My research paper was based on negative body image. I focused on mostly teenagers, but throughout the whole essay I talk about adults too. I focused on the many factors that cause body dissatisfaction.
Thesis: Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
Thesis: Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
Draft #1
Melissa Serrano
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 14, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view about your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day.” (Shaun Dreisbach). Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day. (Hayley Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images. (D'Arcy Lyness, PhD). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors. (Greta Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising. (Greta Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being BDD (Body Image Dissatisfaction). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television. (Nutsa Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is wrong and it needs to be changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is having cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016. (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics).
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men. (Gina Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women. (Andy Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to. (Deborah Teasley).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Liza Darwin).”
It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states. Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015, kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/48157/PDF/1/play/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture. vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws.
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011, www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017, www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016, www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016, www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine, advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 14, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view about your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day.” (Shaun Dreisbach). Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day. (Hayley Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images. (D'Arcy Lyness, PhD). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors. (Greta Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising. (Greta Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being BDD (Body Image Dissatisfaction). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television. (Nutsa Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is wrong and it needs to be changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is having cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016. (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics).
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men. (Gina Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women. (Andy Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to. (Deborah Teasley).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Liza Darwin).”
It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states. Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015, kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/48157/PDF/1/play/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture. vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws.
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011, www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017, www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016, www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016, www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine, advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Draft #2
Melissa Serrano
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 19, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day (Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors (Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising (Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult. It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others. This isolation can happen during school, with friends, and with family. Social media is one of the biggest leading causes of negative body image since it causes comparisons between people that can lead to dangerous activities.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is not beautiful enough and it needs to be altered or changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics). This shows how much the idea of beauty can affect people. It affects them so much, to the point that they pay hundreds of dollars in order to change the way they look to feel comfortable in their own skin. Western beauty standards raise and create unrealistic expectations that affect other people of other races in many ways.
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women (Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to (Teasley). The male gaze challenges women in a few ways. One of them being making it hard to accept their beauty the way they are. It also challenges men in a couple of ways. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image. “Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. (Rachel Simmons).” Social media does not improve a teenagers self esteem, it lowers it and causes problems in the long run.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states, which leads to many dangerous exercises which then lead to eating disorders and many deaths. There are about 30 million deaths each year caused by eating disorders in the United States (Your Future is Worth Fighting For). Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015,
kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017,
www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016,
www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016,
www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com,
study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine,
advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017,
www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Vassar, Gerry. “How Body Image Affects A Child's Development – Lakeside.” Lakeside, 26 Apr. 2012,
lakesidelink.com/blog/lakeside/how-body-image-affects-a-childs-development/.
“Eating Disorder Statistics • National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders,
www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Simmons, Rachel. “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror.” Time, Time, 19 Aug. 2016,
time.com/4459153/social-media-body-image/.
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 19, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day (Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors (Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising (Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult. It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others. This isolation can happen during school, with friends, and with family. Social media is one of the biggest leading causes of negative body image since it causes comparisons between people that can lead to dangerous activities.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is not beautiful enough and it needs to be altered or changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics). This shows how much the idea of beauty can affect people. It affects them so much, to the point that they pay hundreds of dollars in order to change the way they look to feel comfortable in their own skin. Western beauty standards raise and create unrealistic expectations that affect other people of other races in many ways.
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women (Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to (Teasley). The male gaze challenges women in a few ways. One of them being making it hard to accept their beauty the way they are. It also challenges men in a couple of ways. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image. “Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. (Rachel Simmons).” Social media does not improve a teenagers self esteem, it lowers it and causes problems in the long run.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states, which leads to many dangerous exercises which then lead to eating disorders and many deaths. There are about 30 million deaths each year caused by eating disorders in the United States (Your Future is Worth Fighting For). Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015,
kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017,
www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016,
www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016,
www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com,
study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine,
advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017,
www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Vassar, Gerry. “How Body Image Affects A Child's Development – Lakeside.” Lakeside, 26 Apr. 2012,
lakesidelink.com/blog/lakeside/how-body-image-affects-a-childs-development/.
“Eating Disorder Statistics • National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders,
www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Simmons, Rachel. “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror.” Time, Time, 19 Aug. 2016,
time.com/4459153/social-media-body-image/.
