Disorders And The Media

Eating Disorders and the Media

Today's society is undeniably marked by cultural norms and ideals. The question is, however, does the mass media's depiction of this norm cause harmful behavior in its population? Researchers have shown that there is a bias in the way television targets children in advertising (Ogletree, S., Williams, S., Raffeld, P., Mason, B., Fricke, K., 1990) and that this media influence over people has always been observable (Miles, M., 1995). This targeting of audience members serves the purpose of singling out the most desirable consumer for the product to encourage their economic support. So if advertising is only concerned with selling product, why is it blamed for the low self-esteem and body image and thus the bulimia and anorexia seen in today's women?

The images projected by the media in commercials, products, wrote ads etc. give today's consumers an idea of what "normal" should look like (Sellers, M., Waligroski, K., 1993). The people in the ads would all have the ideal body proportions, material possessions and social status in order to deserve the attention the ad places on them. Viewers see the ads and compare the body images they see to themselves, which is likely to reveal a discrepancy. Five years ago, the average female model weighed 23% less that the average woman of the time (Miles, M., 1995) and the difference is only growing.

Men to are affected by the media's portrayal of what ideal looks like. Jirousek explains the evolution of the ideal male figure from a slim and "romantic" shape to the "superhuman" image we see in television and the rest of media today (1996). With the beginning of televised football in the 1930's, the popularized image of males incorporated the larger than life appearance from shoulder pads and other "armor" to encompass movie heroes, comic book characters and clothing models. With the males in the public eye having these muscular figures and distorted proportions, the "normal" male then received the impression that this is what women wanted even if the look does not come easily to most men. Fabio is a good example of this image (although Jirousek states that Fabio is more for the female consumer than the influence over male viewers, 1996). This male image could be just the thing a man needs to see in order to feel completely below expectations thus, resulting in low self-esteem.

Looking further back in history, there is an example of women involved in what we can now look back on and label imitation. Miles compares the "media" of a century ago to that of today and points out that women are involved in the same types of self-deprivation as they were then, only for a different purpose. The media of the time was religious in nature and contained images of statues with certain proportions and tales of women who fasted for the