Unrealistic Body Image

We all in some point of our lives been, so delighted with a fairy tale movie or a book, but do not think about the drastic consequence it is portraying on having an ideal body image? Over, the decades we have seen how fairy tales have impacted every individual. From having our great grandparents to our parents reading and watching fairy tales at a very young age. Fairy Tales have been a great phenomenon for a very long time. With the making of Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and much more loved by many people. As time his passing, people are realizing that fairy tales are affecting young girls at a very young age. Targeting mainly their body image. Body image is really important for many girls because they need to be up to date with the fashion trends society is putting out there. Now, a day’s many Fairy Tales movies are being created in looking slim, pretty, blonde, long beautiful dress, and perfect with no imperfection. In creating these false expectations on how a girl is supposed to look is drastically changing their minds. Also, is affecting their self-esteem in being low, due to not being satisfied with their body. Young girls want to be a princess because they have everything and receive all the attention. Having the characteristic of a princess is changing girls in evolving a false identity. In having a perfect body like a princess is causing other girls to not fit in because they do not fit in the category of perfect. Although, some accept

Though this is true, research shows that media does contribute to the increase in body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. “Anorexia means ‘lack of appetite’, but in the case of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, it is a desire to be the, rather than a lack of appetite, that causes individuals to decrease their food intake,” (Smolin and Mary Grosvenor, 76). “The name bulimia is taken from the Greek words bous (“ox”) and limos (“hunger”), denoting hunger of such intensity that a person could eat an entire ox,” (Smolin and Mary Grosvenor, 94).

Media has greatly evolved since starting, but has bad evolved with it? Print media, digital media, and now social media surround everybody today. Media surround us when we go to the store and see magazines, when we sit and home and watch TV, and especially when we go online. Over time, media has created its own idea of beauty. Medias influence on body image can’t be overlooked. Media and eating disorders have a cause and effect relationship. In Helens article, “Eating Disorders: A growing problem on college campuses”, she expresses that, “In today’s media-saturated world, young women are bombarded with one message: be thin” (Helen, 2014, Paragraph 9). Today media shows that to beautiful you have to be an unhealthy weight. If media doesn’t change its view of beautiful, then the rate of eating disorders triggered by media will go up. We need to figure out a way to help now.

Along with the unrealistic body images on social media it drags along obsession with dieting, food, and appearance in young adolescents creating eating disorders. “Adolescents diagnosed with serious eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia often report that their symptoms can be linked to the bullying they received from their age peers as well as the unrealistic media images presented as an ideal for them to follow.”(www.phycologytoday.com) The unrealistic body ideal that they feel they need to follow has a big impact on the way teens look at what they are eating, and their weight and shape which can lead to serious eating disorders. “Adolescent females who are unable to conform to the ideal being put forward by movie, television find themselves taking extreme measures to be more like their role models.” (www.phycologytoday.com) Teens feel that it is important to become like their role models that they see on social media and go to extreme measures to become the ideal weight and shape

Promotion by the media of the extraordinarily thin body types has been linked to the steady rise of eating disorders, especially among adolescents (Ballaro & Wagner, 2017). Experts believe that there are more than ten million females suffering from some sort of eating disorder and that the problems are happening in patients of younger and younger ages. The gap between the average woman’s body and the ideal body is much larger than before (Spitzer, Henderson, & Zivian, 1999). Ninety four percent of characters in the United States media, are thinner than the average woman (Gonzalez-Lavin & Smolak, 1995). The average American woman is only 5’4” tall and weighs approximately 165 pounds (Martin 2010). The media depicts happiness, wealth and success associated to unrealistic body types (Tiggemann, 2002). Not only does the media display this image, it also exhaustively provides information to encourage achievement of it as well. Whether through dieting, exercise or mild to extreme cosmetic surgery for body sculpting, women are feeling the pressure that they need to be thin and often take even the most dangerous methods to obtain this. Considering that these delusional ideals are nearly impossible for most average women, without choosing unhealthy and harmful behaviors, eating disorder theorists have proclaimed that media is supporting these habits (Levine & Smolak, 1998). It is estimated that 10-15% of girls and women between the ages of 9 and 19 are affected by eating disorders. Though the death rates vary from different studies, one thing is for sure; eating disorders can have many health risks, including death. With the unrealistic ability to achieve the super thin body image many women are still turning to these harmful methods in order to try; thus resulting in death of someone every 62 minutes as a result (Eating Disorders Coalition,

In this essay I will discuss how far sociologists would agree that the media causes eating disorders in women. Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions characterized by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the damage of an individual's physical and emotional health. Eating disorders include: bulimia, anorexia and obesity.

