MediaSmarts Tags - Body Image

Level(s): Grades 11 - 12

Author: MediaSmarts

Overview

To make students aware of the ways in which male violence is used and promoted in advertising.

Learning Outcomes

Students will demonstrate:

From the Beauty Myth to the next top models, how do the media construct our perceptions of healthy and attractive bodies?

In addition to the content, images of women's – and, increasingly, men’s – bodies in magazines also send messages. There has been a progression towards thinner and thinner models in ads and magazines: twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman – but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. [3]

Cultural expectations that guys have to be nonchalant when it comes to their physiques makes body dissatisfaction in boys more difficult to assess, but there is little doubt they are affected by media representations of idealized masculinity. In addition, as advertisers increasingly turn their attention to young men as a lucrative demographic, it is unlikely that such representations are going to disappear any time soon.

An example of this is the TV series Friends, one of the most successful series of the 1990s and still frequently run in syndication. Researchers found that watching a ten-minute segment of the show had a negative effect on how satisfied young women were with their appearance. [2] Since the segment shown did not have any content directly related to weight or body image, it seems likely that viewing similar shows would have a similar effect.

Why are these impossible standards of beauty being imposed on girls, the majority of whom look nothing like the models that are being presented to them? The causes, some analysts say, are economic: by presenting a physical ideal that is difficult to achieve and maintain the cosmetic and diet industries are assured continual growth and profits.

Consequently, we would expect youth to take representations of body shape found in imagery associated with music (videos, album covers, interviews with musicians, and so on) very seriously, and research has supported this: one study found that just ten minutes' exposure to music videos featuring thin, sexualized performers led to a measurable increase in body dissatisfaction. [1]

As photo manipulation tools have become more widely available and easier to use, youth have begun turning to them to modify their own photos to meet media-created ideals of thinness and perfection.

Virtual Worlds and Avatars

Virtual worlds are among the most popular online activities.