Author: Gujral Divya Manjit
Publication Year: 2019
Keywords: Social Sciences,Social Sciences General,Communication
Abstract: Majority of children begin to notice their bodies at a very young age. It may seem quite harmless at first, in the way they look and compare their body to a celebrity, friend or relative; but as they turn into young adolescents, their focus over body image deepens. For teenage girls, it especially matters a lot how others view them. Hence their self-esteem is quite susceptible to a poor body image.
Nutrition challenges continue throughout the life cycle. The concurrent problems of underweight and overweight among young adolescents pose a significant challenge for health interventions. In addition to this, it gets worse when adolescent girls aspire to have bodies like that of clinically malnourished celebrities and end up developing a poor body image themselves.
Moreover, media images are known to bring social and cultural change in our society. To create consumerism, post globalization has shaped a very unhealthy society for women. Our society encourages women to be slim and trim more than fit and strong; thinness is emphasized more over health. Media images make women feel dissatisfied and discontent with their bodies. If a woman will feel dissatisfied with her body, only then will she strive hard to get a perfect body as women are primary consumers of beauty, fashion, jewellery, clothing, food industry, and health and fitness industry. So in order to increase consumerism, media sets an unrealistic standard of "ideal body" for a woman which is a hard target to achieve.
Media images are primary causes of social change and have significant influence over children. Media do not take any special care to monitor the flow of their content, even if it has harmful effects on children. In spite of this, the policy-makers have provided media platform as a free marketplace to advertise ideas. This has led children into becoming potential victims of media images. Media sets an impossible standard of attractiveness, making their audience attain unrealistic "ideal body" targets. Adolescent Girls end up comparing themselves to clinically malnourished celebrities and strive hard to get bodies like them.
Hence, how media impact human mind with its distorted images are reinforced by media representations that need to be studied. There has been constant emphasis of body image effects of media on adolescent girls in various body image literatures, many research studies have been conducted abroad on this research topic, yet not much research has been done on it in India and none in Gujarat. Hence, this research will bring focus on Indian scenario. It will investigate the impact of media in body image dissatisfaction among teenage and young adult girls in Vadodara District.
University: Veer Narmad South Gujarat University
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Category: Communication
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