Body images is how you see yourself. It’s what you believe about your appearance. Body image is how you feel about yourself. How you feel about your height, the shape of your body, and your weight. And it’s how you feel in your body. There are negative and positive body images. Some people can look at social media post and not feel any different about themselves. This is then known as positive body image. But other girls and guys are less fortunate when it comes to seeing a model on the internet.
A lot of them will then develop an eating disorder, they can suffer from depression, and sometimes they will change the way their body looks so they fit the world’s idea of “perfect”. Self-image discrepancies show up when individuals have conflict with their beliefs about their personal characteristics and that person dreams about having. The characteristics the person wants then leads to them having self-doubt, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and can then lead to them committing suicide. These are the negative effects of social media and body image.
There are also positive affects as well. These are when a young teen can look at a photo of a model for one of their favorite companies and not wish to be like them. These people love the way they are and that’s a very positive thing. Both are very real and both have very big impact on a person’s life even if they don’t want it to. Many people that struggle to be comfortable with who they are will tend to hide it. They will pretend they love the way the look in their clothes, say they are happy with their weight, and they won’t complain about their height.
This is where depression comes into play. Teens will stop eating to lose weight to fit the image they see and once they reach their goal, it’s already too late. They now will suffer with an eating disorders. Which then causes more stress for the human body. The more stress the body is under the more tired it becomes. It also shrinks their stomach, making it so they don’t have to eat as much to be full. Some teens will overeat because the food they eat brings them joy. Depression causes many of these teens to end up in therapy session, or to take medication (Heron 1).
People who have conflict with their height will see themselves as either too tall or too short. The person will find alternate ways to make them seem taller, like by where shoes that have a higher platform. The roles can also be reversed. Teens will where shoes that don’t have very tall platforms so they seem an average height, because they already think they’re too tall. They can also struggle with their weight by saying they’re too fat or too skinny. People that think they’re heavier weight will wear baggy clothes so it doesn’t draw attention to their imperfections.
These people will then have conflicts with the shape of their body. People who have a harder time losing weight will think they don’t look good because they have more defined curves, but a skinner person, on the other hand, will think they look like a pencil walking down the street because they have no curves at all. Both body shapes can envy what the other one has, and dream to have the ‘thickness of the other’s thighs (Heron 2). Young teens can suffer from eating disorders from developing a problem with their body image.
This then causes the teens to not eat enough or eat too much. Eating disorders play a big role in the body image discrepancies because the person will think they are too fat so they stop eating. This then cause the stomach to shrink and more stress will be put on the human body. Situation roles can also be reversed in this situation as well. The person can think they are too skinny so they eat enough to feed a family of four. They can gain up to one hundred pounds or more (Dittmar 1) Young teens can then also suffer with depression.
Males and females, both, can have issues with this by seeing models that they want to look like. This all becomes an issue when people begin to think that they can never look that way, but in reality they already do. Many of these people will find themselves stuck in a place of mind full of negative thoughts. Teens will continue to stay up at night wondering why they aren’t enough to fit in with the rest of the people they go to school with. Many things can trigger them into getting depressed.
They can already have a conflict with how they look and can be bullied for it or they can have it be an issue all of their life (Dittmar 3) Another thing that plays a part of this major problem, is social media. Teens and sometimes littler kids are exposed to the images that are being posted by these companies for major companies, like Victoria secret and Hollister. Images being posted by these companies make younger girls feel bad about themselves because once again they don’t match the world’s ideal image. Another thing seen on social media, is many swim suit companies that post pictures of their models.
These then make girls hate the way the look because many of the models are around their age, but they look nothing alike. Males can see male swimsuit models, and begin to have the same conflict with their body image (Halliwell 4) Like I said before models for big companies like Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein, Hollister, and many other clothing brands have models that are “perfect”. The girls are skinny and have a toned body. The men have a very muscular body and they are in great shape. These make people feel terrible about themselves because this is what people consider perfect.
Victoria’s secret considers some of their bigger models plus size, when they only weigh around 125 pounds. That is the weight on an average teen girl. Calvin Klein does not have a plus sized model that is actually over 200 pounds. Their models are only around the weight of 100 to 150 pounds. The average weight of a plus sized person is 160 pounds or more. These models have ruined the lives of many youModels have a huge effect on teenage girls and younger adults (Stirling 4) Models in magazines and some articles can also have an effect on teens and adults.
Seeing these in certain articles about their favorite things can also have bring down a girl’s self-esteem. Articles about procedures to remove fat or diets can be another reason that girls struggle so bad with the way they look. Having fat removed from certain parts of your body can cause problems and can have complications during the procedure. Liposuction can be very helpful but can also cause problems like your skin can become bumpy or wavy, there can be poor skin elasticity, and unusual healing because of uneven fat removal.
These then cause more self-doubt with the patient. They can eventually end up having another surgery to help fix the way their skin looks, which can cause more self-doubt if things go wrong. Another article that can affect them is an article on diet pills or certain diets they have tried that don’t work for them. This then makes that person feel like they didn’t eat right while they were on the diet and sometimes they will eventually starve themselves to get the results they want (Smyth 4) Many people think that body image isn’t a very big problem.
Some will even say these problems are genetic, and are passed down through your parents’ traits and past generations. They can also say that teens can suffer from depression from other issues instead of the conflict they have with the way they look. They might say that teens already have an eating disorder, but most conflicts come from having an issue with the way you look. Teens develop issues with their inner images of themselves because of these things. People get bullied for the way the look causing them to have self-doubt.
Teens can then suffer from an eating disorder because of being bullied because they are too fat to fit in. People starve themselves because of the things other peers will say about the shape of their body, or their weight. Some people even end up committing suicide because that’s what they think the solution is. But it’s not. Society can put an end to this. Companies can add plus size models to their program to help control the problem. Magazines can have more articles about how diet pills don’t work for the people who don’t get results the pills say they e.
Articles can show all the problems with removing fatty tissue instead of just having the good sides to the procedure (Smyth 5). In conclusion, body image is a very big problem around the world. Body image starts in many different ways like bullying, seeing models, reading magazine articles about liposuction and diets. These are all every real, and all take a different effect on the person. Some will develop an eating disorder, some may have depression, and some may even end their life because of it, but it can be fixed. Society just needs a new ideal image to fit “perfect”.
