I have bought a Malaysia chinese fashion magazine , ifeel
this post will be discussing how media affects on women body image and behaviour.
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| Image 2 |
Especially for the adolescent girls who are becoming women in the future which this magazine has targeted for. As Erica Laurén Sanders discussed in his research journal, she noted "Adolescent girls have become a prime target because they are new and inexperienced consumers. They are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self-concepts." From that, seems like all the fashion media has targeted on most of the adolescent girls because of their innocent and immature mind set that can be easily affected. Other reason that fashion media targeted to adolescent girls due to their having more time which allowed them to explore more things in fashion than a adult women who's working. Adolescent girls can spend several hours on the fashion media which they can get via internet.
Resource : http://www.kon.org/urc/v8/sanders.html
As we can see that nowadays, adolescent girls or women are getting more and more slim or underweight in order to look "nicer". Their mind are set to the thinnest of the body is equal to the prettiest of the outlook as they always refer to the fashion base media. In the discussion article from Haliza Mohd Riji PhD of his personal view of this issue, he noted "The media plays a significant role in portraying the meaning of beauty through its representation of women. These influences largely influence and alter women’s perceptions of their body image and in trying to meet the goals of beauty as represented by the media. This may result in dissatisfaction with their body image."
In image 2 shows, the thin model is wearing quite like masculine garment, a bit of hip-hop style in order to bring out the feeling of the garment. As Haliza also noted "beauty myths are created through images in magazines, films, and beauty contests; they work in tandem with highly effective marketing of the beauty products and fashion to transmit ideas about how women should look like. " The image 2 will shows that this is how the way of "normal women" wearing of those garment so that to affect women's mind set as this is how the style looks like but with a thin body image. So most of the women who like this wearing style will try their best to reduce their weight which as same as the model in the image 2 in order to express the same feel as they saw in the image.
Besides, in Haliza's article, she found out that 43.3% of female in Kuala Lumpur were attracted to the models in beauty product advertisement. However, nine out of ten of the them said the women in beauty advertisement were portrayed as 'beautiful', while three-quarters thought they were 'young and attractive.
However, women who in order to become looks like the model inside magazine, will cause them eating disorder. Nowadays, women likes to choose to skip their meal to reduce their weight or they choose to have an unbalance diet that will cause unhealthiness on their body. In J.Kevin Thompson article, in his discussion, those magazine advertisements and articles on on personal conceptions of ideal shape and how to obtain it accounted for significant variance in weight management behavior, disordered eating, and drive for thinness in adolescent girls. Women having body dissatisfaction and eating-disordered symptoms because they doesn't have the slender ideal body shape as what has expose in fashion media.
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Other than that , Haliza noticed that both men and women are increasingly becoming unhappy about their body image; the resulting poor self-esteem in many of them lead to a search for cosmetic enhancement. However, female faces are judged to be more attractive if they have delicate jaws, full lips, small noses, high cheekbones, and large eyes. The fashion media plays an important role which some of women they can learn the make up tutorial which provided in media. From that, the media has influence them the way of the make up which can make them more pretty.
However, different media such as advertisement that targeted different customer. For example, those advertisement with fair skin which promoting mask only targeted on asian but not for african. It's because asian people are more focus on how fair and brightness of their skin to looks more pretty. As in a Chinese term we call it "a white cover three ugly" which means that white can cover up all the shortcoming such as the body fatness, the height, the outlook and etc in one women.
In addition, the slimming advertisement only targeted on certain women. This may led to my personal own experience as last time I was working as a part timer to sell out the London Weight Management slimming voucher which only RM10. We, my partner and I were given some flyers to distribute and promote in the same time .It was a hard time that we need to target on the women who above 21 years old and with overweight issues and approached and pursuit them in order to sell out the voucher. However, some of the women who doesn't looks fat but their BMI is under the overweight category were interested to buy the voucher so that they wish to have the treatment to push them under the underweight category in order to achieve their ideal of body image.
In conclusion, most of the fashion media that targeted on the adolescent girl who they are building their own self-concept and easily affected. Most of the women becoming more and more unhealthy due to skipping their meal and unbalance diet in order to keep their body slim to looks more "beautiful" as Haliza noted "people are killing themselves to look beautiful". However, most of the media that only targeted on certain group of women such as the mask for fair skin and the slimming product and so on.
References :
Laurén Sanders, E. (n.d.) Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences. [Online] Available at: http://www.kon.org/urc/v8/sanders.html [Accessed: 9 June 2013].
An article that allow me more understand of what fashion media that targeted on.
Mohd Riji, H. (2006) BEAUTY OR HEALTH? A PERSONAL VIEW. [Online] Available at: http://e-mfp.org/v1n1/pdf/opinion.pdf [Accessed: 9 June 2013].
A very useful article that Haliza argue what the model weather choose to be more beauty but lost their health.
Thompson, J. and J.Heinberg, L. (1999) The Media's Influence on Body Image Disturbance and Eating Disorders: We've Reviled Them, Now Can We Rehabilitate Them?. [Online] Available at: http://jkthompson.myweb.usf.edu/articles/The%20Media's%20Influence%20on%20Body%20Image%20Disturbance.pdf [Accessed: 9 June 2013].
The articles that talks about how the media that influence on women's attitude that affect them eating disorders
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