“The human body is the best work of art” –Jess C. Scott
Nearly every person in America has something about themselves that they don’t like. Whether it’s their smile, their legs, or the way they look in a swimsuit. A person has no trouble overlooking what’s beautiful about them and solely focusing on their flaws. Body image issues have been around for centuries. Women have tried altering their bodies in order to become ‘beautiful’, and most of the time those procedures are in no way healthy. Many things are related to having a negative body image such as facial/body imperfections, weight issues, physical abnormalities, and the list only continues to grow. Throughout this project, I aimed to answer one question: how does the media impact teen …show more content…
On her blog, Maris states that “the media and our society has systematically instituted a rigid standard of beauty ideals that we now feel pressured to achieve every day” (Degener). Women are portrayed as having flawless skin, tiny waists, perfect teeth and being physically fit. The majority of women do not meet this standard. This isn’t just a problem for women, men deal with unrealistic body standards as well. Men are portrayed like “GI Joe figures [and] may find their body image suffers; a GI Joe toy, if extrapolated into human size, would be taller than the average man and have bigger biceps than any body builder. This gives boys an unrealistic ideal to live up to” (Body Image Men). I have never, not once seen a woman or a man that hasn’t been touched up with photo shop on the cover of a magazine. There has never been a time where someone has woken up on a TV show without wearing some sort of makeup. People need to learn to be natural. Flaws are natural. Being perfect is indeed, imperfect. I believe the media needs to take a new approach and advertise people being comfortable in their own skin, rather than people appearing comfortable in airbrushed …show more content…
Eating disorders are a huge deal. They can be extremely harmful to your body, and become life threatening. Dieting is a huge part of today’s society. Everyone wants to try the latest juice cleanse, or attempt the whole 30 challenge. Dieting is not healthy for your body, your body needs certain nutrients to stay healthy, and eliminating some of those nutrients harms your body in the long run. Some people, however believe dieting just isn’t for them, and they decide not to eat. Others believe that anything that they eat will make them look ‘fat’, so they eat and then later make themselves throw up. The most common types of eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia involves either not eating at all, or eating a very small amount and constantly trying to work off the calories you just ate. Bulimia, however involves binge eating, where people force themselves to throw up whatever they’ve eaten to avoid gaining weight, and “with increasing numbers of females reporting disturbed body image and engaging in dieting behavior, there has been a significant level of concern about the increasing incidence of eating
Nearly every person in America has something about themselves that they don’t like. Whether it’s their smile, their legs, or the way they look in a swimsuit. A person has no trouble overlooking what’s beautiful about them and solely focusing on their flaws. Body image issues have been around for centuries. Women have tried altering their bodies in order to become ‘beautiful’, and most of the time those procedures are in no way healthy. Many things are related to having a negative body image such as facial/body imperfections, weight issues, physical abnormalities, and the list only continues to grow. Throughout this project, I aimed to answer one question: how does the media impact teen …show more content…
On her blog, Maris states that “the media and our society has systematically instituted a rigid standard of beauty ideals that we now feel pressured to achieve every day” (Degener). Women are portrayed as having flawless skin, tiny waists, perfect teeth and being physically fit. The majority of women do not meet this standard. This isn’t just a problem for women, men deal with unrealistic body standards as well. Men are portrayed like “GI Joe figures [and] may find their body image suffers; a GI Joe toy, if extrapolated into human size, would be taller than the average man and have bigger biceps than any body builder. This gives boys an unrealistic ideal to live up to” (Body Image Men). I have never, not once seen a woman or a man that hasn’t been touched up with photo shop on the cover of a magazine. There has never been a time where someone has woken up on a TV show without wearing some sort of makeup. People need to learn to be natural. Flaws are natural. Being perfect is indeed, imperfect. I believe the media needs to take a new approach and advertise people being comfortable in their own skin, rather than people appearing comfortable in airbrushed …show more content…
Eating disorders are a huge deal. They can be extremely harmful to your body, and become life threatening. Dieting is a huge part of today’s society. Everyone wants to try the latest juice cleanse, or attempt the whole 30 challenge. Dieting is not healthy for your body, your body needs certain nutrients to stay healthy, and eliminating some of those nutrients harms your body in the long run. Some people, however believe dieting just isn’t for them, and they decide not to eat. Others believe that anything that they eat will make them look ‘fat’, so they eat and then later make themselves throw up. The most common types of eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia involves either not eating at all, or eating a very small amount and constantly trying to work off the calories you just ate. Bulimia, however involves binge eating, where people force themselves to throw up whatever they’ve eaten to avoid gaining weight, and “with increasing numbers of females reporting disturbed body image and engaging in dieting behavior, there has been a significant level of concern about the increasing incidence of eating