In the coming weeks we hope to find well-founded answers to the following questions:
Can we blame the media for the increase in eating disorders among pre-teen and teenage girls? How might the media contribute to issues related to physical self-concept, social and cultural ideals, and disordered eating? Could it be argued that they have no effect at all?
On the right of the page we will post links to different articles that we will write in response to the questions. Each article will contain source links to the original work that we will be citing. Feel free to share any material that you find.
People blaming the media for their woes is a common technique of sidestepping responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious, why is it that the super skinny, photoshopped women of ads, TV and movies all make women anorexic and lacking in self confidence, yet the overly macho, impossibly muscular, impossibly strong men of videogames, ads and movies don't cause every man to simply become a steroid infused mass of chemicals?
The root source isn't in media, it's in our interpersonal interactions.
Another example - the world loves to blame violence on video games and loves to point out how every person who commits a school shooting loved playing video games with guns and violence. Yet the cold, hard facts are that video game sales have gone up since the 80's, there are more consoles in homes now than ever before and more violence with more realism is the norm in games, yet the violent crime rate as tracked by the FBI for the whole country on a per capita basis has decreased (and our population has monotonically increased over the same time period). So having more violent video games accessed by more people has in no way increased the violent acts of people toward each other. And note, I didn't say the MURDER rate went down, the VIOLENT ACT rate went down, that includes rape, assault, murder, etc...
If we looked more at how parents treated children, how siblings treated each other, how we treated each other on a daily basis, that is where we will find the root cause of societal ills, not in the media and the way it portrays the human body.
I don't know, Mark - that seems a little heavy handed? Don't you see how constant exposure to an unrealistic ideal that is partial replicated in daily life might weigh on a person?
ReplyDeleteThe use of photoshop that is then portrayed as reality is problematic, don't you agree? It's not so much that the "best of the best of the best, sir!" is being put out to display in media, but that we're altering it to be inhuman, but suggesting that it is human, that it is possible. I saw a great video (don't remember where) that talked about the use of photoshop in making models appear perfect when they're anything but.
ReplyDeleteStill, the average person KNOWS these things are photoshopped and unrealistic. If they don't realize it, then they have some other reality issues and interpersonal skills they need to be focussing on. I think Mark makes a good point. Why is it that we say women are affected by media images but not men? This would seem to imply that women are more shallow than men by nature, which I don't think is the case.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who suffered from body dysmorphic issues growing up, I believe that the media does have a certain level of responsibilty for how women, especially girls, view themselves. While I agree with Amy and Mark that a person should KNOW these things, it is difficult when you grow up in a culture that constantly tells you are imperfect, and that there are others who have achieved the ideal.
ReplyDeleteI didn't grow up with the internet we have today, but I did have movies, and tv shows where issues that may have already been there were compounded. I think we do need more men and women in media who are average. Average is not supermodel skinny or perfect skin. We expect girls to be able to figure these things out for themselves, and even those of us who grow up in good, stable, average homes are exposed in other environments to the idea that they need to be doing more to make themselves "perfect". I'm an intelligent, average girl, and this was probably the biggest struggle of my life. While I don't blame the media, I think there needs to be a level of responsibility.