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Professor Hall 2 December 2013 Title What is beauty? It is hard to define, yet easy to recognize. This could be why many women struggle to see their own beauty. A main contributor to the lowering self- esteem to women is the unattainable body image produced by the media. When a company creates an advertisement they usually cast good looking people to represent them. When this idea is taken to an extreme with digital restoration and photo shop this can lead to the distortion of peoples self-image. This distortion can turn into disorders like anorexia, bulimia, and body shaming.
These unrealistic portrayals of women can have the most effect on young girls because they tend to be very impressionable. Russell stated that 53% of children age 13 are unsatisfied with their bodies and by age 17 it had increased to 78% (Russell). It’s sad to think by the age of thirteen girls are thinking about their fgures and are unhappy with how they look. the focus of this paper will be on how media can crucially effect the body image of women and distort how they see themselves. Annotated Bibliography Every day we see an uncountable amount of commercials.
The media has a huge nfluence on how we act, what we buy and, even more importantly, what we eat. Many of the actors featured in these influential commercials are most often very thin and attractive. When they portray every day women as a size two they are misleading the watcher into thinking they are overweight. This kind of misinformation can lead to body shaming and eating disorders. I will be exploring how media can distort the self-image of its watchers by using underweight and unrealistic actors.
For example, I will compare and contrast the self-image produced by the Victoria Secret ad ampaign as opposed to the self-image produced by Dove in their commercials. In this paper, I am going to show the effects of media on the self-image of the watcher. I will touch on the airbrushing techniques used by the editors, to slenderize the already thin actors, as well as the sexual undertones used in these commercials. I will discuss how these contribute to the watchers distorted body image and insecurities.
I am also going to go into the specific effects of these media tactics on children. Children are more impressionable and this means they are at a higher risk of being ffected by these unrealistic commercials. One counter argument I will be addressing is the thought that low self-esteem and bad body image are preexisting and merely enhanced by the media. HAAS, CHERYL J. , et al. “An Intervention For The Negative Influence Of Media On Body Esteem. ” College Student Journal 46. 2 (2012): 405-418. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Nov.
The authors briefly discuss the effects of media on women’s self-image. This scholarly journal then shows data from two different experiments exploring the effects of the media on women’s body esteem, sexual attractiveness, and weight concern. This data will be helpful in my paper when I discuss the amount of women affected. I will use this scholarly article for background information about self-esteem, eating disorders, and the media. This connects with the ted talk I found because they both discuss the concept of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.
This article talks about how to rectify women self-esteem while in “Cameron Russell: looks Aren’t everything. Believe Me, I’m a Model. ” She shows even beautiful people have their insecurities. Russell, Cameron. “Cameron Russell: Looks Aren’t Everything. Believe Me, I’m a Model. ” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N. p. , Jan. 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. This ted talk starts out with a very beautiful and thin model standing middle stage. She discusses how being a model is not everything young girls imagine it to be.
She exposes the industry from the inside and shows how they had her wearing revealing outfits at the young age of thirteen. She then goes on to explain the insecurities the business brings and how being beautiful does not mean your body image is good. I will use this ted talk to quote her “real” definition of beauty. Mid-way through the talk Russell states statistics about children and body image; this should be useful in my research paper. I will also use this ted talk to talk about the photo shop used by the media to make women look almost unobtainable.
I found a lot of the information in this ted talk relating back to my scholarly article. Concept of airbrushing and the statistics on girls with body insecurities tie this ted talk back to the previous article. Gaillet, Lynee, Abgela Hall-Goodsey, and Jennifer L. Vala. Guide To First Year Writing. Southlake: Fountianhead, 2013. Print. In The Guide To First Year Writing I found many pages to help with the research ortion of this paper. I found pages 81-89 very useful in this respect. Pages I will use for my paper are pages 90 and 91 .
The section regarding argument and thesis gave the most information. These pages helped me narrow my topic down into a reasonable thesis to get started. Page 92 helped me plan my counterarguments and helped me make sure I was not undermining my main point. I plan to use a couple quotes in my paper and this chapter helped me correct my format as well as understand the in text citations. This book relates back to my other sources in that it can help me structure my argument and keep on topic.