The Media's Influence on Girls

This week in class we discussed the negative influence that the media has specifically on girls.

When girls read magazines such as Seventeen, or watch TV shows such as America's Next Top Model, they often feel pressure to look as beautiful as the models appear to look, even though they are often airbrushed to look "perfect." Girl's desires to look as skinny and pretty as girls portrayed by the media often go so far as to damage their body from eating disorders. This is proven from the statistic that one in every five college-age females has some type of disordered eating (The Media).

I love the Dove Self-Esteem Fund because it promotes girls loving themselves for who they are, not by how they look. The picture above was used by Dove as an advertisment for the Self-Esteem Fund. I saw this picture on a billboard in Chicago a few months ago, and I remember thinking to myself, "wow how unusual...normal sized models!" I believe that if more companies used healthy, normal looking women to represent their products like Dove does, then young girls would have more self-confidence and eating disorders wouldn't be as common.

I know first hand that the media negatively influences girls everyday, since my sister is 13 and sometimes struggles with self-esteem issues, like most girls her age tend to do. I always try my best to make her feel beautiful in her own way by complimenting her and taking her shopping to find clothes that make her feel good when she wears them. I honestly believe that if companies today didn't always use dangerously thin, airbrushed models, and instead actually showed women in their natural state, then girls today would have more self-confidence and be happier overall.