Life in a society inflicts the need to comply with certain social norms in order to function in harmony with the surrounding environment. Failure to keep to the norms and rules of the society may not infrequently result in certain penalties, ranging from judgment and disapproval to total exclusion from society, ostracism, and discrimination. One of the key aspects taken into account when constructing one’s relationship with society is one’s body image that is formed according to social standards and own perception of self.
Among all the factors contributing to the formation of the body image, the one playing a crucial role in mass media. As emphasized by Jean Kilbourne in “You’re Soaking in It,” the impact of modern mass media on the generally accepted female body image is far from positive since the notion of the ideal body presented in mass media production leads to dramatic distortion of one’s true body image and to tragic consequences for one’s physical and mental health.
Body image, as such, is not a novel notion: society has always possessed a certain standard of appearance against which people evaluated themselves. The significant point is that with the course of history, the ideal body standard has undergone dramatic changes, and nowadays, the ideal model promoted within the society is far from being physically and psychologically healthy. If one thinks of a modern female body ideal, the first thing that springs into one’s mind is the lean construction of skin and bones, almost devoid of any lipopexia that to a modern beauty connoisseur would seem offensive.
How much would Rubens laugh seeing this poor shadow of the plump, milk-and-roses beauties of his times! The gaunt body ideal set by Twiggy in the second half of the twentieth century was enthusiastically carried on by trendsetters and has gradually become so powerful that the desire to fit into the famous 31”-22”-32” parameters often borders on obsession. There has even appeared such size as ‘zero,’ an ideal absurd in itself but so much desired by many.
How does it come that the physically unhealthy and practically unattainable body standards have gained control over the minds of millions? The answer lies in the powerful information source that possesses an almost frightening power of influencing and even manipulating people: the mass media. As shown by multiple research, compared to other sources of influence on body influence, the imagery presented by the media bears by large the most powerful impact on the human perception of their body (Grogan 106–107).
Celebrities and media figures are frequently named as ideals for imitation by people under forty years, and especially by teenagers. Newspapers, glossy magazines, websites, TV programs are boosting with the message of the necessity to be thin. As Kilbourne states, mass media are doing nothing less than normalizing abnormal behavior (such as obsessive dieting, for example) in an attempt to reconcile people with the imperfect world they live in (Pozner 106).
The problem is, this image of an imperfect world is created and maintained not by people themselves, but by the same media; in their strive to persuade people of the necessity to purchase certain products, the media have created “a toxic cultural environment” with the main idea of it being that “we are what we buy” and not what we simply are (Pozner 106, 109). The whole reality is twisted for people, and in this distortion, they also get it all wrong about their body image.
In order to understand how body image is distorted nowadays, it is essential to figure out how body image is formed at all. The key psychological theory explaining the shaping and development of body image is based on Markus’s (1977) Self Schema Theory and has as its fundament the idea that individuals construct their vision of themselves called “self-schemas” (Grogan 100; Myers and Biocca 115). A self-schema is a result of interaction between self-observation, others’ reactions to the self, and general social cues determining the most significant sides of self. The body image, as seen in fig. 1, is a combination of
- a socially represented ideal body;
- an objective body shape;
- the internalized ideal body as a compromise between the first two.
Resulting from such a combination is the elastic nature of body image and its malleability to factors including the media as “the most aggressive purveyors” of body image, according to Groesz et al. (qtd. in Smith et al. 64).
Under the pressure of mass media, bombarding people since their early age with messages of thinness, the society acquires the cultural standards of beauty that are practically unattainable. Comparing themselves to the photoshopped models smiling from billboards, TV screens, and covers of glossy magazines, people forget that the reality presented to them is a myth. The ideal body is positioned by the media as the key to good life and success and a way to attain social adequacy that guarantees bounty life to any possessor of an ideal body.
As more and more people start to believe in unrealistic ideals, the destructive effect of mass media imagery reveals itself. Ultra-thin models make lots of women feel uncomfortable with their bodies and involve in unhealthy eating practices. People become so disharmonized with their inner self that they view their self-starvation not just as a way to a slim body, but as a method of gaining control over themselves — a motivation that leads to addition (Wykes and Barrie 25). The alarming fact is that negative self-perception and depression resulting from the pursuit of thin body are spreading around the planet and acquiring the scale of pandemics.
The good news is that at present society is starting to turn its attention towards the problem of negative body image and seeking solutions to harmonize people with their body images. After the scandalous events at catwalks, fashion industry is introducing a code to protect models from anorexia threat.
One of the most famous populist measures is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty promoting natural shapes and sizes. Research shows that people react positively to images of plump models, since it increases their resistance to “thinness pressures” and helps to boost self-esteem and positive life attitude (Hallwell and Dittmar 145). Additionally, employing realistic images in advertisement increases the comfort of consumers and their trust in the products, stimulating sales.
Body image is one of the key concerns of modern society. There is hardly a sphere where body image does not play a crucial role: fashion and cosmetics, medicine and sports, all claim their objective of helping people achieve a successful image. However, it turns out that popular ideas on the ideal image are imposed by biased mass media, which necessitates critical perception of information produced by mass media in order to find one’s true self in the jungle of commercial interests.
Works Cited
Grogan, Sarah. “Media Effects.” Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children. New York, NY: Routlege, 1999. 94–116. Print.
Hallwell, Emma, and Helga Dittmar. “Does Size Matter? The Impact of Ultra-Thin Media Models on Women’s Body Image and on Advertizing Effectiveness.” Consumer Culture, Identity and Well-Being: The Search for the “Good Life” and the “Body Perfect”. Eds. Helga Dittmar and Emma Hallwell. East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2007. 121–146. Print.
Myers, Philip N., Jr., and Frank A. Biocca. “The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women.” Journal of Communication 42.3 (1992): 108–133. Print.
Pozner, Jennifer L. “You’re Soaking in It.” Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. 5th ed. Eds. Michael Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2009. 102–111. Print.
Smith, Dave, Caroline Wright, Natalie Ross, and Sarah Warmington. “Sports Advertising and Body Image.” Body Image: New Research. Ed. Marlene V. Kindes. New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2006. 63–78. Print.
Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2005. Print.