Adams 1 Courtney Adams Mr.

Lutz English 151 5 October 2011 The Media Enforces Eating Disorders Eating disorders are seen all over the world. Mainly swirling around girls, eating disorders consume many teenage girls lives. The idea that someone wants to fit a certain standard so badly that she is willing to starve herself perplexes me. So what distorts these girls body images to make them so unhappy they would starve themselves? I want to further explore the idea of media influencing girls at young ages. Is it in childhood that girls learn they must look a certain way to be liked? Mainly I want to find out how media such as television and magazines impacts the body image adolescent girls have for themselves. Along with that, at what age do girls already want to change their physical appearance, believing it will make them more popular? Should young children even have access to the appearance related information the media provides? As I began researching the idea of media on young girls and the impact of their body image, immediately I found an experiment related to my question. Many articles are more interested in the idea of parents and peers influencing child body images than media, which I found interesting because I have always viewed media as the most influential part of a childs life. The title of the article I was interested in was Am I too fat to be a princess? which brings across the subject of the unrealistic shapes and appearances of Barbie and the Disney Princesses, which I will be researching later on. The Am I too fat to be a princes article opens by claiming, Girls as young as 6 years old experience body dissatisfaction

Adams 2 (Hayes et all 1). During the experiment, the effect of appearance-related media on body image, looked at pre and post-tests of ideal and perceived body sizes for children ages three to nine. Girls were asked to look at themselves in a mirror and identify on a computer screen which body size resembled them. They also had to pick a body size, which body size they desired to look like. The result was, Close to a third of girls indicated that they would, if possible change something about their physical appearance (Hayes et all 10). In the results of the experiment, it was also found, There was a main effect of ageolder girls choose a significantly thinner ideal shape than younger girls (Hayes et all 8). This research experiment has brought me to believe that at very young ages, girls have an unrealistic ideal body image they have gained from the media. As a girl gets older she is exposed to more and more media and the thinner her ideal body figure gets. I had always thought that girls at a young age may realize how skinny girls on television are but I did not realize that they are aware of their looks compared to their peers. Some girls at 6 years olds even aspire to look skinnier. Although this experiment made many solid points and findings, the fact that they used children as young as three years old seems problematic to me. Since the opening statement acknowledges that at six years old girls usually begin to experience body dissatisfaction, one critique I found of this study is the use of girls three years younger than that. Back to the idea of Barbies having negative impacts on young girls, I found a book called Common Culture by Michael Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure that touches on Barbies role in society. The history of Barbie started in 1959, and more than one billion Barbies have sold, in more than 140 countries (Petracca, Socrapure 10). In the reading, positive and negative impacts of Barbies are considered. The negative unrealistic aspect

Adams 3 that Barbie has perfect looks, a never ending supply of clothes and a humanly impossible figure is highlighted in a poem and two essay within the book. The poem Barbies Shoes by Hilary Tham points out, If only the differently colored men and women we know could be like Barbie (Petracca, Socrapure 10). Although this source does not show the direct effect of Barbie on children, in one of the essays by Marilyn Ferris Motz it is stated, By the late 1060s, the median age for Barbie doll play had dropped from age ten to age six (Petracca, Socrapure 16). Since it has been proved, the younger the child the more impressionable they are, this information is quite profound. The idea of living Barbies life gives these young children the wrong impression of real life. If children get the idea that they can live like Barbie, they will only be let down with the reality of not only themselves but also the real world. It is physically impossible for a human being to have the dimensions of Barbie, so why are so many children allowed to admire these dolls? For a child to interact with these dolls and aspire to be her will only help them to have poor selfesteem because no one will ever have the picture perfect features Barbie has. I continued my research in search of something positive about media and young girls body images. What I came across was another experiment of a book called Shapesville. Within this study, the idea that girls need to be around positive influences of media was stated, In order for prevention programs to be truly preventative, they should be initiated before disordered eating has already begun (Evaluating 1). Shapesville is a book that, Celebrates positive body image by encouraging self-acceptance and diversity (Evaluating 1). The idea is that after reading this book children will have a healthier body image of themselves than they did before. The theory proved to be true as children in the experimental group showed a significant improvement in their satisfaction of their

Adams 4 appearance. Instead of media in general this article helps me to believe that there is beneficial media that works against the negative media. Although it is hard to distinguish between the two, books such as Shapesville should be used more often to counteract the negative effects of the general media. What I also gained from this experiment is that in order for them to do this study, the scientists must first recognize that media does indeed have a negative effect on adolescent girls. This is important to remember because this study already acknowledges the damage of the media and is on the basis of reversing or intervening on such damage. BLUE SOURCE As more of my questions are answered and I began to sum up my research, I found another article that almost mirrors my first experiment about being too fat to be a princess. This article conducted by Hayley K. Dohnt and Marika Tiggermann mentions, Preadolescent body dissatisfaction as a risk factor for subsequent lower selfesteem, decreased psychological well-being, increased eating disorder symptomatology, dieting behaviors, obesity and depression (Dohnt 1). This alarming information brought them to conduct research to find the exact source of this dissatisfaction so that maybe their information could create a cure for this. Fortunately, for the ethics of their study, different age span of children were used than the first experiment I found. This procedure used children ages five to eight and stated the same information about six year olds having the maturity to desire a thinner figure (Dohnt 1) but they went as far as to say that at the age of six some girls are even, Beginning to engage in eating disordered behaviours (Dohnt 2). I focused on the dieting awareness part of this study in trying to answer my question if young children should be experiencing such media

Adams 5 information? The results concluded that 43% of the girls in the experiment revealed that they would use dieting restraints if they noticed themselves gaining weight (Dohnt 5). In my opinion, for a girl in elementary school, to recognize that she should go on a diet is appalling. Through this study I began to realize the severity of the damage done to young girls from the media. I am convinced of the idea of eating disorders being an option for girls of such young ages. I think for most girls with body image insecurities grow up knowing their option of eating disorders but usually do not take action until later in their teens. As I found it, this experiment was conducted respectfully with no true criticisms, which helped me to better believe the results found. Being a child is supposed to be about being carefree and having an innocent mind, unfazed by the surrounding negative media. Unfortunately, though my research I have found this dream of innocents is broken just as girls enter grade school. Although there were some different views and interpretations of the media affecting young girls, the consensus found that girls need an alternative to mainstream media. Something must be done in order to preserve girls innocence regarding their body image. Examples such as Shapesville could make a dramatic positive impact on girls self-esteem.

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Work Cited Clark, Levina, and Marika Tiggemann. "Sociocultural Influences and Body Image in 9- to 12-Year-Old Girls: The Role of Appearance Schemas." Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 36.1 (2007): 76-86. Academic

Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Oct. 2011.

Dohnt, Hayley K., and Marika Tiggemann. "Body Image Concerns in Young Girls: The Role of Peers and Media Prior t Adolescence." Journal of Youth & Adolescence 35.2 (2006): 135-145. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Oct. 2011. "Evaluating a program to promote positive body image in young girls." Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior

Letter 24.4 (2008): 3-4.Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Oct. 2011.
Hayes, Sharon, and Stacey TantIeff-Dunn. "Am I too fat to be a princess? Examining the effects of popular children's media on young girls' body image." British Journal of Developmental Psychology 28.2 (2010): 413426. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Oct. 2011.