Betzy Rodriguez
Self-image has evolved over time. In the 1500s, the ideal image was for women to have a flat chest and a huge lower half of the body. People would use armor-like corsets to flatten their chests. Many women even have plastic surgery, gastric reductions, begin radical diets to get skinny (“Perceptions of Body Image Throughout Time”). The ideal body image has changed. Nowadays most women want to be thin. From the seventeen years I’ve been alive, I’ve seen how people’s perception of the ideal body type and also the way they dress, has changed. When I was younger, leggings were worn under some types of clothing, but now girls use them as pants. Some women use leggings to show off their bodies because they feel that guys will like them more. Media has influenced a lot of girls to think a certain way. For example, “Feminine odor is everyone problem,” proclaims an ad for a feminine hygiene spray. “If your hair isn’t beautiful, the rest hardly matters (an ad for shampoo).” Ads have been influencing people for decades. Some ads make people think that if one doesn’t look a certain way, then one is ugly or not good enough. For instance, “sometimes a woman’s body morphs into the product, so she becomes the car or the shoe or the bottle of beer. As advertisers look for new ways to get our attention, they also use ever more graphic depictions of sex and of violence. Ads in the early 1960s, bad as they were, didn’t feature women’s battered bodies splayed out on the ground or stuffed into automobile trunks” (Kilbourne). Our generation and future generations have been badly influenced by media. The importance of body image influences many girls to fall into eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. |
Isabelle Arce
Self-Image has been changing over time and continues to be a problem all over the world, people think of self image as body image or just how they see themselves. Beauty has been different for different time periods and it has been changing.”Up until the late 1800's, the rubenesque woman dominated the ideal female body image. Until the early 1900's, for a woman to have extra weight on her body and look voluptuous was a sign of good health and wealth” (Kendall, 1999) Over the years this image of beauty kept changing, and women found it harder to compete with it which is affecting the teenagers everywhere. Self image has been around the world, in many different places. “In the 1950s the ideal body was curvy, in the 1960s that ideal body image changed to a skinny British model.” This is showing us how as the years keep increasing then the ideal body image is changing, this is affecting the way teenagers think they should look. Not only teenagers and little girls are seeing how their body should be, but they are also using makeup to be “more beautiful” or are being exposed to makeup ads. Teenagers feel as if they have to put on makeup because famous people wear it. Little girls have barbies when they are small and barbie uses a lot of makeup, The way they see the barbie they want to look like her. “Barbie has negative influence on young girls and makes them self-conscious about their physical appearance because of Barbie’s unrealistic body features.”(Hoskins, "The Negative Effects of Barbie on Young Girls an the Long Term Results")There are a lot of toys or ads about cosmetic toys for little girls and everywhere around the world children of all ages are exposed to this. Some girls will see make up advertisements on the television and tell themselves that they’re not beautiful. Advertisements on the television are affecting the way that children and teens feel about themselves. The media has influenced a lot of girls to think that they are not beautiful and they start to do things that affects their health. Teenagers feel the need to change their appearance. They start doing things to look more skinny, or start to add unnecessary things to themselves. Teenagers get eating disorders, they become anorexic or make themselves throw up after eating a lot of food, which is called bulimia nervosa. “Millions of people in the United States are affected by eating disorders, specifically young women striving to reach the "ideal" figure. Approximately 1 percent of adolescent girls develop anorexia nervosa, Another 2 to 3 percent of young women develop bulimia nervosa.”(Miller, "Eating Disorders") |