Monday, April 28, 2014

Teens and the media

Like a few other people, I found searching on this topic to be a lot harder than I originally thought it was going to be. What kept popping up in google were issues teens have with body image and self image. This doesn't surprise me at all though, because the media does manipulate everything with photoshop and I'm glad people are speaking out about it! the reason that so many girls, women and even men, have body issues is because of the unrealistic ideals our society has posted on every video, billboard, movie and magazine. This is a cause of many mental health issues today like anorexia, bulimia, and depression. These issues are extremely serious and can consume peoples lives to the point of no return.

These issues reminded me about the quote by Orenstein from Cinderella Ate My Daughter, "And guess who preformed better on a math test, coeds who took it after being asked to try on a bathing suit or those who had been asked to try on a sweater?(Hint: the latter group; interestingly, male students showed no such disparity)". Though the end of that quote makes it seem like body issues only effect females, that is incorrect. It's so sad that now a days people can't love there body's for how they are. but this is the society we live in today. Women especially are pitted against each other in competition, constantly comparing one another and then bullying girls for looking "different". During my search i found an interesting blog about how basically Photoshop is the devil (kidding, but it still is the the root of some kind of evil).

I looked at some other blogs and was happily surprised about the many different organizations that teens have for themselves. I would like to know if everyone had problems finding information about teens? I kept finding links about how to control my teen when they talk back...lol

5 comments:

  1. while researching I have also found that more teens are speaking of photoshop and pictures they see as not being real...this makes me feel better about this topic because at least some teens can feel that the way they are, unphotoshopped, is good enough for them.

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  2. The video that I posted in my blog mentions issues with body image and how the media effects how we think of ourselves. It's very interesting, but it's also really sad!

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  3. It is great that teenagers are realizing and making public this act of photoshoping pictures, because I know when I was growing up, there was really no such talk about this other than "I wish I could look like that".

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  4. I think that this topic is one of those that is covered most frequently by people. There is a large body of literature about how media effects young girls especially. If you're interested, try checking out MissRepresentation, a documentary about how women and girls in the media are constantly denied access to actualized media images.

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  5. I've definitely also been seeing a lot about body image, and thank you for the hyperlink to that blog! Photoshop definitely has a lot to do with these scary beauty ideals. Great post! :)

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