Female Body Ideal

The Female Body Ideal through Media
How do you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror? Dissatisfied?...
This research paper is about the problems women have to face with their body and how they look like because of the ideal the media gives them. For me, it is really important to talk about this problem because it definitely has to change. A recent article in the Daily News said, that 87% out of 2000 girls are unhappy with their body. Only 19% of the teenagers were actually overweighed, but 67% thought they have to become thinner and 64% of the girls under thirteen already tried a diet. Also, more than 25% of 14-year-olds thought about getting plastic surgery. And all that only because of the unrealistic body ideal the media gives
The upward comparison means, that the person you compare yourself with is better than you and the downward comparison means that the individual, that you compare yourself with is not as well off than you. There are many things individuals can compare themselves with, but mass media is one of the most common because you get confronted with it several times a day. They beauty ideal of the mass media is however so unrealistic, that it is hard to go through a day as women without getting the message that you are not good enough. There out you can see, that social comparison can have many negative effects like a bad mood and body image disturbance. Furthermore gets the thin ideal internalized through this theory. The second theory is the Cultivation Theory. It tries to explain the striving to be thin, with the explanation that the unrealistic ideal of the female body becomes the norm for several people because it is prevalent in the media all the time. It makes it seem like that only woman that match the ideal are popular, have influence and are accepted. As a result, the ideal becomes the norm and the norm becomes abnormal. The third and last theory are the Self Scheme Theory. It contents three points, the Socially Represented Ideal Body, the Objective Body and the Internalized Ideal Body. The Socially Represented Body is the ideal the media or important persons give us, the Objective Body is our own body and how we look like and the Internalized Ideal Body is the ideal you want to achieve. For some women, the ideal body represents exactly the one that the media gives them and for others not because they know it is impossible for them to achieve it. If there is a large gap between the individual’s body and their ideals, it is bad for their confidence and has many negative effects because it is unlikely that they are