Body Image, Nia Beals

                                       

                                                      How the Media Portrays Body Image

                                                             By: Nia Beals

            The media has given people unrealistic expectations to what a normal person’s body should look like. Today, with the influence of the media, women are expected to look like Victoria Secret models and men are expected to look professional athletes. Because of this, people think if they are bigger than a size five that they are fat which is not accurate at all. According to depts.washington.edu, seventy percent of boys and girls nine to ten year olds have attempted to lose weight by dieting. However, the percentage for just females whom are unhappy with their bodies is extremely higher. At the age of thirteen, fifty-three percent of girls do not like their appearance, but that percentage will sky rocket to seventy-eight percent once they reach seventeen years old[1].

            Unbeknownst to the consumers, no one in real life looks like the people the media portrays as having perfect bodies. Magazines and movie producers do not like to let the consumer know that the people in their works are all photo shopped. An example of this is in the music video for the song “Work Bitch” by Britney Spears.

  As you can see the director of this video made sure to photo shop Britney’s body to make it appear flawless. When in reality, women and little girls could relate more to the actual video more than they could with the photo shopped video. Unrealistic videos such as this one, make some people insecure about themselves. Society making these unrealistic goals, cause some people to harm themselves by developing eating disorders. About eighty-six percent of people have or have had an eating disorder between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. With this astronomical percentage, it does not surprise me that anorexia is ranked third for most common diseases with young adults[2]. Society needs to stop putting pressure on people to look and act perfect because no one is perfect, including the ones who seem to be flawless. I wish more people  would live by the words in Beyonce’s song “Flawless.” “I woke up like this, flawless.” If  more people had this mentality that would not care about how others looked or how others perceived them because they would that they were flawless. A person who has this mentality is Jennifer Lawerence.  I think Jennifer Lawerence is an excellent role model for young women because she does not let Hollywood make her feel inferior.

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[1] washington.edu, "Teen Health and the Media." Accessed January 31, 2014. http://depts.washington.edu/thmedia/view.cgi?section=bodyimage&page=fastfacts.

[2] ANAD, "Eating Disorder Stastics." Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.