Women and the media

Essay by starliteintheskyHigh School, 11th grade December 2002

download word file, 2 pages 3.9

Young Women And The Media

Every where we look today we are bombarded by the media, At home or at school there is pretty much no escape. The impressions of the media are most obvious with teenage girls. Every where they look there are TV commercials and adds in magazines that are directed towards them telling them how they should look They see people like Brittany Spears and Christina Agulara and they think that that is the acceptable body image that they should strive for, no matter how unattainable it may be. This need for teenage girls to look like the super models causes eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia and low self-esteem and depression.

About one percent of female adolescents have anorexia. That means that one out of every hundred girls are starving themselves to live up to standards set by the media and our society. Eating disorders mainly affect girls in their teen and twenties, but there have been some cases with girls as young as six with this problem.

This is a disturbing statistic, even girls as young as six are affected by our societies definition of beauty.

Society and the media know full well of the effect they have on young impressionable minds. They seem to know exactly how to market it and feed of their insecurities, and it works, companies make millions of dollars by doing this. Any company that manufactures face washes, make up, diet pills, breast enhancers, even perfume is guilty of this.

Worst of all they market magazines to teenage girls with all these pictures of beautiful celebrities and perfect flawless models. Now what these girls fail to realize is that computers are used to retouch most of the pictures. They take away any little imperfection that might make the model...