Do very thin female celebrities in the media cause eating disorders among adolescent girls?

Thesis:
Adolescent girls learn how to behave by observing others, especially their role models. This idea of social learning correlates to the increase in acceptance by teen girls to have eating disorders in order to model themselves after very thin female celebrities.

Support for my argument was found in a variety of places. From our class book I found the following, “. “At first, the women in magazine photographs had roughly the same body shape as the general population. By the 1960’s, the average model in a fashion magazine was around 10% thinner than the average woman; by the 1990’s, models were 30% thinner than the average, which placed many of them in the anorexic range.” Another bit of research I found in the Rodman book stated, “Even the recent ‘superwoman’ image of a woman who has status, accomplishment, and independence still needs to stress her physical attributes, especially how thin she is.”

I also documented a recent controversial Hollywood story surrounding the eating disorder of the “Full House” T.V. star Mary-Kate Olsen. Before her family announced that she was going into treatment for having an eating disorder her fans had noticed photos of her with “stick legs and sharp shoulder blades.” People magazine says, “What's most surprising is that, to some fans, those photos weren't alarming, but inspiring. "I admire her," wrote one 19-year-old girl about Mary-Kate's increasingly gaunt appearance on a teen Web site's message board devoted to eating disorders. The girl had cut out the skinniest pictures of Mary-Kate, she wrote, "and pasted them in my journal, because that is what I am striving to look like." The article goes on to say, “Mary-Kate "epitomized the perfect 18-year-old," says Dr. Allyson Cherkasky, clinical director of eating-disorder services at Walden Behavioral Care in Waltham, Mass. "She's very thin and very beautiful and represented having it all." real life situation regarding a very thin celebrity girl to help validate my argument.

People magazine article:

http://0-web.ebscohost.com.janus.uoregon.edu/ehost/detail?vid=7&hid=117&sid=f20e3a9f-7184-440d-985a-34a123cf734b%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JmxvZ2lucGFnZT1sb2dpbi5hc3Amc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d - db=aph&AN=13809743

Article about how girls with eating disorders are getting younger

http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.janus.uoregon.edu/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do

Public Relations

This week we’ve been talking about Public Relations and its effects on public opinion. One issue that certainly caught my eye that I never noticed before was President Bush’s press conference stating that he was going to declare war on Iraq. The entire conference was staged. President Bush knew what questions he was going to get asked by the reporters and how he was going to respond to them, and the reporters knew that President Bush knew the questions they were going to ask. Apparently it was so noitceable that President Bush was saying that “so and so reporter, don’t you have a question for me?” On one side I can see the media acting in this way as not to appear unpatriotic in very turbulent times, but on the other side I don’t necessarily agree with siding with the president on an issue such as going to war with skeptical evidence so willingly.
The Bush Administratoin public relations team knew that President Bush was going to go to war with Iraq no matter what so they knew it was their duty to make sure the media didn’t create a division between the Administration and the publics opinion.
Rodman points out some other times during the war where public relations was used to bolster support for the war. One was the staged-managed cameras at the hospital where Jessica Lynch was released, another was the video of the toppling of the Hussein statue in Baghdad, and another was of President Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in a fighter jet and declaring “Mission Accomplished.”
I know that any powerful and prominent organization, including governments need a public relations team to handle issues that become unpopular or controversial in the publics eye. I’m okay with legally and rightfully exploiting a situation that would otherwise go unnoticed to improve opinion, but I disagree with bending or twisting the truth like “Big Lie’s” or whitewashing. Both of these actions create none or very short term gain and never fully help the issue at hand.

The impact of the Internet

Chapter ten talks about the Internet and how it has evolved over the years. It first started with military roots when President Dwight D. Eisenhower started the ARPA, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, the Internet has grown to become a seemingly endless stream of data and information that people use 24/7. As the Internet has developed and people have realized different ways in which they can exploit the Internet, certain issues and controversies have come up. One such controversy Rodman points out is the issue of Control vs. Freedom.

As of now the Internet is unregulated and people are free to do what they so choose on there. Rodman says that this unlimited freedom of the Internet has caused a number of problems like viruses, fraud, spam, copyright infringement, child pornography, malicious hacker attacks, and identity theft. The Internet also in my opinion offers an overwhelmingly more amount of good things to the average user like offering a plethora of information and knowledge, ease of communication, greater business opportunities, and even a way to date. The question arises though, should the Internet be regulated and/or users be more responsible for their content, or should the Internet remain free of all censorship and regulation?

