Curriculum Unit Grades 6-8
Exploring Media Messages in Visual Culture:
How Media Affects Self Image
Body image is a term used to describe the way people view their bodies (good, bad, fat, thin, attractive, unattractive, etc.) and how comfortable they feel in general about their physical appearance. Children and adolescents in society today are bombarded with images of female bodies. Actresses, models, singers, presenters, socialites, and reality television stars are becoming younger, taller, and thinner and often appear in magazines looking too thin, sometimes even verging on emaciated. Media certainly has an important role to play in the messages impressionable, young people receive about the cultural ideal of physical perfection. Research indicates that exposure of images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem, and the development of unhealthy eating habits in women and girls. Several studies, such as one conducted by Marika Tiggerman and Levina Clark in 2006 titled Appearance Culture in Nine to Twelve Year-Old Girls: Media and Peer Influences on Body Dissatisfaction, indicate that nearly half of all preadolescent girls wish to be thinner, and as a result have engaged in a diet or aware in the concept of dieting ("Beauty and body," 2010). American research group Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc. says that 1 of every 4 college-aged women uses unhealthy methods of weight control- including fasting, skipping meals, excessive exercise, laxative abuse, and self-induced vomiting ("Beauty and body," 2010). Beauty and Body Image in the Media also claims that overall research indicates that 90% of women are dissatisfied with their appearance in some way ("Beauty and body," 2010). It may seem irrational to blame the media for causing poor body image in adolescents, however, the media often sends out the message that physical perfection is what we should all strive for if we want to be successful. While the media effects body image for both boys and girls, Researchers report that women’s magazines have ten and one-half times more ads and articles promoting weight loss than men’s magazines do, and over three-quarters of the covers of women’s magazines include at least one message about how to change a woman’s bodily appearance—by diet, exercise or cosmetic surgery ("Beauty and body," 2010).
A study published by DisordedEating.co.uk, The media and eating disorders, considers that the image of physical perfection that celebrities project is unobtainable for the majority of people, many of whom are secretly wishing they too could look like this, and that perhaps this contributes to women’s (and men’s) feelings of dissatisfaction about their own bodies, and encourages them to make unhealthy diet or exercise choices ("The media and," 2011). According to Beauty and Body Image in the Media it is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth anywhere between forty to one hundred billion (U.S.) dollars a year selling temporary weight loss products ("Beauty and body," 2010). Media activist Jean Kilbourne explains, “women are sold to the diet industry by the magazines we read and the T.V. programs we watch, almost all of which make us feel anxious about our weight” ("Beauty and body," 2010). The roots of these images may be economically driven. The promoted ideal beauty is impossible to achieve and maintain, thus the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. Women who are insecure about their bodies are more likely to buy beauty products, new clothes, and diet aids. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising claims that we are each exposed to over 2,000 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful educational force in society (Kilbourne, 2011). Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because they are new and inexperienced consumers and are the prime targets of many advertisements. They are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self-concepts. A research study published by Purdue University claims, “It’s important to understand the messages our children receive about traditional gender roles, especially during a time when women are encouraged to be independent and rely on their brains rather than beauty.” Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and find it difficult to resist or even question the dominant cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by the media. Mass communication has made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards. The informally published manuscript from Purdue University Experts Say Fairy tales Not So Happy Ever After, urges that parents need to be aware that some stories tell children that unattractive people are more likely to be evil and reinforce traditional gender roles that may be confusing for today’s young women (Patterson-Neubert, 2003).
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers some questions to help dissect advertising and learn media literacy. These questions involve encouraging adolescents to consider “who is behind the advertisement, song, commercial, television show, or movie?”, “what is their motivation (to amuse, entertain, persuade)?”, “why did they choose to make the media message this way?”, “how does this song, movie, T.V. show, or commercial make you feel, and why?” (2012). These are all questions that may help adolescents understand how media may effect their self image and how to avoid negative media influence. For my critical intervention action plan, I wanted to develop a curricular unit of study focused on the social issues of media messages in visual culture and how they effect the self image of adolescents/teens. This unit involves guiding students through different means of media messages and deciphering the effects the messages have on self image. Students will collect advertisements and compile into their sketchbooks and write about how they may reflect positively or negatively on their self image. Students will maintain sketchbooks/journals of their discoveries and then use their new knowledge to create positive messages to display in the throughout the school. As an extension students can create messages highlighting a concern about negative self image issues.
Citations:
Patterson-Neubert, A. (2003). Experts say fairy tales not so happy ever after. Informally published manuscript, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Retrieved from http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/031111.Grauerholz.tales.html
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (2012). Retrieved from website: http://www.hhs.gov/
The media and eating disorders. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.disordered-eating.co.uk/causes-of-eating-disorders/media-and-eating-disorders.html
Kilbourne, J. (2011). Beauty..and the beast of advertising. Media and Values, 49, Retrieved from http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/beautyand-beast-advertising
Beauty and body image in the media. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm
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