Advertisements are meant to bring awareness to people, incite reactions and in many cases make us feel like we need something so that we will want it enough to buy it. They are used for a variety of things are seen on billboards and television, in magazines and newspapers, storefronts, the radio, etc. so they are a big part of our daily lives whether we notice them or not. The claim or evidence behind the advertisement is sometimes misplaced and represent the wrong things to our youth.
In doing so images are represent the norm and cause children and young adults to feel as if they have to appear the way they see people in the advertisements. A big issue that has risen over the last few years have included the images of “skinny” models. These images, in many cases, show models that appear to be skeleton thin with bones protruding in their faces and on their bodies. Magazine covers often show celebrities and models who are size 0 or 2 and leave behind an impression that in order to be a model, celebrity, or even beautiful that you have to be the size of the models in the advertisements.
Over the years there has been stories published about what a model had to do in order to be the size that the designers wanted them to be and sometimes this led to anorexia, bulimia, and drug use in order to stay the size that they needed to be so that they would be considered for several assignments. According to Heinberg & Thompson (1992), females tend to compare their body image based on the influences of their peers whereas males base their appearance and body image off the images of celebrities that they see in advertisements.
The media plays a very important role with helping children identify with their gender roles which is a very important part of identity formation (Rouner et al. , 2003). So, with that being said if we continue to allow our children to believe that the images that are shown to them day in and day out are true representations of today’s society our youth will strive to look like or be like what and who they see in those images. Peer pressures amongst today’s youth also pushes our children to want to be like what they see in images as well.
More often than not children want to fit in and be liked and if the images that we show our children show them a distorted picture of reality in a sense. When a child turns on the television and all they see is a person that is a size O or 2 and all magazines show this image it causes a false sense of normalcy. (Akthar, 2014) Every little girl grows up wanting to feel beautiful and boys grow up wanting to break things, however as a society we have to understand the images that our children are seeing on a daily basis because they have the power to influence how they feel about themselves and one another.
If violence is something a child deals with on a daily basis as they get older they will be conditioned to violence in a sense. So when we constantly show our children that in order to be a beautiful successful model or celebrity you must meet be a certain size. If the image above doesn’t frighten you, maybe this will; “the thin, idealized female body portrayed in media has coincided with an increase in eating disorders. Although many studies have been conducted in this area, it is still unclear why and how women are negatively affected by ideal media imagery” (Lucas et al. 1999).
Media does not show the line or explain what is considered to be reality and what is fake. Advertisers hurt our youth in that they present photo shopped women and men or even airbrushed models and present them as true and real people but don’t be fooled they are not. How many times have you watched TMZ and viewed a celebrity with no makeup and realized that they don’t really look like exactly like their picture? Many times, right? That is because they don’t. They are made to appear more desirable and beautiful with photo shop, make up and by being air brushed.
So, who are we hurting when we show these fake images to our youth? We are hurting them. They grow up wanting to be this impossible looking model from television when truth is that model doesn’t even look like that and for the ones that are bone thin these images show an idealized body image; one that is not the norm and in many cases maintained in an unhealthy manner. Society is where our youth learns what a desirable body image is and where it comes from so advertisements are based on what society deems as ideal.
The issue lies with the negative effects on our youth when idealizing a body image that is unhealthy or at the very least non-existent. So, what do we do? That is a very hard question to answer and I can’t answer that for you. But, what I can do is inform you of the negative consequences of the images that our youth see on a daily basis. This paper was to argue the influences of negative body images and how advertisers are feeding our youth idealized body images and ruining our youth with untrue propaganda.