Being an average or less than average user of the Internet, my best answer to that question is to leave the Internet alone. I believe that the way the Internet is right now does a lot more good than bad. It has grown to global proportions and commands a great deal of respect. With something so grand and so powerful it’s no question that there will be some level of “side effects.” The Internet isn’t perfect, but if you were to take certain freedoms away from even the average Internet user I believe you would find millions and millions of very unhappy and lost individuals because I believe even the average user is heavily dependent on the Internet in their daily lives.

The all powerful music industry

My post is about the video we watched in class today (July 9, 2008) and not about the readings. The video showed how the music industry is actually a huge industry like any other consumer product. I knew that the industry thrived on money to make it run, but I didn’t realize how cut throat it truly is. One of the things that shocked me the most was that most artists receive very little royalties for the albums they make. In the video they said that artists will receive roughly $1 per album sold and the rest would go to the record company. A good example of how the record company’s seemingly “rob” the artists is the story of the group, TLC. They were at the top of the music industry, but they were getting paid so little for their work that they were living with nothing and had to ultimately file for bankruptcy. The artist’s response to this was the emergence of new record labels being developed by artists to avoid such an injustice.
Knowing what I know now I feel that the few major record labels who are owned by larger parent companies need to be broken down so that there can be more competition in the market. I feel there are anti-trust laws that are being violated by these conglomerates because people all around the world are feeling their powerful bite. The artists, the smaller record labels, radio stations are doing what ever these big companies say because they are able to pay the big prices to do it and leverage them just so, to make sure they get what they want out of it.
I think there should be investigations by Congress into these powerhouse company’s to figure out if there are anti-trust laws being broken and if there are taking action by breaking the companies down.

The Impact of Images

At the end of Chapter 5 under the Controversies section I became interested in the heading “The Impact of Images.” It talks about how the images portrayed in magazines of women are not realistic compared to the average person who reads them. I think. I had heard of this problem within the last couple years and I wondered how that changes the perception of the “not so perfect” readers.

In “The Impact of Images” section it talks about how between the “1960’s and the 1990’s images in print media went from being average to 30% thinner than average, which placed many of them in the anorexic stage.” I remember watching the Golden Globes a couple years back and seeing a number of actresses and models deathly skinny and how the commentators were commenting on good they looked. I couldn’t believe they thought they looked good! I was so turned off by it and wondered who on earth would like to look at a woman who is basically just skin and bone.

I feel that recently though women who are in the spotlight are toning it down a little with their excessive weight loss, but that’s just been my perception. For all I know I could be wrong. Nonetheless, as a result of exposing the public to this idea that skinny is always better, they have made the rest of women in America feel their bodies will never be perfect and that they will never be happy with their body. Rodman says, “As fashion magazines continue to promote this unrealistic body size and shape, survey after survey shows that women are increasingly unhappy with their bodies.”

In my opinion I don’t see this “skinny” fad to end anytime soon. Hollywood and the media are still going to promote what they think looks good and what looks good is slender women. They know that’s what every woman wants to ultimately look like and therefore they think that’s what women want to see.

Chapter 1 Reflection

After reading chapter 1, I was interested in the media controversies toward the end of the chapter, specifically the “Ethical Issues Deal with the Morality of Media” section. I feel that over the last ten years or so television, radio and movies have been bending the widely accepted morality rules between what has been traditionally right and wrong. I remember when I was younger the worst language I would hear on T.V. and radio would be “hell.” Now, “damn,” “ass,” “shit,” and even racial slurs are profoundly common on T.V. and radio. The norm back then was to keep kids safe from adult content including language, sex, and violence. As a result I felt kids were growing up relative to their age. These days I feel kids are growing up way too fast because they are constantly being exposed to bad language, sex, nudity and strong violence in video and computer games. Some would say that it should be up to parents to monitor their child’s exposure to contemporary media, but we all know parents can’t be everywhere kids view media. There have been technological advances in child media protection, but it takes very disciplined parents to enforce it all the time. I think U.S. media is getting very greedy when it comes to producing mass media. I feel morality becomes second to making a buck. Putting restrictions on free speech is an issue within itself. Maybe though, a 238-year-old constitution needs to change with the times instead of being constantly pushed to the limits. When does a child’s very impressionable upbringing take precedence over a greedy capitalistic driven country? I feel the people that are producing questionable media know what they are doing is wrong, or at least know they wouldn’t want their children watching some of the media content out there, but the fact that they are getting paid the big bucks drowns out the important issues at hand.