Final Draft
Melissa Serrano
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 19, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day (Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors (Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising (Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult. It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others. This isolation can happen during school, with friends, and with family. Social media is one of the biggest leading causes of negative body image since it causes comparisons between people that can lead to dangerous activities.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is not beautiful enough and it needs to be altered or changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics). This shows how much the idea of beauty can affect people. It affects them so much, to the point that they pay hundreds of dollars in order to change the way they look to feel comfortable in their own skin. Western beauty standards raise and create unrealistic expectations that affect other people of other races in many ways.
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women (Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to (Teasley). The male gaze challenges women in a few ways. One of them being making it hard to accept their beauty the way they are. It also challenges men in a couple of ways. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image. “Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. (Rachel Simmons).” Social media does not improve a teenagers self esteem, it lowers it and causes problems in the long run.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states, which leads to many dangerous exercises which then lead to eating disorders and many deaths. There are about 30 million deaths each year caused by eating disorders in the United States (Your Future is Worth Fighting For). Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015,
kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017,
www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016,
www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016,
www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com,
study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine,
advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017,
www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Vassar, Gerry. “How Body Image Affects A Child's Development – Lakeside.” Lakeside, 26 Apr. 2012,
lakesidelink.com/blog/lakeside/how-body-image-affects-a-childs-development/.
“Eating Disorder Statistics • National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders,
www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Simmons, Rachel. “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror.” Time, Time, 19 Aug. 2016,
time.com/4459153/social-media-body-image/.
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
March 19, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. It can also be very hard for you to realize how your own body image is being affected in a negative way. Body image is the mental picture you have of yourself, it can be either good or bad, even though most of the time, it’s negative. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Thirteen negative thoughts a day may not sound like much, but in reality, it is. Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Teenagers also use social media for about six hours a day (Tsukayama). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. One of them being having struggles with body image. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online. We admire people online and create unrealistic expectations to how we want to look. These comparisons and expectations then lead to very dangerous behaviors (Moy). These behaviors can be extreme dieting, using harmful substances, and extreme exercising (Moy). Since all of this is happening as teens, comparisons and dangerous behaviors can be very harmful while developing from a teen to an adult. It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others. This isolation can happen during school, with friends, and with family. Social media is one of the biggest leading causes of negative body image since it causes comparisons between people that can lead to dangerous activities.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. The United States is made up of many races, but we’re only being exposed to the beauty of one race. Western beauty standards is the idea that being tall, skinny, and white is more beautiful than any other body type and shape. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). We’re exposed to only a certain body shape and skin color, that we feel like the way we look is not beautiful enough and it needs to be altered or changed in order to be considered beautiful. Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics). This shows how much the idea of beauty can affect people. It affects them so much, to the point that they pay hundreds of dollars in order to change the way they look to feel comfortable in their own skin. Western beauty standards raise and create unrealistic expectations that affect other people of other races in many ways.
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This can lead to the idea that men are more powerful than women (Simmons). Basically, the male gaze empowers men and objectifies women. This leads to also unrealistic and high expectations for women. Women are very sexualized, therefore women are expected to have a perfect body. In magazines, there are images of celebrities. These images are heavily edited, and when a man looks at it, they now will compare the body of the average women, to a very skinny, tall, and blonde one. In movies, women are also portrayed as objects. Again, this creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the model or celebrity. Now, there is not only a worry to look like the people we idolize in movies, online, and in magazines, but to also to try to look the way that men want us to (Teasley). The male gaze challenges women in a few ways. One of them being making it hard to accept their beauty the way they are. It also challenges men in a couple of ways. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. Sure, this is true, but it ruins their confidence with their body because they start to compare to how others look. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image. “Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. (Rachel Simmons).” Social media does not improve a teenagers self esteem, it lowers it and causes problems in the long run.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states, which leads to many dangerous exercises which then lead to eating disorders and many deaths. There are about 30 million deaths each year caused by eating disorders in the United States (Your Future is Worth Fighting For). Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Works Cited
“Body Image and Self-Esteem.” Edited by D'Arcy Lyness, KidsHealth, The Nemours Foundation, July 2015,
kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html.
“Body Image Statistics.” Statistic Brain, 19 Feb. 2017,
www.statisticbrain.com/body-image-statistics/.
