Media And Negative Body Image

This means that not everyone wants to see just skinny thin girls all time. Young teen girls are more afraid of gaining weight the getting cancer(Waynshten). For example more girls are more concerned about what their bodies look like than they are about their health. “78% of 17 year old girls are very unhappy with their bodies”(Waynshteyn). However most teen girls are not happy with they look like.

“47% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported wanting to lose weight because of magazine pictures.” Says Michael Levine(3). Society has a negative effect on body image. Naturally, Society’s image of a perfect body is unreal and unnatural. All of the expectations can cause eating disorders and mental disorders. These expectations can cause insecurities in adults, teens, and even children who normally have little to no insecurities.

The majority of females who want to look perfect and satisfy societal norms end up with depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, drinking, or even suicide. Every 62 minutes at least one individual dies because of eating disorders and in total, 30 million have problems with these disorders in the U.S. Depression and suicide is very common in girls between their teenage years and only 30% of them are treated for it. Sometimes being in depression makes an individual do or act a certain way. For example, drinking is one of the major problems that teens do to escape from their problems. It has been proved that many individuals who commit suicide had been drinking.

This can be explained by, “Studies of pregnant women in New York City welfare hotels have shown their babies are twice as likely to weigh less than five pounds at birth when compared to all pregnant women. Low birthweight babies are at greater risk of blindness, deafness, brain damage, and even death”(Hyde 56). Taking this into consideration, homeless children’s academic performance is hindered because of their poor cognitive development and the circumstances of their homelessness, including constant mobility. Math, reading, spelling, and vocabulary tests are the tests that homeless children most often struggle to succeed on and likely result in being held back a year in school(Hart-Shegos 3). This can be seen in Dicey’s Song through Maybeth’s character and the difficulty she has to prosper in school.

Being surrounded by society’s definitions of beauty has definitely taken a toll on American women’s confidence. This toll becomes evident from statistics such as, “7 in 10 girls believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up

From the perfect body going from Marilyn Monroe who had curves to models now size zero bodies that are clearly unrealistic for almost all women today. The effect of this is 10 million women struggling with anorexia. Thirteen million women binge eating, and females ages fifteen to twenty-four are twelve times more likely to die from an eating disorder than all other causes of death. Second, abuse of drugs and alcohol. Statistics Canada states seventy-three percent of teens girls who drink say that do it to take their mind off “the real world”.

Having a good body image helps an individual improve oneself. Negative body image or Body Image Dissatisfaction is when people feel uncomfortable and not satisfied with their looks and they think and see about themselves in a negative way (ReachOut, 2015). It consists of a deformed perception of body size or

Children as young as 12 years fall pregnant due to social problems in townships. Social problems include parental guidance, access to government grant, peer pressure, substance abuse, poverty, job marketing and education. Most teenagers do not have enough information on sexuality and contraceptives. Teenagers engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse lead to unwanted teenage pregnancy which is a serious social and health problem. About half of all South African teenagers aged between 15 and 19 reported having had sex.

1 “Don’t be dramatic, it’s just some plastic, no one will love you if you’re unattractive” by Melanie Martinez. Have you ever felt like you weren’t pretty enough, just because society has a different definition of pretty? Society today sets high standards of body image, facial features, and talents. Society’s high standards have various negative effects on us, especially if we’re girls. Setting these standards has caused an enormous number of girls all around the world to despise their flaws; therefore, have a very low self-esteem which leads to portentous physical and mental disorders and illnesses.

Most of the time, idealized bodies in the media are an unrealistic perception of the average body. Yet the audience is unable to recognize the difference between tangible and fabricated. As a consequence, body dysmorphia can become self-destructive for those with focusing on the ideal body. These individuals obsessively focus on their imperfections in an attempt to conform to an idealistic identity. Teens and young adults have a higher tendency to become more affected by the consequences of body dysmorphia due to selfies, because of increased emphasis that media has placed on the body and appearance.