Body Images Affecting Canadian Youth

All three of these articles share one common topic: body dissatisfaction leading to an eating disorder promoted by some type of media. Some degree of body dissatisfaction among women and young girls is consider a norm today. According to one girl asked to describe the “ideal girl” she described it as “5 ft. 7 in., 100 lb. , size 5, with long blond hair and blue eyes” ( Groesz, Levine, and Murnen 1). This ideal is not attainable for all young girls and women and I can only imagine how horrible this would make them feel, always seeing images of ideal beauty and not being able to meet it can cause them to go to extremes to get the body they want.

In the past, eating disorders have been characterized as “women’s problems’ and men have been stigmatized from coming forward or have been unaware that they could have an eating disorder (NEDA, n.d.). Although women’s body image is continually an issue in society, very few are aware that nearly 18 percent of adolescent boys are highly concerned about their weight and body image

One of the biggest issues with the media is “thin-ideal media.” Many American celebrities of the twenty first century are incredibly skinny. However, this is only because so many of them lose weight due to unforgiving diets and overbearing workouts. Thin-ideal media causes the majority of issues, “‘thin-ideal media’ refers to media images, shows and films that contain very thin female leads… Thin-ideal media highlights the idea that thinness is a good and desirable thing to be, even if it is to a level that is potentially damaging to a persons health” (Farrar). Females are portrayed as feminine, skinny, and ladylike on screen.

Ronda Rousy is an MMA fighter in the UFC. Rousey is known for her fierce feisty attitude. However, there is one thing that upsets her, people criticizing her body. While getting in shape for a commercial she was working on someone called her fat.

Where do we draw the line between telling people “love who you are, no matter what” and “your lifestyle choices are killing you, change it?” If we’re going to survive as a society, we need to stop crumbling individual’s self worth by shaming them. Douglas Bar explored intolerance of the obese in To Be Fat Like Me, as he conducted a social experiment filmed in a high school environment, where a 130-pound jock donned a fat suit and facial mask to make her look like a 250-pound teenager. Aly, the protagonist, perfectly maintains a slim figure while her family has overweight troubles. Aly ridicules her mother and brother for suffering with these challenges.

The American Psychiatric Association Work Group on Eating Disorders found in 2000 that the ratio of men to women plagued by eating disorders were between 1:6 and 1:10. This trend is also seeing an increase in non-English speaking countries like Spain, Argentina, Fiji and also affecting more Japanese and Chinese women than ever before. This is proven to result from media exposure because women with eating disorders demonstrated a significant increase in perceptual body image disturbance following exposure to photographs of models from popular fashion magazines (Waller, Hamilton & Shaw, 1992). In 1990, Irving discovered that participants who were shown photographs of thinner models reported significantly less self-esteem and weight satisfaction than subjects shown photographs or larger models. In another study, it was reported that a 3-minute exposure to 12 photographs of models taken from popular women’s magazines led to transitory increases in depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction that were not evident for controls who viewed photographs of average-sized models (Stice & Shaw, 1994).

Introduction When reading a blog about a woman who suffered from anorexia, writer Audra Metzler makes three statements that are extremely relevant to this research: “I would analyze the perfect models in every ad I saw, wondering why I couldn’t look like them”, “I compared myself to the models in the magazines I felt that I had a long way to go if I wanted to look like they did” and “women are held to such a high standard of perfection in the media and how that contributes to eating disorders”. For centuries, men and women have used food to control their physique. Many believe that achieving the prefect body will mean complete happiness. However, in the past decade there has been a major change in thinking of the origins of eating disorders.

The idolization of slim figures are blinding teenagers to believe it is a necessity to practice these methods. As Blaid describes society’s perspective, “If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story,”(26-27) this is to point out how society has manipulated the point of view on health conditions to be viewed as a

The impact of Reality TV and The Influence on Individuals' Body Image and Perception Introduction: The impact of media on girls and young women’s esteem of self and body imagery has been researched for years and has produced varied results. However research has mainly focused on magazines, television shows and advertisment, very little has been researched in terms of the increased viewing of reality television. Some might argue that reality television does not depict real life events (Chaney,2011), but the new phenomenon of reality television is the most widely viewed and has given channels increased TRP ratings. Festinger(1954) posits that humans possess a drive to evaluate their abilities and their opinions with

A child today is borne to watch on an average of over 7 hours of television a

Based on a poll, 40% of nine and ten year-olds had tried losing weight and at age thirteen (Body Image and Gender Identity, 2002), 53% of girls were unhappy with their image (National Institute on Media and the Family). Now, this cannot all be responsible on the media, but with celebrities becoming thinner and thinner, much self-confidence is lost and images of television stars or models have been associated to body discontentment (National Institute on Media and the Family). Celebrities need to be worried about their image because of the unpleasant fact that it causes young fans to struggle to be unhealthily thin. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that eating disorders affect more than five million Americans a year, with disorders usually beginning in the youth or as early as eight. (n.a, www.youtube.com/,n.year,

Media is looked at by most people in society as a way to receive news, albeit sometimes biased. Although many news channels and companies often sway a story in favor of their beliefs, media in general is just another tool for entertainment or education. Teens, however, are subconsciously affected by unrealistic standards set by media. Most magazines use photoshop in almost every that they include in their final draft, and have articles that tell how best to live your life or talk to people. Teenage years are a critical part of life, and these standards make many teens feel as though they aren’t good enough for others.

Grogan (2006) defines body image as to how a person perceives his or her body. It involves body size estimation, body attractiveness and your feelings associated with your own body (Muth and Cash, 1997). Most of the body dissatisfaction is seen as the wish to be thinner (Grogan, 1999). Less research has been done on body image issues of boys in comparison to girls (Tiggemann, 2004). Eating disorders in women have been at a rise and hence, it has been conditioned that body image dissatisfaction is only relevant to young women (Orbach, 1993).

There has been many studies that have shown us how communications can lead to the negative perception of someone's body image. There is no single cause of body dissatisfaction; consequently, media does contribute to why hundreds of people look down upon them. Even though many individuals believe in the positive effects of media on society, it causes eating disorders, it alters our minds, and lowers our self esteem. Due to media, women have eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia.

Men and women nowadays are starting to lose self-confidence in themselves and their body shape, which is negatively impacting the definition of how beauty and body shape are portrayed. “...97% of all women who had participated in a recent poll by Glamour magazine were self-deprecating about their body image at least once during their lives”(Lin 102). Studies have shown that women who occupy most of their time worrying about body image tend to have an eating disorder and distress which impairs the quality of life. Body image issues have recently started to become a problem in today’s society because of social media, magazines, and television.