Body Image, Media and Adolescence Part 2

Etiology of Body Dissatisfaction among Adolescents

            Cultural perceptions of the body has changed throughout the years, it wasn’t always the thin for girls and big for guys standard that we see today. A primary example of this would be the metamorphoses of what our North American culture has viewed as attractive in a woman’s body within the last 120 years.

The era	The look
1890s	Plump, voluptuous
Early 20th century	Corseted, hour-glass
1920s	Flat-chested, slim-hipped, androgynous
1930s and 1940s	Full-bodied, with emphasis on legs
1950s	Voluptuous and curvaceous
1960s to date	Thin, un-curvaceous (waif-look)

                                                                                                                       Health Canada (1996).

The cultural perception has undergone a radical shift from the full bodied voluptuous woman to the rail thin, anorexic look of today. The impact of this changing cultural standard can be seen when walking down the hallways of a junior high or high school, going through the checkout stand at the super market, or watching a few hours of MTV, BET or VH1.  It doesn’t take long to realize that there is a very real and serious problem in the way our culture views the body. Almost every magazine on the rack when going through the checkout stand is about getting that “Beach body” or getting “Ripped abs”, how to lose 10 lbs in a week, or a new miracle drug for losing weight. Body image is powerfully influenced and affected by cultural messages and societal standards of appearance and attractiveness. Don’t believe me? Take a look at these facts collected by TV-Turnoff Network and Teenage Research Unlimited (1996).

• Adolescents watch an average of 28 hours of television per week.

• American youth spend, on average, 900 hours a year in school and an average of 1,023 hours a year watching television.

• The average American consumes 11.8 hours per day of media of all kinds.

• Children view more than 20,000 commercials per year.

• 75% of all adolescents spend at least 6 hours a week watching music videos.

Adolescents are consuming more media and advertising than any generation before them. But the influence is not restricted solely to TV and broadcast media, the cultural shift in body perception can even be seen in the textbooks and toys adolescents interact with everyday. Over 800 million Barbie dolls have been sold and annual sales amount to more than 1 billion dollars (New York Times Magazine, 1994). If Barbie were real, given her proportions, she would barely be able to stand upright. The same is true of the Ken doll, if Ken were a real person he would not be able to fit in normal clothes (New York Times Magazine, 1994). Textbook images of girls have gotten more slender every decade since 1900, while images of boys have not changed significantly (Davis, 1992). It is clear that the cultural messages concerning body image has changed to an unrealistic and unhealthy perspective, i.e. the Barbie and Ken doll body type, and secondly, adolescents are bombarded on a daily basis with this stereotypic body. They couldn’t get away from it even if they wanted to because the textbooks they read and toys they play with are also influenced. I do not mean to mislead the reader, culture is not entirely responsible for the shaping of adolescents perceptions of body image, family and peers play a crucial also. Yet I focused heavily on culture since culture also influences the thinking patterns of families and peers, and its connection to body image is massively represented in the literature. This leads us to the next question, what is the impact of the body image messages bombarding today’s adolescents through media, family, peers, education and play?

To learn more read Part 3