Overview of issue:
In today’s society, little girls are being led to believe
ideas that are not accurate. Body image
is a subject that has been extremely sensitive to adolescent girls for a long
time. With the introduction to social
media, the problem has gotten bigger and bigger. Not only are girls hearing and feeling the
pressure to look thin and perfect from their peers, but also through mediums of
social media as well. Some social media
examples would include but are not limited to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,
Instagram and Snapshot. The words and
pictures being posted are making adolescent girls think that their body needs
to be a size zero and anything above that is considered “fat”.
The industry that my report will be focusing on is social
media.
This is a very important subject because it discusses the
negative impact that social media plays in people’s daily lives. Parents do not realize how much time their
child spends interacting with social media on an everyday basis. Most kids under the age of twelve have an
iPod or iPad of some sort. So, there are
constant ways to reach the world of social media from our fingertips.
I have a very personal connection to this issue. I babysat the same two kids for about six
years. I started back in 2006, when I
first graduated high school. One of the
girls was eight-years-old (Lily), while the other was at four years of age
(Sarah). When I first started
babysitting them, Lily did not care about what anyone though about her…she was
eight, so all she wanted to do was play outside with her friends. As Lily got older, she began developing a
larger group of friends and became one of the “popular” girls in school. She would often ditch Sarah to hang out with
her other friends, which would leave Sarah in tears. By the time Lily reached the age of 12, she
had gotten a MySpace account and owned an iPad.
Just from being around her for so long, I noticed that her style had
changed greatly, and she would start to wear revealing clothes to school with
her friends. When I confronted her about
it, she said that was what everyone was wearing and if she did not wear it, she
would not be considered cool. Lily also
skipped dinner meals. Her parents tried
to make her eat her vegetables, but most times she would just pick around her
food and end up not eating anything.
My last year babysitting, she came home from school one day
in tears. When I sat her down to talk
about it, she said that someone on MySpace had messaged her and called her fat
because of one of her pictures. She
happened to be in a bathing suit in this picture, so she felt extremely hurt by
the statement. She also said that she
had stopped eating food so much because she was trying to stay skinny like all
her other friends. She was afraid that
if she did not maintain the same body weight that she had, she would lose all
her friends.
ARTICLES
For and Against the Reality Television Show: America's Next Top Model
For:
This article focuses on the aspect of how media in general
plays a role in the mindset of body image.
The author discusses the television show, America’s Next Top Model, which is a modeling competition
show. I personally used to watch this
show, and I would always notice that it was always the same types of girls who
would compete. Skinny, skinny and even
more skinny. They would very rarely, if
ever, branch out and get someone of what we consider “normal” body weight. The girls would always be less than 100
pounds. A quote that I really liked from
this article was “This show glamorizes women that really aren’t the problem,
but the fact that it only uses women who are poster children for pro-ana is a
big problem. The media needs to be accountable for its impact on our youth, as
it is already aware of the body issues it produces.” America’s
Next Top Model is also a show that comes on in marathons almost every
week. It is so easy for a child to come
home from school, turn on the television, and immediately be sucked into
watching how their body’s should look.
Against:
This article battles the first article about the reality
television show, America’s Next Top Model. The author thinks that the show has improved
on helping girls out with their body image, with having a winner who is
considered “plus-size”. The winner,
Whitney Thompson has been busy since she won, with being the spokesperson for
the National Eating Disorders Association.
She also “speaks to college-aged girls about maintaining a healthy body
image.” When asked why if Whitney has
never personally had an eating disorder, why she would decide to be a
spokesperson for it, her answer was “I mean, when the majority of all
9-year-old girls have been on a diet, we're doing something wrong.” Whitney
also made a comment later in the interview that really hit me kind of
hard. She said that “A lot of girls get
depressed, some girls commit suicide, some girls starve to death, literally,
and we kind of just don't pay attention to it in the industry. We don't really
talk about it, but it's very common.”
That is a very powerful statement.
How Far Social Media Has Come (Not In the Positive Way)
This article discusses what was different before social media came into the picture and how society has changed with the introduction of the new technology. “Before social networks, we mostly had images of impossibly perfect celebrities. We would pass these images on billboards, watch them on TV, flip through them in magazines, but we weren't sitting around staring at them for hours every day.” I think that this is very true because when kids come home from school, they do not want to go outside and play with their friends…they want to sit in front of some sort of technology. Dina Borzekowski, professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who specializes in children, media and health, states that “Social media may have a stronger impact on children's body images than traditional media. Messages and images are more targeted; if the message comes from a 'friend,' it is perceived as more credible and meaningful.”
