Body Image Essay -- essays research papers

psycheify ImageThe purpose of this shoot is to further explore and understand the influences of kitty media on male&8217s and female&8217s personal organic structure image satisfaction and the sentiency and internalization of societal pressures regarding display. For a human personate years evidence surrounding the insecurities that women have towards their own bodies has been widely published. to a greater extent recently, it has been suggested that men are falling victim to media andsocietal pressure, and are development insecurities traditionally associated with women. Much of the body dissatisfaction that we see today can be attributed to the enormous disparity between our current cultural beauty ideals and our true bodies. Although most of the research surrounding the influences of media on body image has interpreted the form of analyzing exposure through the examination of such things as clipping content, recentresearch has begun to focus on an individual&8217s aw areness of societal pressures, as well as one&8217s acceptance, or internalization, of these societal standards (Cusumano & Thompson,1997).Every culture has standards of beauty. Through the ages and around the world,people have evaluated the appearance of themselves and others. A person&8217s body image is his or her image of their physical appearance. The mental representation which may be realistic or unrealistic, is constructed from self-observation, the reactions of others, and acomplex interaction of attitudes, emotions, memories, fantasies, and experiences, both conscious and unconscious. A pleasing appearance has often been associated with higher status, better opportunities to attract a swain and other positive qualities. We live in a society that thrives on first impressions. Many people interact with large numbers of modern people everyday, especially in their work lives, and we often have poor information nearwho these people are, but we do know how they look. We accentuate to size them up based on how they are dressed, how they talk, how they move and their overall physical appearance. People tend to judge a fat person as lazy and self-indulgent and a thin person as organized and disciplined and these stereotypes are reinforced by the media. A study done by Franzoi and Herzog (1987) examined what body parts and functions young adults... ...ents magazines. This ratio nearly reflected the ratio of the incidence of eating disorders in women to the incidence of eating disorders in men (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997). According to Botta the available reports suggest that media do have an impingement on bodyimage disturbance, both directly through body image processing and indirectly byencouraging males and females to endorse their various(prenominal) ideals and by establishing what they see as realistic ideals (Botta, 1999).The present study seeks to examine the influence of exposure to media ideal body images and the awareness and internalizat ion of those ideals on males and females. The results of previous studies indicate that the media plays a role in not entirely reflecting societal perceptions of male and female body image, but in shape those perceptions. Media stereotypes, advertising ploys, and the fashion industry have all lead to the mental home of the unrealistic ideal body shape that we compare ourselves to. How we feel about our bodies and how our bodies look to us in the mirror is an important aspect of our self esteem and for many Americans the media tells us how we should feel and look.