Transcript Slide 1

Media’s
Influence on
Teenage Girls
Chrissy Eiser
And
Tilor Rohr
The Barbie Doll was invented in 1959 by Ruth Handler as a
child’s toy and it was made to represent the dream of girl’s
“perfect mature body.”
But in all actuality it is nearly impossible for
anyone to achieve the measurements Barbie
was created with at 36-18-38.
She was made to be the
“ideal woman,” in the eyes
of its creators.
Television
Of the roughly 14,0000 references to sex a teen would see on TV each year, only a small fraction
(165) will include any reference to abstinence or delay of sex, birth control, risk of pregnancy, or
sexually transmitted disease. Obviously girls bear the risk of pregnancy that boys don’t, but girls are
also more likely to contract STDs than boys. (American Academy of Pediatarics, Sexuality,
Contraception, and the Media, 2001)
Some studies show that repeated exposure to media with sexual content may influence teens to
have sex earlier. But here’s the scary part: those same studies show that the younger a girl is when
she has sex, the more likely she did it under pressure, or even force. (AAP; see above)
Gossip Girl Clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgzIBwU-XMg
The women seen most often in the media are fashion
models, pop stars (singers) and actresses. (We don’t
like the word "supermodel", ‘cause they really don’t do
anything that super.) Many women seen often in the
media, especially models and increasingly actresses,
are seriously underweight, and many diet and smoke
to keep their natural weight off. ( A girl or woman who
diets and is underweight can be undernourished,
sometimes even losing her menstrual period.
Prolonged loss of periods can lead to fertility
problems---while constant or extreme dieting also
carries health risks and can actually lead to longterm
weight gain.) (Body Wars, by Margo Maine, 2000)
Need to be Thin
As girls mature they go through puberty,
the figuration, width, and weight change.
This change may not be desired,
but it has a functional purpose.
That purpose is to be able to bare children.
The widening of the hips allows for a space
for the fetus and the fat is necessary for the
woman to carry a child in the womb successfully
and healthily. Breasts develop and menstruation
is the beginning of the childbearing process.
These changes are inevitable, and because
of the changes, girls become insecure and feel
they have become fat. How a girl views her body
has to do with her mentality and knowledge.
That's why it is vital to know that being comfortable
and allowing your body to undergo its natural processes
to mature, is part of growing up and being a woman.
http://www.bygirlsforgirls.org/2002/medialiteracy1.html
Media Consumption
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A study found that the amount of
time an adolescent watched
soaps, movies, and music videos
is associated with their degree of
body dissatisfaction and desire to
be thin.
Magazines, not television, seem to
have the strongest relationship to
eating disorders because they
offer more instruction on dieting
and therefore more correlated.
"The average woman sees 400600 advertisements per day and
by the time she is 17 years old,
she had received over 250,000
commercial messages through the
media.”(www.mediascope.org)
In a 1992 study of female students at
Stanford University, 70% of women
reported feeling worse about themselves
and their bodies after looking at
magazines. (A British study also had a
similar finding.) Roughly 50% of teen girls
in the U.S. read teen or adult fashion
magazines. (Body Wars
Gender
• 50% of the commercials aimed at girls spoke about
physical attractiveness, while none of the commercials
aimed at boys referenced appearance.
• It is said for girls it’s “how they look” is more important than
“what they accomplish in life”
• In a 1997 study designed to show how children described
the roles of cartoon characters children (4-9) girls were
domestic, interested in boys, and concerned with
appearances.
• In advertising, women’s bodies are used sexually to sell
products more often than men’s. A 1997 advertising study
showed that white women in roughly 62% of ads were
"scantily clad", in bikinis, underwear, etc, while the same
was true for 53% of black women. For men, the figure was
only 25%. Women were also represented in stances of
powerlessness more often. (Racial and Gender Biases in
Magazine Advertising, S. Plous and D. Neptune, 1997,
Psychology of Womens Quarterly)
Questions
• Should we worry about these pink and orange,
boy-obsessed, lip-glossed, giggly treatments of
teen life or accept them as a rite of passage for
teen girls?
• Why do you think magazines have a bigger
impact on girls than television?
• How do you think celebrities with eating
disorders affect teen girls?