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Sample Student Essay—Cause-Effect—Viewpoints
essay “Your Mirror Image” Media Exposure and the Effects
on Body Image In her essay, “Your Mirror Image?” in Viewpoints, Francine Russo explains
how our children are developing eating disorders, low self –esteem and poor
body images as a result of modeling after their mothers. She states, “ Sure,
you can blame the media for imposing a parade of surgically enhanced pop
icons on your impressionable child, but the real danger to her self-image
comes from closer to home: you!” (234). Russo believes that women are
unknowingly teaching their children at a young age that being beautiful is to
be skinny. I disagree. It’s the media influential exposure and
their “skinny is beautiful” body image that has internalized in young girls
and women causing a drive for thinness. Consequently the media is igniting feelings
of body dissatisfaction among women and children. Women and young girls are
obsessively trying to alter their appearance just to look like the perfect body
images we see in magazines and movies. They have internalized the harsh media
exposure of being “ultra-skinny” is to be beautiful. Body image is in the media everywhere you look.
Every time you turn on the television we are bombarded with beautiful women
with perfect figures and porcelain faces. The overwhelming urge for women to
find a way to have a body just like the perfect actresses in the movies or
the size zero models we see plastered in the magazines, has rubbed off on our
children. What these women and young
girls don’t understand is that these models have airbrushed bodies, elongated
limbs, waists shrunk, and breasts enlarged all with the help of technology or
costly plastic surgery. Women and young girls are spending endless time and
money trying to achieve the look that the media has created of the perfect
woman. To what price will one pay physically to achieve that unattainable
look the media has driven into our minds? The extent that these young girls
and women have put their bodies through has placed enormous stress and risks
on their health. The media has ignited feelings of body dissatisfaction among
women and children causing eating disorders. Anorexia and other poor eating
habits have stormed our homes as our children endure horrific starvation on
their quest to what they feel is beautiful. “On any given day, 45% say they
are dieting. Scarier yet, a 1992 study found that 46% of girls 9 to 11 say
they are “sometimes” or “very often” on a diet, and experts agree that the
numbers have probably increased since then” (Russo 234). Feelings of low
self-esteem and poor body image are becoming more common in young girls as
they become discouraged in trying to achieve the perfect body. The feeling of depression stemming
from the impossibility of being able to attain the look that the media places
on beauty is causing low self-esteem in young girls. Children are vey receptive to dangerously thin models and dolls with the
unhealthy messages their bodies convey. “Barbie, Tinkerbell,
and countless others . . . reinforce the societal message about the value of
thinness,” writes psychologist Cynthia R. Kalodner
in her 2003 book Too Fat or Too Thin? Superheroes
are dressed in skin-tight body suits revealing every curve of their unnatural
bodies and are seen as powerful and sexy. They learn at a young age what the
media has classified as beauty. Unusually
thin is seen as desirable and being overweight is not. Women everywhere keep
their eyes wide open while in the check out lines
at the grocery store, hoping for the next big diet to be revealed on the
cover of a magazine. Commercials are loaded with celebrities and models
endorsing the newest trends in weight loss from pills to exercise videos.
They are teaching women and children that it is ok to fill your body with
chemicals in order to be thin. Often,
mothers are not aware that their young girls are picking up on these media
cues and that it may be causing body dissatisfaction, or that overhearing
their mothers complain about being fat, needing to diet, and that food is the
enemy, also cements in their mind what they are learning through the media. “If
you declare yourself “good” for eating only salad and “bad” for eating
cookies, they will judge their own goodness and badness the same way” (Russo
234). In a culture that promotes thinness, young girls and women become fixated and
internalize these messages about body image. Activities that require a lean
appearance such as acting, dancing, modeling and gymnastics can also increase
the risk of developing an eating disorder. Society is placing too much
pressure on our youth to be perfect. They become mentally obsessed and see
themselves as only fat and overweight. They struggle to continue on their
battle to lose weight and achieve what the media has driven into their minds
as beautiful, even though they are mere skeletons standing in front of the
mirror. Unfortunately many of these young girls and women never get help.
They end up victims of societal misconceptions of being skinny is pretty; their
minds and bodies too weak and exhausted to continue, collapse in their
endless battle for beauty. The media will never take responsibility
for their influential actions in portraying unrealistic expectations of body
images because sexuality sells. The feelings that it internalizes and the
body dissatisfaction in women and children can be eased with proper
education. “It’s better to talk about bodies in terms of their strength and
abilities rather than their appearance” (Russo 234). We need to communicate
to our children that the media is communicating a false conception of beauty.
Thereby igniting feelings of body dissatisfaction, causing serious health
issues in women and young girls as they struggle for the unrealistic “perfect
body” image that media is conveying. Works Cited Kalodner, R. Cynthia. “Too Fat or Too
Thin?”, 2003.
(33) Russo,
Francine. “Your Mirror Image?” Viewpoints.
Ed. W. Royce Adams, 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. (233-35). |