Body Image

Influenced by Magazines

Women ranging from thirteen through eighteen years of age feel they donÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦t have the ideal body image because of the influence of magazines. We believe that a magazine has the biggest influence on women because they provide fashion and style. Every month they pull out what is "it" and not. Magazines typically create an image of young women in thin bodies or in beautiful skin. Most magazines have pictures of models with bathing suit and provide dieting and exercise types and weight loss programs. We decided to write and research about this topic because we can relate to this topic as well as our peers. Mostly everybody has looked over a magazine and has seen the women they portray to teenagers and others. Our peers also believe they feel that magazines influence them and how they think the ideal body image should be. This is an everyday issue that happens everywhere. It cannot be stopped; the media cannot stop portraying women as thin model that looks beautiful. Teenage women are most affected because they are growing into women and are hitting puberty. Most start to care about their looks and likes to be in fashion. Men also take a big role into this. Since magazines gives tips and advice to look good, teenagers do what magazines say. Magazines are used to give the media new looks and better clothing style to wear. There are magazines for sports women, fashion, teens such as Seventeen for music like Source even for the older women like People magazines. Typical magazines carry many ads which many of them include to get better looks of skin hair and other products. Magazines carry models that look skinny and in shape. They also consist in changing the image of the models in the magazines by changing some facial characteristics and adding many other things such as make up and or bigger lips. At first when we decided to the project we decided on many subject from gang violence to pregnancy at a young age that ranged from thirteen to eighteen. At last we sought to find out our statement at the last minute. When the subject of how girls from age thirteen to eighteen gets influenced by magazines some of our group members were not so sure about the subject. Some felt magazines didnÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦t influence them at all while another group member thought it had a bigger effect. From then we decided it was a proper subject. It was a subject that contained an argument which in fact can be a very good place to start. We had the perfect environment because many girls in high school ranges from thirteen to eighteen and most, we believe, have seen a magazine as well. While others might contradict our statement we can prove that our statement proven right. In order to prove our statement we decided to research the question and gather as much information as we could to get valuable results. A team work consists of two or more people sharing and splitting the work. We decided to split the work instead of doing the work together. The first steps we took are the review of literature which consists of much information in magazines, books, or internet and compare them to our own. After we got the questionnaire done we passed them out to only women from freshman class through senior class. The Purpose of the questionnaire or survey includes a couple of questions about how the person feels about their body image, if the magazines influence them, and what kinds of magazines they look at. By categorizing the magazines it gives us better information on the types of magazines that influence women the most. To get the research we write the summary and compare and contrast to the other information we gathered.

Reasearch

Do thin models warp girlsÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦ body image? Is the question that Nancy Hellmich and many other people ask This is the question that should be asked to all fashion industries, the fashion industry has a responsibility to portraying an unhealthy body image. Ð'ÐŽÐ'§Fashion is a mirror and many times teenagers tend to follow up what they see on the catwalk,Ð'ÐŽÐ'Ё said regional official Concha Guerra.. Media is to be blamed and to believe that their message constitutes the ideal body image. Because we are unable to find direct information on only magazines we researched under the main category media. This also happens to give information about the ideal body image, and the every day issues why magazines have such a big impact influence on girls today. Today magazines promote the ideal body image because our society has created a situation where the majority girls dislike their bodies. They send a message across saying the ideal body image that every girl should have is this. This message is not given directly in words but from all magazines, following with television, internet, and display show cases.

We have taken time to research editors studies to other studies, to compare and contrast their survey information and there results. A study done by Wilcox and Laird inLoyola University, New Orleans found that social comparisons and exposure to thin models media images did have a negative effect upon body satisfaction. He studied the reactions of forty-one girls exposed to images underweight models in magazines, and television shows such as the Project Runway Show and AmericaÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s Next Top Model. The results were recorded according to the affection by facial cues. They had the girls adopt facial expressions of emotions and if so their feelings were influenced by the facial expression of emotions, they had them adopt the image of an under weight model that produced them to a low self esteem. On the other hand those who werenÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦t corresponding to the facial cues the images that were given to them showed that these girls had a higher self esteem from those who were corresponding to the facial cues. Their study did prove their hypothesis because they wanted to know that magazines and television shows made girls have a low self esteem on body image.

Another research done by Henderson-King concluded that whether or not social factors of individual factors were related to a girlÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s body esteem. He happened to find media images were not so affected on girls body esteem. He had also found that girls who matched the ideal body image had a much higher self esteem because they were able to include themselves as part of the society, such like the Ð'ÐŽÐ'§ideal body image wanted.Ð'ÐŽÐ'Ё The girls who did not match Ð'ÐŽÐ'§the thin ideal body wantedÐ'ÐŽÐ'Ё resulted as a more negative self image.

Harvard researchers also conducted a study search with the dealing of girls