Identify a topic for your signature assignment and briefly discuss why you want

Question

Identify a topic for your signature assignment and briefly discuss why you want to investigate psychological foundations of the media literacy topic you have chosen (choose from the following): • Body image and advertising • Representation of women in media • Representation of minorities in media • Representation of LGBT in media • Drug use in popular film and its effects on youth • The major issues surrounding political advertising and political campaigns • Effectiveness of fear tactics in editorial advertising • Depiction of violence in sports media and graphic enhancements in print advertising • Ethics in journalism • The relationship between popular music and culture • Social media as a catalyst for change • Another media related topic (where you can include arguments on why it is currently relevant and impacts society) site sources and no plagiarism.

Explanation / Answer

Body Image and Advertising

Body Image:

The body image has many definitions like Cash & Pruzinsky (1990) defined body image as a person’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about their body overall, including appearance, age, race, functions, and sexuality. They guess the body image as multidimensional, consisting of a cognitive and an emotional dimension and this contain beliefs and self-statements about the body. The emotional body image contains the comfortable or uncomfortable experiences of appearance and it is satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the body. The body image is individual experiences and it depends on the individual interprets himself and how a person perceives their body is how they perceive themselves. Banfield and McCabe (2002) concurred that body image is multidimensional, however they identified three aspects: cognitions and affect regarding body, body importance and dieting behavior, and perceptual body image. The cognitive dimension relates to thoughts and beliefs about body shape and the affective dimension includes the feelings that a person has towards their bodies’ appearance.

The second dimension, body importance and dieting behavior, can be described as behaviors associated with grooming and dieting. Women who focus more on their body shape tend to engage in more grooming and dieting behaviors than women who do not focus so much on body shape. The last dimension, perceptual body image can be described as the accuracy an individual has when judging their shape, size and weight. Although researchers agree that body image is multidimensional in construct they do not agree on the amount or nature of the dimensions.

The body images are not static and changeable over time or even in a few moments. Cash and Pruzinsky (1990) found that watching television could change a person’s body image by influencing them to think about their weight, attractiveness, or appearance. Body image is static in the sense that it changes over the life span. Grogan (1999) concluded from several studies that body image is influenced by many factors (family, friends, teacher, peer and society) and person when get older the influences on body image changes and may become stronger or weaker, thus creating flux in body image over the life-span.

The women with a negative body image experience negative feelings about themselves. Cash, Ancis, and Strachan (1997) found that the negative feelings that some women have about their bodies are only minor annoyances, but for other women the negative feelings they have about their body cause great distress that interferes with their everyday life. When a negative body image gets severe, it may contribute to several disorder, including body dimorphic disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. A negative body image could also lead to anxiety, depression, lowered self-esteem, sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction. Cash (1999) concluded that investment in physical appearance comes at a high price - undermined self-worth as the body fails to meet societal standards.

The media influencing society in many ways for the years and it decides what the public sees and how it is portrayed. The women are predominately portrayed in the media as thin, waif-like women, without imperfections and they show the thin women as happy and successful. Some women are affected negatively by constantly being bombarded with this thin ideal. Plastic surgery, drastic dieting, low self-esteem, negative body image and disordered eating are all part of what may happen to women who are constantly in contact with the thin ideal. The media portrayal of women and how this portrayal affects women will be discussed below.

The widespread thin ideal seems that thin women are everywhere in society from tv to magazines to billboards. However, these are not our next-door neighbors, not our friends and family and they are society cannot attainable images of women. They are the stylists models do their make-up and their hair, airbrushed to rid themselves of imperfections, posed to look sexy and they are the images of the media. The women mostly cannot live up to these images because not everyone has make-up artists and stylists living with them, they cannot always hide their imperfections, and they do not normally pose themselves in the ways that the media poses their models.

Advertising:

In the modern democratic society the mass media have an important role, as the primary channel of communication and specifically advertising is a main source of information to people and we are unaware of how much we are exposed to advertising. It is able to subliminally filter through ideas about how identities are constructed within society. The advertising has received consequently much importance and recognition in any society. While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without its social costs. The advertising detractors accuse an array of sins ranging from an economic waste to promotion of harmful products, from sexism to deceit and manipulation, from triviality to intellectual and moral pollution.

The advertising targeted men and women according to social beliefs and attitudes and physical appearance is important in both males and females, beauty is generally defined as peculiarly a feminine attribute and according to Ivy & Backlund, (2004) preoccupation with one’s appearance is seen as part of the feminine stereotype. The advertisements have a negative impact on women than men, as women appear more emotional and unconfident in contrast to men. The point of concern to be noticed about women's appearance in commercials is that the advertisements focus mainly on beauty and body features of the model, and less on the product and they give emphasis to the physical attractiveness of woman.

References:

Body image and the media: the media’s influence on body image by Julie M. Sparhawk

Advertisement pressure and its impact on body dissatisfaction and body image perception of women in India by Dr. Sasi Rekha V

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