Body Image in Media

Down to the skin and bones    
By Rhys Loors
We have all seen the supposedly perfect figure for men and women in magazines, but have we ever seen this figure on the street. The answer is no, we haven’t seen this “perfect” figure in real life. The average Aussie just doesn’t have this body shape. It is so misleading and fake that some of the models and movie stars getting their pictures taken, don’t even really look like that, there body’s are being technologically enhanced to look like manufactured Barbie dolls. The scary thing is, allot of female models actually do look like this, wearing size two clothing with next to no meat on their bones. "We know seeing super-thin models can play a role in causing anorexia," says Nada Stotland, professor of psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago and vice president of the American Psychiatric Association. Perfect body image in the media is more prominent in females, with this fake body image being drilled into their heads at such a young age with young girls playing with Barbie dolls and entering beauty pageants at the age of 4. There's no question younger girls are getting this message, says Sarah K Murnen, who has studied this for 15 years. "We have done studies on high school girls, and even girls in grade 1, girls think the culture is telling them that they should model themselves after celebrities who are, beautiful and sexy."
Some girls can reject that image, but it's a small percentage, as little as 18% according to Murnen's research. The girls that were placed in this minority were said to have the highest self esteem and confidence in their physical appearance. Murnen and her colleagues reviewed 21 studies that looked at the media's effect on more than 6,000 girls, ages 10 and older, and found those who were exposed to the most fashion magazines were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and develop eating disorders such as anorexia.
We grow up with various forms of media feeding us a warped...