Thread: Body Image and Teen Magazines

IT needs to be redone a bit, but here it is.



Demon
November 9, 2005
Senior Project
Research Paper

<div align="center">Body Image and Teen Magazines</div>

Girls have it rough. When they are born, they are assigned by society specific traits that they must live up to. They must have the thinner thighs mixed with the ample bosom inside of the halter top with the low-rise jeans. Their face must be blemish free and with just the right amount of make up to make them look smooth and perfect. All throughout the teenage years, girls are bombarded with peer pressure to look a certain way and to eat a specific amount. Teen magazines promote that THIN IS IN. The images that are shown in magazines show a 5�8�, one hundred pound woman who is the prize girl for today�s teen magazine. The girls that read these magazines are the ones who are two to three times more likely to diet and exercise to lose weight than the girls that do not read them. (Body Image�) The media influences America�s young woman to think that being thin and glamorous is society�s true definition of beauty.

The reason for this poor body image can be summed up in a song by Savage Garden from their second album. The title of the song is �Affirmation� and one lyric summarizes the dilemma: �I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem.� This is true. Thirty-seven percent of articles in popular teen magazines are tailored to young girls who want to slim down with diets and learn how to put on make-up. (Focus On�) The percentage of advertisements is a staggering twenty-five percent higher. (Focus On�) The pressure on teenagers is increasing substantially. A quick look at Ulrich�s Periodicals Index shows at least eight magazines founded within the last eight years that are targeted towards teen. They cover at some level, beauty, fashion, and culture. These magazines include Teen Vogue (2000), Teen Style (2000), and Teen People (1998). All of these magazines affect how girls feel.

When young women peruse these magazines, they are shown the social norm of what a woman is supposed to look like. They see the 5�9� one hundred and ten-pound model that is a stark opposite of an average 5�4�, one hundred forty-two pound American woman. (Mission Impossible) What does this difference in pictures and reading tell about teens? It illustrates that teens are influenced by what they see in their surroundings. When reading magazines, girls see ads in them that show �soft skin, pink cheeks, and a wide-eyed unfocused gaze� (Body Image and Advertising). When a girl looks at this she is forced to think that she must look like this, must have the good perfect skin that will make her all the rave with guys. Looking back on what is inside of magazines, articles, and advertisements, girls become self-conscious about their bodies. Most of these girls are the ones the magazines are targeting in their ads. The ads show the popular teen actors of the day holding up a bottle of Clean and Clear, smiling while saying �For clean, beautiful skin [use Clean and Clear].� Perfect skin is one thing that matters among young teens. Skin is a form of glamour. If a young woman has nice skin she is considered beautiful. Girls must feel, now that they have read magazines, that they must have beautiful soft skin. This is important to girls because if they look nice then there self-esteem will boost. When there self worth goes up then they will be able to get the guys that they want and live the happy life that the American society has put in place for them.

Smooth beautiful skin is not enough however; young women must have the super-model body to look stunning. In 1996 when Alicia Silverstone went to the Academy Awards with an extra five to ten pounds of weight, she was ridiculed. Unlike her, teenage girls do not have that same amount of self-confidence to go on national television with that much extra weight. (Mission Impossible) A lot of girls cannot even go to school, shower, or even look at themselves in a mirror when the have gained a lesser amount of weight that Silverstone did. At age thirteen, fifty-three percent of young girls are unhappy with the way they look. By seventeen that percentage has gone up twenty-five percent. As a result girls are physically starving themselves. Statistics from October 2003 show that �approximately 90-95% of anorexia nervosa sufferers are [young] girls and women� (Eating Disorders). Mentally they are going through turmoil.
Young girls are thinking, �Do I look beautiful?� �Is that a pouch of fat on my gut?� �Why? Why do I look like this and not like that girl from the magazine?� Doing a quick web search statistics will show, �In 1972�twenty-three percent of U.S. women� were dissatisfied with their� appearance� today that figure has more then doubled to forty-eight percent.� (Mission Impossible) Similarly, women are significantly less happy with their bodies� one-half of all women report frequent dissatisfaction with there appearance�� If someone were to base a television show off of a standard teen magazine article, and put the characters in a high school setting, the show would flop. High school is not in every way a like a teen magazine yet, the influence shows up in the halls of an American high school. Yes, there is the gossip and the celebrity following, but not everyone is talking about how to lose weight. If someone were to walk down the halls of any high school, that person would see the thin girls, the happy chipper ones, the big girls, and also the depressed ones. It is the latter two demographics that magazines target because they are the ones most at risk because they are easily influenced by what they come across. If someone were to go up to a girl and say, �You are perfect the way you are,� many girls would complain and say that they are not. While it may seem to some women that the world of magazines is not a bad place for a younger teenager to hang out, think about how it is affecting them. Alicia Silverstone was hassled by going on television with that �little pouch of fat,�; imagine how a teenage girl must feel everyday that she goes to school.

American culture is all about appearances. How many �fat actresses" are out there right now? Yet the average American women weighs has much as two of the thin model performers. All the actresses on television are thin and beautiful. Why would America need obese women when they have so many thin ones?
Lucid Rog wrote, �You don�t have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive. True beauty is an exchange, not an observation.� This is a statement that states whilst a young woman may feel horrible on the inside she may not look like it on the outside.




My works cited also need to be redone

Griffin, Kelly. �Body Image and Mass Media.� Dial Center For Written and Oral Communication. 28 March, 2004. University of Florida. 18 Nov. 2005 <http://web.cwoc.ufl.edu/owl/archives...sages/2174.htm >.
This essay helped me with the base of the whole paper. I used it for, mainly the first page and a �. This is an essay giving a personal view on eating disorders written in the first person.

Savage Garden. Affirmation. Sony Records 9 Nov. 1999
This song gave me the idea to write this paper. I heard it and thought immediately to write a paper on this topic. It sums up the entire paper in one sentence.

Schneider, Kelly. �Mission Impossible.� People Weekly 3 June 1996: 64-9
The article goes into deep detail about how mainly teen magazines affect young girls. This was my best source. I used this article for every aspect of my paper. It gave me ideas that formed around in my head.

Signorielli, Nancy. �Focus On Appearance, A.� Teen Health and The Media 31 Oct. 2003
<http://depts.washington.edu/thmedia/view.cgi?section=bodyimage&page=fastfacts>
This is a brief synopsis of how advertising can affect young women. This source was reliable because I was able to pull one good phrase and use it to build a big paragraph. It made the paragraph. It helped to form my second page.

Sloan, Bridgette. �Body Image and Advertising.� OhioLine m<http://ohioonline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5328.html>
This source is all about how media outlets appear to young girls. It tells about how girls use to make them selves look pretty. This source gave me a good idea that I used to build my entire third page.

Statistics. �Eating Disorders� Wenatchee High School. 21 Oct. 2003 18 Nov. 2005 <http://whs.wsd.wednet.edu/faculty/Lynch/sadd/statistics.html>
This source gave me the most trouble. It was very hard to place. It only had one good fact that I could use to for the paper. I was able to use it for another paragraph towards the end of the paper.

not too shabby, not too shabby at all