If you have to make a choice between the delicious cheeseburger and a Caesar salad with few dry pieces of chicken breast, which one would you go for? A lot people believe that the answer is obviously easy because people would definitely pick the delicious cheeseburger. However, for many female adolescents these days, this is an extremely difficult question. The decision isn’t simple based on the taste and leisure. It is the choice between being attractive or ugly. How ridiculous it is that the choice of food and the level of attractiveness tightly connected to each other? Well, a big applaud should be given to the media that promotes a huge self-conscious for female adolescents about their body figures.
Our body figure tightly links with our body image. However, it is undeniable that many of us are still grappling with the definition of a body image. In the book “Body Image: Perceptions, interpretations, attitudes”, Sophia B. Greene quotes the definition of the term body image from Slade, a psychiatrist, in which he states, “The picture we have in our minds of the size, shape, and form of our bodies; and to our feelings concerning these characteristics and our constituent body parts” (60). In other words, body image is the way we perceive and assess our own figure. However, the factors that we utilize to construct evaluation of our own body could sometimes lead to inaccurate judgments. Consequently, these inaccurate judgments would lead body dissatisfaction and negative behaviors which eventually can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Today, female adolescents and college girls allow the dominance of slim figures in media to bombard their body images and falsely deform the evaluations of their body figures.
It is a fact that many American adolescents and college girls love the popular lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret. The brand is the representation of fashion, beauty and attractive. When we look at the “angelic” models on the brand’s campaign pictures on magazines and social media, we have to admit that many of us have quick thoughts such as “I wish I can look like her” or “I wish she is my girlfriend”. Simultaneously, Victoria’s Secret lovers ignorantly allow the brand to set up the definition of a perfect body. As results, when the brand’s slogan The Perfect Body came out few years ago, it placed all the college aged girls under pressure. In the article Victoria’s Secret has a body image problem, Nicole Elphick states:
The tagline was a play on the name of their lingerie range, 'Body', but was illustrated with 10 models that all had the same tall, ultra-lean and busty physique. No attempts at body diversity were made in the image and worse still the clear suggestion was that the models were what should be seen as 'perfect' bodies.
Victoria’s Secret goes after the looks of narrow shape, wide chest and thin legs which falsely establish of the social norm of the beauty standard. For the female college students spending times on media to find down popular trends and looks, they would feel guilty and shameful of their body if they are not ultra-slim. Because the society views Victoria’s Secret models as the symbols of beauty, these young girls with “imperfect” bodies would face the phobia of looking at themselves in the mirror and feel the sense of not belonging. With media highly suffocating with the images of thinness, it directly indicates that the overweight figures are outcast and unappealing. These forms of media are no longer the sources of entertainment and leisure. In contrast, they incessantly bring forces and pressure. The level of attractive and a “perfect” appearance gradually become the primary factor of success.
And in the current age of social media, how do numerous teenage girls define their success? Not surprisingly, their “successes” are determined by their number of followers and the thumbnail like. Different forms of social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are socially interactive. These places are where the slim and fit body figure receives praises and followers. Teenage girls are obsessed with collecting "likes" and followers which serve as their trophies of achievement and popularity (“Body Image concerns”). In order to accomplish this popularity, teenage girls have to constantly “trim” down their weight so they can fit in with the norm of being slim. According the academic article Body Image, Eating Disorders, and the Relationship to Adolescent Media, a research on media exposure was conducted among the college women and the result showed, “Involving 145 college women showed that exposure to thin-ideal magazine images not only lowered self-esteem but increased symptoms of eating disorders” (Fredericks, et al). Constantly exposing to ultra-slim figures does not only make female adolescents and college girls feeling more negative about themselves but also allow them to be more vulnerable to the problem of eating disorder which is known as anorexia.
So why do we care? In the article She’s too thin, tell her, Monica Gwee recites the story about an insane diet of a member of gym:
She would place her frail form on the treadmill and set it to its highest speed…she would then struggle to keep pace with the unrealistic speed by raising herself above the treadmill on her arms. Occasionally, she would fall off. Once she apparently broke her arm but insisted on continuing a work-out on several weight-bearing machines, so intent was she on burning non-existent fat and toning non-existent muscle mass from what would appear to be deliberate starvation.
This person could be our daughter, sister, friend or our loved one. She is more fearful of gaining weight than being injured. She rather hurts herself than being categorized as unattractive. She workouts insanely in order to obtain a perfect “ultra-slim” body. Mass media and the fashion industry consistently pose the unrealistic standard of beauty that influences women to starve themselves to be skinny. This leads them to be the victims of anorexia.
However, is it the media completely at fault? The media clearly integrates the slim body figure into women’s mindset in order to fulfil their marketing agenda but the power is still in our hand to decide what a good body is and what makes us happy. Self-educating plays a central role in changing people's impression of their body image. The growth of technology and Photoshop allows editors to create and modify the unrealistic body figure of models. It is the power of self-knowledge which inspires women the capability of not being swayed the false representation of the body figures in the media.
Mass media’s job is to promote products and values to us but we shouldn’t let them dictate our life. Moreover, we shouldn’t let them tell our loved ones who they are and who they should be. As results, the decision between a cheeseburger and a salad should no longer be difficult. Life is supposed to be enjoy and happy.
