Effects Of Mass Media

Register to read the introduction… Some of the most common health problems that occur are eating disorders and smoking. “Eating disorders theorists and feminist scholars have long indicted fashion magazines, movies, television, and advertising for their advocacy of disordered eating”. (Levine & Smolak, 1998). There have been many studies by many different groups that have shown that the mass media is one of the biggest cause of all types of eating disorders. “[With in Canada] almost 40% of adult …woman engage in yo-yo dieting”. (Canadian Gallop poll 1994); “and from 15 to 20% develop health-threatening eating problems” (National Eating Disorder Information Center 1989). Often when characters are shown in media smoking they are portrayed and or stereotyped as the ‘cool character’ just because they are smoking. “[In]… movies rated PG-13, 82% of the movies show characters smoking. (Information and messages). Many of these characters become role motels to women, therefore if the character is smoking, the woman might start as well. In North America smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and has claimed the lives of millions already. Smoking can also cause many other health-related …show more content…
The media affects a woman’s place in society. How a person views his or herself as well as others can be altered by the media and therefore can have many negative social affects on a person as well as society in general. The media has picked up many stereotypes from different places in society, and they keep these stereotypes alive by constantly producing material that has the same stereotypes plastered all over it. Media is a powerful driving force of our time, the television characters that we get to know become role motels to us. Once these characters become role models, we start to follow what they do and start trying to look like them. This can have many effect on your health. The media has become such a major part of life that it has now started to control everything we