Mass Media and Eating Disorders

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how mass media has set an unrealistic "ideal" body shape for women of all ages to live up to and how this ideal along with the growing body weight of today's youth, has become a main contributor to the problem of body image frustration, particularly among young girls. It looks at how the portrayal of only one model of beauty on television and advertising has attributed to women forming unrealistic body image expectations and has lead to an increase in eating disorders, unhealthy eating patterns and extreme dieting behaviors that can have long-term physical and mental health consequences.

From the Paper:

"Body image dissatisfaction is a widely known way to describe ones body discomfort in the researching field. Noticeable characteristics of body image dissatisfaction are frequent negative thoughts about one's physical appearance (Skemp-Arlt). In a survey of 200 girls between the ages of eight to 10 years old it revealed that 55 percent of girls and 42 percent of the girls in the study preferred body figures thinner than their own and 23 percent "always" wished that they were thinner (Skemp-Arlt) Another disturbing trend in American society that contributes to body image problems and, consequently, rates of eating disturbances, is body distortion."

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