the time. Since the turn of the century, the ideal female form has fluctuated between voluptuous and curvy, such as Marilyn Monroe, and thin and boyish, such as the flappers of the 1920s, but since Twiggy’s debut in the ‘70s, the standards have focused on thinness (Chittom and Finley 2). Even with the constant change and fluctuation, there has, historically, been an equilibrium in what body shape or size is “beautiful.” Twiggy’s debut, which started the skinny trend in the media, lines up with when the increase in EDs reportedly began, furthering the question as to what effect mass media has on women’s self-esteem and body

When one encounters elements of the media including television, movies, ads, and magazines, he or she is likely to idolize the media’s presentation of individuals along with societal expectations. Body image affects various individuals regardless of age. Today’s society views the ideal body as one with an overall thin figure and flawless features. The media continually excerpts societal expectations that having the ideal body results in experiencing contentedness and acceptance. Normalizing altercations, encouraging individuals to engage in drastic behaviors, creating dissatisfaction with one’s body, and establishing false perceptions hallmark the media’s influence on body image.

“You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine does not even look like the girl in the magazine.”-Unknown. “According to the National Eating Disorders Association, eighty percent of women are unhappy with their appearance and approximately forty five percent are dieting on any given day.” (Chittom & Finley, 2017). Men and women everywhere are extremely influenced by the media on what their bodies should resemble in order to be considered thin or appealing. The people seen in the media influence these expectations. Although a few parents may be at fault for neglecting body issues at a young age, the media affects people’s body image negatively in several ways because it can cause several deaths, severe health problems,

One reason mass media is so effective at portraying unrealistic body types as normal is because the mass media helps to set what is perceived as normal. In an article about the mass media’s role in body image disturbance and eating disorders, J. Kevin Thompson and Leslie Heinberg state, “A sociocultural model emphasizes that the current societal standard for thinness, as well as other difficult-to-achieve standards of beauty

With that said, women go to drastic measures such as following a strict diet in order to obtain the “ideal body image”. Eyal &Te’eni-Harari (2013), describe the ways in which the media portrays thin people and bigger individuals. Heavier character on TV shows appear to be unattractive and or not sexually desirable. Another key point that was brought from Eyal & Te’eni-Harari’s (2013) article is that women have been proven to unconsciously compare themselves to other women especially those that they praise(models/celebrities). With this knowledge, it is fair to place some blame on the media and its “thin unattainable ideal” and its influence on women and their low self-esteem which in turn may cause an eating disorder (Eyal & Te’eni-Harari 2013).

Today’s culture has placed women across the globe in a position where they are constantly flooded with idealistic images that depict what the media perceives as the “perfect body.” Quite often, young university-attending females, those who are involved in social identity formation, are exposed to numerous forms of media that fabricate various experiences relative to body image. In the past, researchers have surveyed women who are exposed to body-related standards using multiple forms of mass media as a unified entity, which has caused for limitations since each means -such as magazine advertisements- differs in relation to how a thin idealistic image is portrayed. In light of prior research, Harper and Tiggman established that

From the multicultural body image norms, which suggests women overall are much more concerned with body idealism and are earlier adopters of slim ideals, women are expected to also express a great fat stigma. Females exposed to media images reflect on current societally standards of slenderness and fell a greater mood and have a better body image. Females who viewed a neutral, or not so slender image for the adverse outcomes of such media exposures.

Mass media has encompassed us with images of the “thin ideal” since the 1920’s and 1950’s. Doctors Wendy Spettigue and Katherine Henderson fixated on social problems that supported Thompson and Heinberg’s concept of the internalization of attractiveness at the hand of the media. Both articles directly analyzed the internalization of attractiveness and perception of beauty. However, Spettigue and Henderson explicitly concentrated on the aspect of the media in developing eating disorders as well as the etiology of eating disorder pathology. This has fortified the notion that the “thin ideal” has a crucial detrimental repercussion on body satisfaction in men and women worldwide (Spettigue and