Beauty has become stigmatized in our culture. Women are starving themselves and men are abusing steroids in a never ending quest to achieve what is to be believed is the perfect body. This has led to an increase in cases of lower self esteem, body dysmorphia issues, and eating disorders. Popular culture has influenced what is to be perceived as beautiful, especially in women. All of this pressure is coming from magazines, movies, reality television, music, social networking, and peer pressure.

The health of young women is negatively affected by the unrealistic sizing of barbie dolls and the excessive use of photoshop. Nannette Hammond grew up playing with Barbie dolls and obsessing over the perfect figure of the plastic toy. Many years later, she is a forty-two year old mother who has spent five-hundred thousand dollars to undergo surgeries in order to look like Barbie. From a young age she believed that everything about Barbie was perfect: her body, her hair, even her car. Now she has thrown away half a million dollars in order to live out the life of Barbie. She weighs only ninety-one pounds and has gotten numerous surgeries including work to obtain the bra size of a twenty-eight H (Abrahamson). This situation proves that by being introduced to the disproportional body image at a young age, women can end up

Scholars have continuously tried to understand why people develop eating disorders. Many have tested and proven one prerequisite for certain: having a damaging, negative, self-image (Fisher et. al., 2003; Button, Loan, Davies & Barke 1997; Cervera et. al., 2002; Thomas, James & Bachmann, 2000; O’Dea & Abraham, 2000). Other scholars have looked at how media interacts with these feelings of negative body image to produce females who harm their bodies in order to be thin (Berel & Irving, 2001; Busselle, 2001; Gettman & Roberts, 2004; Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003; Hendriks, 2002; Kilbourne, 2000; Leung Kwork Yan, Prendergast, & Prendergast, 2002; Posavac, Posavac, & Weigel, 2001; Slater & Tiggemann, 2004; Strice & Thompson, 2001; Thomsen, 2002).

Teenagers spend as much as seven hours observing media daily according to researchers (Spur, Berry and Walker); the need to reach the ideal body image becomes overwhelming due to emphasis on looks in the media and time spent viewing it. The National Eating Disorder Association did a study that concluded 80% of women were unsatisfied with their appearance and girls as young as nine had begun to practice dieting (Chittom and Finley). Through the use of the language of morality, the media has lured people into buying and using dieting products. Due to the staggering different proportions between the average woman and average model – an average woman measures 140 pounds at 5”4 while a model weighs 117 pounds at 5”11 – the ideal body image becomes, not only exceedingly difficult to achieve but extremely dangerous (Chittom and Finley). According to Body Mass Index calculations, 18.5 and below is dangerous for the human body to endure and means it will not function at an optimal rate – the average model calculates to a BMI of 16.3. However, media has been making an effort to correct the problem of body

This ethical issue is important for the society especially to the women and young girls who are being blind of the wrong advertisement of body image. Media contributes a huge impact on people, they are showing the unrealistic image of ‘perfect body’ to their audience that influences their idea on what body should they have. Most of the people who gets sway by those media advertising are young people. Magazines, television and another form of media are setting beauty standards that influence a lot of people to want a perfect body.

Morant, H. (2000). BMA demands more responsible media attitude on body image. British Medical Journal, 320(7248), 1495. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203999379?accountid=10458

Depression is another problem that those who use social networks often may experience when they worry too much about themselves and the ways they present themselves. Time Magazine once said that “girl have more body image and [eating disorder] than boy have.” For example, my sister is younger than me and she is so thin, because she not eating much in an effort to grow stronger. Through what I see with my sister, the body image of girls is the important to them especially during their adolescent years. A Researcher of the Brown University School of Public Health said that “the more user of the social network the more increase in depression.” Teenage girls who are often on the social networks and have experiences that include bullying and

“The attention-grabbing pictures of various high-flying supermodels and actors on different magazine covers and advertisements go a long way in influencing our choices” (Bagley). The media is highly affective to everyone, although they promote an improper image of living. Research proved says those with low self-esteem are most influenced by media. Media is not the only culprit behind eating disorders. However, that does not mean that they have no part in eating disorders. Media is omnipresent and challenging it can halt the constant pressure on people to be perfect (Bagley). Socio-cultural influences, like the false images of thin women have been researched to distort eating and cause un-satisfaction of an individual’s body. However, it

Researchers believe that access to mass media (i.e. Internet, television, newspaper, magazine, and other forms of social media) may be a correlate to low self-esteem and higher rates of body dissatisfaction (Stryer, 2009). Adolescents who have high body dissatisfaction will typically engage in behaviors that lead to eating disorders, such as dieting supplements, excessive exercise, or dietary restraints (Greene, 2012).