In a May, 2000
edition of Newsweek a 16-year-old girl was quoted as saying, "I took
this picture [out of the magazine] because it shows the stick-thin and perfect
bodies in the magazines that teens read. I
think this is part of where the
pressure to have the perfect body comes from. I was thinking about a
girl I knew that had an eating disorder. I
think they should put a few more
'realistic' bodies in the magazines to show teens that not everyone is
skinny." Adolescence is an extremely hard time for anyone as uncertainty
and self-doubt arise from many physical, emotional, and psychological changes. As
these feelings fester, one’s sense of confidence drops at a constant rate. With
that being said, strategies for fitting in and improving physical attractiveness
become even more important to adolescents.
White adolescent girls are the most avid consumers
of magazines, with three fourths of those between the ages of 12 and 14 reading
at least one magazine on a regular basis (Klein, 1993). Remembering my days
spent reading magazines such as Seventeen and Teen People, the content is
highly based off of appearance and beauty. Although there were always the articles
dealing with conquering anorexia or bulimia, maintaining a positive body image,
and a stressing independence and uniqueness, it was very clear that most of the
models in the advertisements were thin and beautiful. Based on this, one must
conclude that the main message of the advertisements is that in today's society,
acceptance depends upon fitting into this narrow conception of pretty. The
content of advertisements in magazines targeted to young women send an array of
implicit and explicit messages concerning physical appearances.
In both van Zoonen and Gill, the idea of
content analysis is under much discussion. Content analysis counts the
frequency of various occurrences and this raw data is translated into
percentages and various other statistics. While it can be argued content
analysis suggests that sexism resides in single images that can be counted instead
of seeing sexism as a culture wide issue, there are still benefits of this
research. I found an article that performs a content analysis on the top
five selling teen magazines. Of those were Seventeen, Teen Vogue, Girl's
Life, American Cheerleader, and M Magazine.
As expected, those represented in the
magazines represent girls that are flirty, carefree, tan, and beautiful. With
so much content pushing such similar images, girls will inevitably internalize
the idea that beauty means echoing and replicating what they see in the media.
If this continues, what will this mean for the future of individuality and
confidence?
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