This article discusses the different
standards of feminine beauty. All
standards can take presence in different forms of popular media. The author talks about how most standards of
beauty are unrealistic for women. Most
models that are shown on television or advertisements are under the normal
weight that is considered healthy.
Adolescent girls are looking at these people as role models and copying everything
they do, including achieving how they look.
The article quotes that “From the perspective of the mass media,
thinness is idealized and expected for women to be considered attractive.” It also discusses how “images in
advertisements, television, and music usually portray the "ideal
woman" as tall, white, and thin, with a "tubular" body, and
blonde hair.” Girls will do anything to
try to go after this image until their body type matches up. So, what happens when children are constantly
seeing and being exposed to this kind of material? Research says that “constant exposure to thin
models fosters body image concerns and disordered eating in many females.” I am sure parents would rethink the exposure
to social media if they knew that their child could be affected in such a
negative way.
How To Help When Social Media Becomes Too Much:
Now, while I have given you tons of examples of how social
media plays a role in adolescent girls lives, there are a number of ways that
the subject can be helped. Parents are a
very big role, or even supporter in a child’s life, so the teaching needs to
start there. In this article, the author
discusses how parents could help control the amount of media that comes into
their child’s daily lives. When it comes
to mothers, “Girls take to heart what their mothers say about bodies: their
own, their daughters, those of strangers and celebrities. They notice when
their mothers exercise obsessively, diet constantly, or make derogatory
comments about their own appearance. That should come as no surprise, as
mothers are a girl's first and, often, most influential role model.” Fathers also play an important role. “Fathers
play an equally influential role in shaping their daughters' self-image. A daughter learns how to relate to men by the
way she relates to her father.”
Renee Hobbs, EdD,
Associate Professor of Communications at Temple University puts her opinion so
very perfectly…Co-viewing [the act of parents watching TV or viewing the
Internet with their daughters] allows parents and their daughters to talk about
those patterns of [physical] representation.”
Hobbs and her research team actually came up with a website called My
Pop Studio. This website allowed “visitors
to the site, which is targeted at adolescent girls, to actually
"create" their own celebrity images based on a host of physical
attributes.” Results from the study
proved to be even more disturbing than Hobbs and her team were expecting. According to Hobbs,” the majority of girls
who engage in this online activity make themselves over to appear thin, white,
and blonde -- even girls whose appearance differs substantially from that
"ideal" Image. Seeing the skewed self-images their daughters create
gives parents a starting place for dialogue about body image as portrayed by
the media. When parents can help their daughters recognize how unrealistic
these images are -- airbrushed to trim tummies and hide blemishes -- girls may
begin to feel better about the way they look, flaws and all.”
The Positive Side of Social Media and Body Image:
This website deals with an article that talks about how
social media can have a positive impact on body image. There was a magazine that was published where
the author found that after the readers finished the magazine, their body
satisfaction had improved. This “contradicted
many studies that suggest the media obsession with promoting ideal bodies only
damages a woman’s satisfaction about their weight and their body.” The author stated that “The magazines attract
women because they give a short-term boost in body image, but they also set up
unrealistic expectations. When women don’t achieve the body they want, they are
disappointed and then likely come back to the magazines for more advice and
inspiration.” This is just an example of
how social media can have a positive impact on body image and body
satisfaction.
MY VIEW ON THE ISSUE
This is always going to be an issue that bothers me. I have a niece who is four-years-old and I do not ever want her to think that she is anything other than perfect...no matter what she looks like. I get angry when I think about what people might say or do to her that could change her opinion of herself. I do not think that anyone has the right to do that...no one deserves that. I think that after doing research, parents should definitely be more careful and aware of their children using social media. Maybe only allow them a certain number of technology hours per day. That way, they are still getting to be a kid and actually enjoy it. I think society today does not know how to survive without social media, and I do not think that we ever will. I think that body image dealing with adolescent girls will always be an issue, especially with the social media portal growing as large and as fast as it is.
