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
Pregnancy in the media
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Question: Does the media glorify teen pregnancy?
Thesis: The media portrays pregnancy unrealistically, thus negatively
affecting teenagers and their likelih...
17 years ago
2 comments:
Thin femal celebrities does cause some eatin disorder cases becahse they are super skinny and even the celebrities themselves are doing the same. It is hard to say that audience are folloing their inapporpriate diet behavior, but for sure, the first thing comes into girl's brain when the want to lose weight is "to eat less". The standard of a "beautiful sexy girl" has changed over decade. Slender body with big boobs is the trend now, but people don't notice that models are chosen 1 out of thousand of normal people.
I enjoyed reading your blog, I think that this is a very serious issue in society and young females are such a huge target for the eatting disorder problem. Young woman are so vulnerable, they are so easily influenced by everything around them. Not only are their role models showing them a very skinny image, but the toys they play with at a very young age portray the same body image. Take Barbie for example, if a girl really had the body type of Barbie she would break in half. Young woman are surrounded by this stereotype their whole lives, I think that celebrities and role models really do have a pretty large role to play when it comes to eating disorders among girls. But I cant ever really blame the actual celebrities, because they are trying to portray a certain image to please the public and be successful in their career.. Great research topic!
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