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The Media And Body Image
These days we know that the media and body image are closely related. Particularly, the body image advertising portrays affects our own body image. Of course, there are many other things that influence our body image: parenting, education, intimate relationships, and so on. The popular media does have a big impact, though.
Together, Americans spend 250 billion hours watching television every year. According to the California State University at Northridge, advertising accounts for about 30 percent of all television air time. The average child watches 20,000 television commercials every year. Of course, television is not the only place we see advertisements. Popular magazines, particularly women’s magazines and many teen’s magazines, are brimming with ads. We even see pop-up ads online.
Anything we look at for so many hours has to affect us. The media and body image are closely related due to the number of images we see in the media and the excessive amount of exposure we have to those images.
The Body Image Advertising Portrays
Although advertising aims to convince us to buy things, ads seldom portray people that look like us.
The Effects of False Body Image Advertising
These “false body image” ads, showing bodies that are not real at all or that are not very realistic or representative of the general population, have far-reaching effects. It might seem that we could recognize when ads showed us something not real; after all, when we see a dog food commercial featuring a talking dog, we aren’t fooled into thinking dogs can really