The Question and the Research: What We Found

In attempting to answer such a question, how modern media advertising affects female adolescents' body image, my research turned to four major scholarly articles, dissertations, and theses.

The first of these resources is a thesis published in 2006 by Meghan M. Gillen from Penn State University entitled Body Image Development in Emerging Adulthood. This resource, comprised of three papers, takes a "developmental approach" (p. iii) to body image in adolescence. It examines data drawn from the Gender & HIV Study, a longitudinal study of college students, looking first at body size perceptions, then at responses to open-ended questions on participants' "perceptions of messages about physical appearance" (p. iii), with the third component taking a longitudinal view of body image development throughout the college years. Specific to the media, the thesis develops its argument upon the notion that through the advertising of "unrealistic" ideals of beauty, the media "imparts harmful messages about physical appearance" (p. 67). Gillen cites Lakoff and Scherr (1984), writing that the thin ideal presented in the media, while it is not realistic for most women to achieve, has become the image that most people associate with real-world beauty and body appearance. Thus, citing Field et al. (1999), Tiggemann, Gardiner & Slater (2000), Gillen explains that many female adolescents are then prompted to "strive for the thin ideal" (p. 67), based on what they are exposed to in the media. It is concluded that increased exposure to media that consistently portrays these unrealistic ideals of beauty and physical appearance is associated with negative reports on body image from adolescent females, especially in young women, as Gillen writes citing Durkin & Paxton (2002) and Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, & Stein (1994), with "higher BMI, those vulnerable to social comparison tendency, internalization of the thin ideal, and body dissatisfaction" (p. 68). Overall, I wasn't surprised at all by the information revealed by Gillen's writing, but it does seem to imply that as the media and its advertisements endorse ideals of beauty and physical appearance, female adolescents are extremely vulnerable to negative views of their own body image, thus becoming a concern when considering adolescents' health, as well as physical and emotional well-being.

The second of these sources is a dissertation written in 2007 by Jennifer Alice Wilcox from Ohio State University called Toward an Understanding of  Resilience to Disordered Eating and Body Image Dissatisfaction Among African American Women: An Analysis of the Roles of Ethnic and Feminist Identities. In her thesis, Wilcox analyzes eating disorders and their symptoms in addition to levels of body dissatisfaction among African American college students. She found that high levels of ethnogender discrimination predicted symptoms of eating disorders, but lower levels of body dissatisfaction. She also concluded that higher levels of ethnic and feminine identities predicted lower levels of body dissatisfaction, but could not predict lower levels of symptoms of eating disorders. From her writing, it is clear that the implications of body image and body dissatisfaction on eating disorders are well established, and that media advertisements that boast, even if unintended, discriminatory ideals could produce symptoms of eating disorders in many female adolescents, and thus adverse effects on body image and health. It seems also important to highlight the effect of identity on body image/body dissatisfaction, that a common feminine or ethnic identity can prevent or combat negative body image, which would then imply a possible remedy to some of the media's adverse effects.

Thirdly, I examined a dissertation, Articulations of Desire and the Politics of Contradiction: Magazine Advertising, Television Fandom, and Female Gender Identity Dissonance, written by Sarah Benjamin Crymble in 2009 for the University of Michigan. In her writing, Crymble examines the "link between mediated representations of feminine contradiction and the manner in which women develop, organize, and manage personal identity" (p. xi) through the theory of identity dissonance. She engages examination of how identity dissonance has penetrated the world of media advertising, looking specifically at magazine ads, revealing three major dissonances: Madonna-Whore, Masculine-Feminine, and Singlehood-Couplehood. Crymble concludes that a historical analysis illuminates how media advertising, particular in magazines, reinforces "problematic gender norms" (p. 44) and how such media can frame the development of the female identity, a part of such an identity being body image. Crymble's research implies the significance of media in forming the female identity and the significance of viewers' polarizing thoughts into an 'us versus them' philosophy. This all points to the possible adverse effects of media advertising on female adolescents body image as such polarizing thoughts can separate notions of identities, including one's body image, making what adolescents think they 'should' be and who they actually are drift farther and farther apart.

The fourth resource that I examined was a thesis written by Nancy Jo Nentl in 1998 for the University of Minnesota entitled Media Cultivation: The Impact of the Media on Beliefs and Attitudes About Beauty. Throughout her dissertation, Nentl examines how the concept of beauty is cultivated, how exposure to cultural representations of beauty in the media can foster certain ideals in the masses. She comments on how "contemporary women barraged with thousands of images in the media that display a narrowly-defined ideal standard of beauty..." (p. 9). Citing Boskind-White & White (1983), Nentl highlights the themes commonly associated with women in magazine ads: sexy, subordinate, seductive, and competitive with other women (p. 11). She then cites a content analysis that revealed "the cultural standard body form presented in the media is 15% below safe weight standards" (p. 12). Like the first thesis mentioned, Nentl writes how unrealistic cultural standards of beauty and body image portrayed in media advertising can become the ideals that the masses aspire to and can be partially blamed for society's "fixation" (p. 13) on beauty. Nentl's research again implies the significance of media advertising and the portrayals of body image and beauty that it presents. It seems crucial then to note that with the media's prevalence in society, body image in female adolescents may be what suffers as profits and the media's influence prosper.

The Research: What, Why, and How

Communication- it plays a vital role in every aspect of our every-day lives. One avenue of communication is modern day advertising, whether that be through television, magazines, newspapers, the radio, or the internet. The presentation of advertisements and the people that populate them have major influence over the way that many of us look at ourselves and the world that we live in. One demographic at risk of negative influence is adolescents, especially female adolescents. It seems crucial to critically examine such advertisements and their effects, using scholarly articles, studies, journal articles, etc., to ask ourselves: How does modern media advertising and the stereotypes that it presents affect female adolescents' body image? In our bustling society and its concern with health, it seems necessary to examine what effects advertising might have on teens, which many of these ads are directed towards, especially when ads compound stereotypes to sell a product. Many modern resources have become available to parents and teens to understand the media and its ramifications when it comes to a healthy body image. With many young females suffering from self-abuse, eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression, and many other serious maladies, such a question and the following research might just reveal that simple advertising is more complex than it appears.  

An advertisement such as this can very often be seen  in our society's media environment: it showcases a  bronzed, toned, and beautiful girl in a position of subservience to a man. The advertisement is for Skyy Vodka, and the subjects appear glamorous, possibly having an extreme effect on adolescents and body image. 

Welcome

Welcome to my blog for Communications 111 at the University of Michigan!