Social Media Effects on Our Body

Have you ever considered the possibility of yourself being affected by the media? Or ever caught yourself staring in the mirror, looking at your body, or maybe pointing out that extra fat you have, wishing you could be thinner, leaner, fitter? Or maybe, wishing you could have the body of that bikini model you follow?

Social media is a tricky concept that we tend not to realize very often. In a world that is driven by technology, social media is now a huge part of our lives that we feel the need to check every single second.

Whether it is for the purpose of following daily news, trends or just checking our favorite celebrity, social media wields transformative power that is capable of driving substantial change on the body image as the amount of time we spend on the media is influencing us, we eventually get desensitized to the effects of it to a point where we want to be the people we constantly see on the media.

Moreover, in the history of body image, where before the 1960s, there was no television and movies. However, throughout the 70s and 80s, when people were introduced to television, western culture’s nurturing and the feminine female look was replaced with a slim figure, which led starvation diets to become increasingly popular. Although during the 21st century the concept of being thin shifted slightly to having different shapes and sizes, the media was still influencing the ideal women as something that could be very unrealistic for a variety of women to have.

Bratz Dolls, for instance, represent how the media throughout the history changes the idealization of a perfect body and are the sole proof that how on such shows intense weight loss is normalized, and the portrayal of attendant medical and health risks are minimized.

In this quotation, Burgerion and Clydesdale attempt to illustrate the effects media ultimately causes. By focusing specifically on the dolls’ features and using adjectives such as ‘disproportionally large’ and ‘abnormally small’ Burgerion and Clydesdale successfully convince the readers that media uses Bratz Dolls to serve an unrealistic body and face structure, which, as a result, affect many girls around the world and lead them to despise their body.

Therefore, even though the effects of the campaign are not as bad as what other influencers cause, Dove is only using these women to increase its sales, knowing if they encourage women to love their body by using a woman with a similar size that they have, audiences will eventually relate to that woman and get inspired, as they will be seeing her and thinking that if that woman feel good and beautiful in her own skin, it must be because of Dove products. Dove encourages her, it makes her more beautiful even though she doesn’t have the typical fit and lean body that other models have.

As a result, the audiences will be leaning towards Dove more and more, in order to feel the same way. Like I said, social media, after all, is a very tricky concept.

In this quotation, Coles attempts to make the readers rethink about the way people react to a picture they see on the media, pushes them to realize that being affected by the media is ultimately a choice, a personal responsibility. Unlike what the article the Body Image & the media: An overview focuses on, Coles claims that people have the power to reject being influenced by the media.

For example, Coles refers to parents who let their daughters get breast implants, rather than addressing sending them to a therapy to ‘address self-esteem issues’. While his language is convincing Coles is also problematic in this example due to a lack of explanation of how ‘vulnerability’ leads to body dissatisfaction as there is no further proof that being vulnerable is the only reason to be influenced by the media. On the contrary, despite what Coles claims — ‘Studies show no consistent correlation between media images and a sense of self’, Burgerion and Clydesdale’s (2016) references can be confirmed by many. Therefore, Coles fails to provide widely-explained examples to readers to emphasize what he is supporting. Although his language is strong and his point of view sheds insight on totally a different perspective of this topic, his use of technique is insufficient and not successfully persuasive.

My personal opinion on this whole topic is that, despite what Coles claims, which is the fact that we have the power to reject getting influenced by the media, the truth is…Yes, we actually do have the power to reject. However, that’s not the point. The main point is that we could very well be aware of the negative effects that social media cause. But we still get into that comparison state of mind. We still have that ideal body image on our mind. We still look at ourselves in the mirror thinking what could be done to change our appearance, and yes…we still feel guilty when we eat something unhealthy. And that’s the result of getting desensitized to the effects of the media itself, and it’s, after all, something that media does to make us feel not good enough.

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