How the Media Portrays Women Body, Research Paper Example

Introduction  

Although women have made important steps in the previous decades, society greatly pressures and dictates how women should look. Such beauty and appearance standards are widely spread through the media and usually have adverse effects on women and their body images. Mass media utilizes various media forms and other technologies to disseminate information about various subjects such as weather, current occurrences in society, sports, entertainment, products and services, and political news. It has undergone tremendous evolution, which has established more and more uses and greatly increased its role in people’s lives. The media has important functions such as circulating government policies, mobilizing individuals during crisis times, entertainment, dissemination of crucial cultural norms, rules, values, and validation of norms and status of certain movements, individuals, products, or organizations. Despite its important functions and usefulness in keeping the world updated on the past and current happenings, media is associated with various problems such as sensationalism, high levels of inaccuracies, the concentration of making enormous profit margins instead of serving the public, misinforming and un-informing the public, and portraying a bad image about women’s body. A specific current problem and trend affecting the media are portraying the image of a woman’s body as thin, light-skinned and with silky-smooth skin.

Background of the problem

The media portraying the image of a woman’s body as thin, light-skinned and with silky-smooth skin has been a current trend in contemporary society – the media pushes women to believe they need to be skinny and not sway from the norm. Although there has been visible progress, women’s body image in the media industry remains a sexist and negative one, making the real problems affecting women to be overlooked. The media displays improbable pictures of body images of super-slim women, which gains the most attention. The majority of people comprehend that image manipulation is possible, but the extent to which the media utilizes image manipulation to darken or lighten skin tone and change the body shape of women is not always understood. Other women, in turn, try to adopt the behavior portrayed by the media- they try to make their body shapes and skin tone appear similar to the ones displayed by media sources. Such evidence is transparent when a closer look at younger women reveals how they attempt to go openly to sexual appearances based on the nature of media they consume. The media plays a significant role in influencing women’s self-image by informing and reflecting on what society contemplates to be attractive or beautiful. One way the media achieves this is through general utilization of attractive and very thin models in print and other forms of media, which is often termed as “thin perfect” and conveys the way individuals believe they should appear to be attractive and desired by others. the media uses diverse aspects of appearance to convey beauty ideals, including facial, skin, and hair features (Mills, Shannon, & Hogue, 2016). There has been an elevated tendency in women to concern their body weight and shape, contributing to high-risk behaviors and drug-taking, including binge drinking and depression. Women, as well as adolescent girls, are finding themselves with issues revolving around body image. The stress is to attain the impossible – fit in with the conventional images that are not even actually in the first place. The emphasis on the culture of celebrity within the media has been on the rise. The people that society is encouraged to admire and desire are having unrealistic bodies – the majority of the celebrity culture depends greatly on body image. The sad side of this increase in celebrity culture is that the media encourages women to admire and aspire to celebrities that have transformed their bodies into “ideal and perfect” ones. The media is the major means to make such images stick in people’s minds. Media sources such as newspapers, magazines, televisions, and social media news sites are fast to report any news concerning a celebrity who has lost weight or gained more weight; the negative messages these media forms convey are far more general than the positive messages. As these celebrity images and news fill the media channels, more and more time is spent finding self-validation via social media. For example, people start comparing their appearances to other images posted on social media sites and other media forms, and such people often critic themselves (Oakes, 2019).  The media presents the ideal beauty standard for women to be thin. For example, the ideal beauty standard in American culture has been for long periods being portrayed as thin. Huge populations of young girls fail to manifest medically diagnosable consumption conditions marked as unhealthy and extreme by society but rather demonstrate a complete obsession with boy size and shape. Such an influence is caused by the media showing that women should be thin, skinny, light skin tone to be accepted in society. The progressing worry is accepted as an entirely even inevitable and normal part of being a contemporary girl. A research conducted among various girls showed a relationship between body image and media image – girls who have exposure to television forecasted a thinner body and a developed level of conditioned eating one year later (Ossola, 2010). Some media firms like TV advertisements tend to stress that a person’s body should have a specific appearance, such as being extremely slim, thin, or having a particular skin stone. Any other look makes them less. The reality is different since people have different body structures and shapes, and just because someone is slim does not mean that they are more attractive or healthy than others. the emergence of social media increased the belief that women should have certain attributes. Social media offers fast access to large content from different parts of the world; thus, some people engage in various behaviors linked with perceptions of beauty and body image. For example, people can engage in activities such as taking selfies, taking photos with various body make-up, and posting only the photos that meet certain qualifications – some people even use camera filters to improve their facial appearance and other body-transforming features to make them appear thinner. Also, the media often makes people spend more time trying to perfect themselves to fit the ideal body image they have seen on media which is a sign that they are struggling with body image dissatisfaction (Oakes, 2019).  The media is responsible for offering such means of people displaying their body images. However, some people post their body pictures on social media when they feel that the photos satisfy their “ideal look.” Some social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram allow the use of hashtags to post messages. Such messages act as a pathway of showing people that certain body attributes are the only ones that make someone “perfect and have an ideal body.” For example, celebrities post images with hashtags that describe their bodies to be perfect; people get the idea that if women do not have such looks, their appearances are not attractive or beautiful. Research showed that women induced and exposed to social media and other media forms that present women’s body image in certain ways have a high likelihood of feeling unhappy and unsatisfied about their bodies. Such women may choose other social media platforms and media forms to expose their bodies featuring beautiful and thin models.

Proposes to this issue

Young women are left more vulnerable to media effects when it portrays women’s image as thin or has other attributes. They may suffer from self-loathing and dissatisfaction that the failure to adapt to these media-presented body images can induce (safeline, 2021). Such feelings can leave them socially susceptible and isolated to abuses from prospective abusers. The use of safe lines or hotlines entitled to women with issues regarding body images can assist them in enrolling in guidance and counseling programs. Such services can be accessed through instant messaging, phone, chat, email or text that maintains higher levels of confidentiality to offer them information and advice. Since women have become aware of the impacts of media on their body images, they have initiated programs to help girls and women understand the media messages and content there are often consuming. Media literacy programs help women understand the negative sides of media on women’s images and how it can have devastating effects on their health.

References

Mills, J. S., Shannon, A., & Hogue, J. (2016). Beauty, Body Image, and the Media. IntechOpen.

Oakes, K. (2019, March 12). The complicated truth about social media and body image. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190311-how-social-media-affects-body-image

Ossola, A. (2010, September 01). The Media’s Effect on Women’s Body Image. Retrieved from Hamilton: https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/the-medias-effect-on-womens-body-image

safeline. (2021). How body image is portrayed in the media. Retrieved from safeline: https://www.safeline.org.uk/how-body-image-is-portrayed-in-the-media/