How Is The Media Affecting Teenage Girls?

There are countless issues constantly growing larger in our society today that are not often taken serious enough, such as global warming, world hunger and homelessness. A major issue more applicable to my generation is the distorted views by teenage girls of their personal image and appearance. This includes but is not limited to their weight, hair color, breast size, color of skin or simply how much makeup they apply. The body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by only 5% of American females, yet 47% of girls ages 11-18 grade reported wanting to lose weight because of magazine pictures and 69% of girls reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of a perfect body shape (Mellin) . This distorted and incorrect view that young girls have of themselves have caused many to develop serious self-confidence issues and eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa. This is a tough problem to find solutions to, but by getting the media to use more diverse actresses and models this problem may be helped. By magazines advertising the same tall, skinny, dark skinned woman on their covers, adolescent girls are pressured to feel the need to have to look this way as
Media should portray and advertise all different types, sizes, shapes, and races of woman in order to help every teenager feel happy and confident with themselves. We should also provide girls who struggle with self-image distortion eating disorders with counseling and cognitive therapy to talk about their issues and feelings freely. The first step to solving the problem is identifying the problem, therefore teachers, counselors, peers, parents, and others should be more aware of signs and symptoms of eating disorders in able to address them to find and provide them with the help that they