Beauty Culture An Examination the Effects Media Has on...

Society is obsessed with being beautiful. One just has to examine the amount differing beauty industries earn early for this fact to be evident. For example, the diet industry is a thirty-three billion dollar industry, with the cosmetic industry following close behind with twenty billion yearly (Wolf 16). However, this obsession with beauty is not without cause. As stated in Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children, â€Å"In affluent Western societies, slenderness is generally associated with happiness, success, youthfulness, and social acceptability. Being overweight is linked to laziness, lack of willpower, and being out of control.†(Grogan 325) Despite common misconceptions, body image affects all groups of†¦show more content†¦The importance being that even overweight students held negative stereotypes of â€Å"fat† people (Grogan 363). Furthermore, experiments have discovered that exposure to television, especially adverti sements, and magazines, particularly fashion magazines, can cause a decrease in positive self image (Fox 5). Likewise, limiting exposure to specific media sources has a beneficial effect on a person’s self image (Beauty (Mis)represented 3). In fact, magazines that fall under the same category as Vogue and Elle have been outlawed in several eating disorder clinics because of their proven negative influence on a patient’s self-image (Fox 5). To come to the point, media has a widespread negative affect on the general public’s self image because of the messages it sends out and it’s largely unavoidable presence. Highly concerning is the affect that beauty culture and the media are beginning to have on children. Really, it has been a surprise to no one that media is beginning to have such a powerful influence on children. One source states, â€Å"As we look at the powers of the media and the influences on the human mind, researchers have confirmed that child ren are the most vulnerable to messages sent by the media.†Children are easily the group most susceptible to the messages sent out by the media, for this reason, children have sponge like minds that begin soaking up ideals from the media at extremely young ages (Impact on Youth 1). While all children areShow MoreRelatedSocial Media Has a Negative Effect on Body Image and Self Esteem1202 Words   |  5 Pages Social media has become one of the most popular sources of communication for the upcoming generation. For young people growing up in today’s society, social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have provided pictures and news that have become the first thing that their eyes see in the morning and the last thing that they see before bed. 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