Body Image

In modern times, the influence of media on every aspect of culture and society is everywhere. This is especially true in America. One of the social and cultural aspects that are particularly influenced by media is the body image. The majority of young women are young women who shape their bodies based on the opinion of the media and judge the attractiveness of women according to the thinness of women. The image of the body plays a very important role in our individualist society where the identity of women is closely related to her body.

Recently we know that the media closely relates to the image of the body. In particular, the image advertisement of the body depicts the image that affects our own body. Of course, there are many other factors that influence our body image: child rearing, education, intimacy etc. However, popular media has a big influence. Americans spend 250 billion hours a year to watch television. According to California State University Northridge, advertisement accounts for about 30% of all TV broadcasting time. Ordinary children see commercials of 20,000 TVs a year. Of course, it is not the place where only the TV watches advertisements. Popular magazines, especially women's magazines and many young people's magazines, are filled with advertisements. Pop-up ads are also displayed on the web.

Images that we see in mass media (television, movies, internet, video games, magazines) can affect the body image and sometimes interfere with the development of healthy body images. These images tend to be more repetitive and advertising tends to have a very slim and attractive model. The exposure of the media may affect the image of the body by sending information about what it means that it is the ideal body shape, size, weight. This exposure puts pressure on individuals to achieve thin and attractive ideals portrayed by the media. For women, this ideal usually includes slimness and appeal, for men the ideal is tall, thin, muscular and masculine. People are beginning to measure whether they are breaking these unrealistic ideals and are confirming that they are abbreviated.

Ideal body image concept directly affects the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a person's body image. The body image satisfaction level refers to the concept that a human body image resembles the person's ideal body image. The ideal body image of a person represents the physical ideal the person is trying to replicate and is a high-end fashion model, celebrity, movie star, fitness expert, or other such role model. Dissatisfaction with the body image means that the level of the human body image is different from the ideal body image perceived by one person or the personal feeling of individuals' dissatisfaction with the human body. Physical dissatisfaction is a precursor to negative self-awareness or self-worth, which can lead to an increase in eating disorders. (Martin, 2010)