Body Image: Part 5

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 they want to look and come off as just 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 reporters and in newspapers- updating you on what is going on around the area. The most commonly known part of mass communication 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 effects to it, but, the main issue that is being discussed a lot more often that has to do with advertising 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. This is because they are trying to find the “in look” for themselves and these models in magazines are how they find it. Models are becoming role models to teenagers and they don’t even realize it.
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; they do this because they know it will help them sell their product better because the models catch the 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. Teenagers already have enough stress in their lives at that age, whose dating who, who they will go with to homecoming, keeping their grades high enough that they will please their parents and that’s just a few things. The last thing they should be worrying about is their weight, or how pretty they need to be. Everybody wants to be in the popular crowd at school, but making yourself sick just to be that person usually isn’t flattering to many. 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 even out of control of their own bodies. I am sure that some of the girls that look up to these young stars might be losing weight, coloring their hair, getting tattoos and piercings, because they think this is what other people want them to look like. But what they don’t see is how people really don’t fine these things attractive.
What is it that makes people judge others on how they look? How do they determine if someone doesn’t look good enough in what they are wearing or how big someone is when obesity might run in their family? I just feel that you can’t judge someone without knowing anything about them. An example of body image happened recently at the University of South Dakota with the cheerleading and dance teams that advertise the coyote logo on their uniforms. 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 they couldn’t just point out the girls that they were directing these comments towards because that would be very upsetting to them and discouraging to hear.
There could be opposite view points on the topic body image. Some people may think that magazines don’t affect the way that girls look themselves. Others may say that Lindsey Lohan and Mary Kate Olson might have no affect on the younger crowd or that 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. These are all good opposite viewings of body image 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 excellent problem to clean up because there would be a lot less illness and deaths from illnesses of people becoming anorexic or bulimic and a lot less self-esteem issues as well. 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 “Americas Next Top Model” everyone is beautiful in their own way. Even stars in magazines think they need to lose weight because one of the competitors in smaller then they are, which isn’t setting a good example for the younger crowd. Hopefully in a few years body image will not be such a large social problem, and we can start to cure it.