Effect of the Media on the Way Women View Their Bodies, Essay Example

The media is one phenomena that permeates each and every sphere of our current day existence. Its influence on business, culture as well as education is undisputable. Even on matters that are acutely controversial, the media always prods people into a particular direction. This is why most people refer to the media as a major opinion shaper in all respects. Most pundits view the media as an important echelon of the state power structure and at times viewed as being more powerful in determining public opinion than the armed forces (Whitney 2010). This means that the opinion the media propagates forms a critical part of how the populace perceives matters. The health of a person and the society is a sensitive issue that touches on nearly all other matters. The people’s health and their bodies as well have not been spared by the media. Women being very sensitive (sic) about their bodies are very careful of the opinions voiced by the media as well as how the population perceives this opinion as far as their bodies are concerned. We examine how the media has managed to influence this opinion and how it has shaped the way women perceive their bodies. Body image (perception) is used in reference to how people think their bodies are. The media therefore plays a huge role in setting the standards against which bodies are compared.

According to Christie (2009) the media through glamorous depictions of beauty contests and such competitions has managed to glorify overly slim women to near deities. The glamour and fame that these women enjoy has left the rest overly envious of their more slim peers.  This has left most women dissatisfied with the in bodies leading them into obsessive habits of exercising and dieting in an effort to look like their more glorified counterparts. The same goes for models that appear on Television programmes and glamour magazines. There is no single super model who can be classified as voluptuous, this is to say least of statements in the press to the respect that anything would look good on her, this makes the other women crave for a body which they can be able to wear literally anything and get away with it.

The television and other media have ceaselessly portrayed perfect images of people who seem to have what would be viewed as perfect bodies. This has given women undue pressure to live up to these seemingly perfect images which are more often than not unattainable. These images mostly from adverts of beauty products have posed a major challenge to the users of these products. The women of our society hence end up measuring up to these images which mostly are not real life images.

In effect the media has managed to make many women have dietary disorders stemming from their efforts to conform to that glamorous figure.  Anorexia is such a disorder where the affected women have a wrong view of themselves; they view themselves as being overweight while they are in actual sense grossly underweight. The effect of this is that the distorted image of supermodels with slim bodies has gotten so ingrained into the present day woman that everything they do is geared towards attaining this so called great shape. This is in total disregard of the other salient facts not publicised by the media such as the fact that one’s immune strength as well as general health and resistance to diseases is a function of the body mass index (BMI) which is determined by their weight. One can even be forgiven for thinking that the media is just peddling rumours for the sake of marketing cosmetic and other health beauty products. So maybe, the women of our generation ought to re-examine their view of their bodies with a different attitude.

References

Christie C (2009). Body Image. Retrieved 03 May 2010. Available: http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ar-Bu/Body-Image.html

Whitney M (2010). Traditional Media As Instruments To Shape Public Opinion And To Elicit Support For The Corporate Agenda. Retrieved 03 May 2010.Available
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/06/26/traditional_media_as_instruments_to.htm.