Pontero , Diane. Resisting the Male Gaze: Feminist Responses to the "Normatization" of the Female Body in Western Culture.
http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1844&context=jiws
News, CBS. “Survey: 97 Percent of Women Have Negative Body Image.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 2 Mar. 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/news/survey-97-percent-of-women-have-negative-body-image/.
Dreisbach, Shaun. “Shocking Body-Image News: 97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016,
www.glamour.com/story/shocking-body-image-news-97-percent-of-women-will-be-cruel-to-their-bodies-today.
Voelker, Dana K, et al. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, Dove Medical Press, 2015
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4554432/.
Health, Office of Adolescent. “February 2016: Teens' Social Media Use.” HHS.gov, US Department of Health and Human Services, 13 May 2016,
www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/news/e-updates/february-2016-teens-social-media-use/index.html.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?utm_term=.80447718d7af.
Teasley, Deborah. “The Male Gaze: Definition & Theory.” Study.com, Study.com,
study.com/academy/lesson/the-male-gaze-definition-theory.html.
Darwin, Liza. “How Social Media Can Boost Your Confidence.” Shine,
advice.shinetext.com/articles/how-social-media-can-boost-your-confidence/.
“How Social Media Affects Us Positively.” The Odyssey Online, 27 Aug. 2017,
www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-affects-positively.
Vassar, Gerry. “How Body Image Affects A Child's Development – Lakeside.” Lakeside, 26 Apr. 2012,
lakesidelink.com/blog/lakeside/how-body-image-affects-a-childs-development/.
“Eating Disorder Statistics • National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders,
www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Simmons, Rachel. “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror.” Time, Time, 19 Aug. 2016,
time.com/4459153/social-media-body-image/.
Condensed paper
Melissa Serrano
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
April 13, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online (Moy). It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics).
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the celebrity. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states. Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.
Hood-Esparza
Humanities
POD 1
April 13, 2018
Negative Body Image is Influenced by Many Factors
The way you view your body is influenced by many factors, some of them so small, you might not even notice them. “Our research found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily—nearly one for every waking hour. And a disturbing number of women confess to having 35, 50 or even 100 hateful thoughts about their own shapes each day (Dreisbach).” Negative body image is very prominent in American society today because social media creates unrealistic expectations, we’re only exposed to western beauty standards, and men perpetuate the idea of how women should look.
About 94 percent of teens use social media, and 71 percent say they use more than one social media site (Office of Adolescent Health). Spending this much time on the internet can lead to many things. As teenagers, we start to pay more attention and have a bigger interest to celebrities and how they look in certain images (Lyness). This new interest leads to unhealthy comparisons to other people online (Moy). It can be dangerous because it affects the child’s social competence (Vassar). For example, if the child has a very low body image, it is most likely that they will not socialize with others.
Being exposed to mainly western beauty standards makes it very difficult to accept different ideas of beauty. Being exposed to only one idea of what beautiful looks like can cause many problems. One of them being Body Image Dissatisfaction (BDD). This happens because there is a pressure to look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, social media, and on television (Melitauri). Again, this can lead to dangerous exercises. One of the biggest ones is going through cosmetic surgery to change or alter the way you look. Forty percent of women state that they would consider cosmetic surgery in the future and nearly 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2016 (Statistic Brain, Body Image Statistics).
The idea of “the male gaze” originally came from Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze was a term used to explain the idea of looking at women as objects for the pleasure of men (Miller). This creates a very high standard for women to look and act a certain way. When women look at these movies and magazines, there is a very high chance that there will be a comparison between themselves and the celebrity. It challenges men to accept women as human beings, not as sexual objects, and to accept that men are not more powerful than women in any way (Mulvey).
People believe that social media helps in improving their self esteem because they get a chance to feel important and relatable with others. “We've all been taught this mentality of comparison, especially when it comes to our looks, so when all we see around us are Photoshopped, unattainable 'ideal' bodies, our self esteem is doomed. (Darwin).” At first, there is a sense of relatability, but that stops once models and other very airbrushed images come up in their timeline. A teen/adult can feel important at the start of their social media usage, but it soon goes downhill, causing a negative body image.
An unhealthy and negative body image is influenced by many factors. It is clear that negative body image is a very common problem in the United states. Unhealthy body image and low self-esteem are created by the expectations that social media creates, by the influence of western beauty standards, and the objectification of women created by the male gaze.