Body Image: Part 4

Body image is becoming a huge issue today with younger girls around the high school level. They are becoming more interested in what models in the magazine and ads look like and are wanting to become more like them. Mass Communication is a broad field of study that is used in everyday life. Mass media is commonly seen in the news, from reporter and in newspapers- updating you on what is going on around the area. The most commonly seen part of Mass Communications is advertising. Advertising is seen everywhere from commercials to magazines, billboards and now even on cars for example the Red Bull truck. Advertising has a lot of positive and negative effect s, but the main issue with advertising today that is discussed a lot more often is body image. Body image is how people view themselves and others on a daily basis; it has to do a lot with judging others or even themselves. This is becoming a bigger issue towards teenage girls that are entering the high school level or in high school already because they are trying to find the “in-look” and these models in magazines might be becoming their role models, people they want to look like all the time.
My feelings on body image are very strong. I feel as if girls rely too much on others to figure out what they want or think they need to look like. Magazines and ads always have very beautiful models and they do this because they know it will help them sell their product better because the models catch reader’s attention by their looks. I feel in a teenage magazine, for example, Teen People, or YM. Girls aren’t reading to look at ads they are reading to find out what is cool and in for the upcoming season. I had a friend in middle school that thought she needed to be as skinny the models in one of her magazine ads and ended up getting very sick. She found out that once she started the things she was doing to stay skinny she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t attractive how skinny she was and it was making her very ill. Today big role models to high school aged girls are Lindsey Lohan and Mary Kate Olsen. Look at these girls now, they are anorexic, sick and out of control of their own bodies. I am sure that some of the younger girls that look up to these stars might of started doing what their doing to get skinny just because they think that this is what people what you to look like. But what they don’t see is how people really don’t find it attractive.
Another example of body image happened recently at the University of South Dakota with the cheerleading and dance teams that advertise “coyotes” on their uniform. Someone that works for the university mentioned to their coaches that they would not be able to wear their uniforms anymore if some of the girls didn’t lose a little weight. When they were told this of course it affected the squad as a whole because you can’t just point out the girls that need to lose a little weight because that would be very upsetting to them and discouraging to hear. What is it that makes people judge others on how they look? How do they determine if someone doesn’t look good enough in their uniform or how big someone is when obesity might run in their family? I just feel like you can’t judge someone without knowing anything about them.
There could be opposite view points on the topic body image. Some people may think that girls don’t think they need to look amazing because the girls in the magazines do. Others may say that Lindsay Lohan and Mary Kate Olsen might have no effect on the younger crowed or the University of South Dakota told the cheerleaders and dancers that they need to lose weight because there is a lot of people that look up to them. A lot of younger girls that may want to be just like them someday are watching them and they need to present themselves in a clean manner. This is a good opposite view point because all of these points are very strong as well.
Body image is a problem that is just becoming worse over the years and it would be an amazing problem to clean up because there would be a lot less deaths from illnesses of people becoming anorexic and bulimic. Body image could be cured by people just starting to respect themselves and others in public and at home. No one needs to be compared to anyone else everyone is beautiful in their own way. Even stars in magazines think they need to lose weight because one of their competitors is skinnier then them, which isn’t setting a good example for the younger crowed. Hopefully in a few years body image will not be such a large social problem.