Shriveled yellow-skin barely clinging to bones, spines protruding from a slender back, a face aged beyond recognition, a girl looking in the mirror repeating the words "I’m too fat." Such are the images of young girls that are often highlighted in primetime dateline programs on eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2004), it is estimated that in America an average of 10 out of 100 young women suffer from some type of eating disorder (p.1). Just factoring in Anorexia this translates to about 7 to 10 million women a year (Haycock, 2000, p.1). Moreover, while more women than men are documented to have eating disorders, new research by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa has reported that more than one million men suffer from anorexia on an annual basis (Haycock, 2000, p.1).
In country where the entertainment media constantly bombards its audience with size zero models and anorexic actress like Nicole Richie and Marie Kate Olson, it is not surprising, yet still disheartening, that the number of young people who suffer from an eating disorder is so high. Men and women, especially adolescents, grow-up with distorted views of what constitutes a healthy body weight. For one, some women strive hard to achieve what has become known as the ideal body measurements of 36-24-36-an unrealistic Barbie-sized proportion where women have large size 10 busts, a small size 0 waist and large size 4 hips (Lynn, 2003, p.1 ). Such a body proportion is far off from what a healthy body should look like. Likewise, some men feel pressured to reaffirm their masculinity and work hard to build the perfect abs and muscles that male models have in magazines, at times falling in the trap of steroid use. Not to mention, young boys grow-up playing with muscularly built action heroes like the Hulk or G.I. Joe, further reinforcing the notions that a strong man is a muscular man. In essence, our opinions about ideal body images are constantly molded by others perceptions, especially the media.
Consequently, since most media advertisements have adversely contributed to the creation of unrealistic body image ideals, this paper will investigate how American teenagers mold their body image views and how it affects their life, but it will do so through the lenses of inner-city kids. Most research, has concentrated on the American population as a whole or teenagers in general, but it is as equally important to examine how young adolescents in high-crime, inner city schools view their body and how it affects their self-esteem. Already, numerous studies have revealed the large impact that the media has had on body image ideals, but what other factors are at play and who else is influencing America’s youth? Is the family actually more important at reinforcing body image ideals than the media? Such are the questions I ventured on to investigate and attempt to answer in my first-hand research study conducted at a Los Angeles inner-city school.
Methodology
To conduct research into body image ideals, I administered, through the help of my sister who is a teacher, 34 in-depth surveys to teenagers ages 14 through 16 at a Los Angeles inner-city school. Participation into the study was strictly voluntary and participants were told that it was part of a continuing study on body perception. The survey was composed of 15 questions that covered a wide range of open-ended questions including: self-analysis of body weight, the importance of body image, satisfaction/dissatisfaction with one’s body weight, the importance of body image in the selection of one’s partner, male/female preoccupation with body weight, media and the body, and other related questions all of which will be discussed in greater detail in the results section.
The questions were designed to allow the participants to reflect on their body perceptions as well as to denote where their perceptions of ideal body weight were coming from and how important an ideal body image is to them. The survey also stressed the importance of reflecting on whether women and men face different challenges in terms of body weight and how each sex perceives the importance of body weight with reference to the other.
Besides the open-ended questions, the survey also contained a set of 16 pictures, half with male and half with female pictures all of varying weight, which the participants were asked to label as extremely overweight, overweight, slightly overweight, healthy weight, slightly underweight, underweight and extremely underweight. Participants were then asked to place a 1 next to the body image pictures they found attractive and a 2 next to the body images they found unattractive. The purposes of the pictures was to see whether male and females have different perceptions of body weight and how each perceive what is considered attractive or unattractive.
After all surveys were administered and completed, each question was quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed for its content and in comparison with the other sexes’ answer.
Results
The overwhelming numbers of women who suffer from an eating disorder opposed to men already reveal the feminine preoccupation with maintaining an ideal weight. Thus, the study asked participants if they had ever or if they currently suffer from an eating disorder. To offer a point of comparison, 43% of girls responded affirmatively to the answer while 80% of boys responded they had never had an eating disorder. Such results highlight that females experience greater pressure to fit a certain body ideal than do males. The common reply these participants offered for suffering from an eating disorder was that they wanted to be skinny, "hot-looking," and felt to fat compared to others. These "others" as the paper will later reveal is usually models, friends, or family members. Sadly, young girls fall into the trap of harming their bodies only to feel attractive to others.
Female fixation on body image is further revealed through the results of the next question which asked participants how they felt about their current weight and how satisfied or dissatisfied they were about it. While 65% of young girls expressed dissatisfaction about their weight at every level from the desire to loose more weight to feeling too fat, only 30% of young boys reported similar symptoms of concern. Most males felt completely satisfied with their weight. The general female respond to feeling dissatisfied with their weight, over 50% dissatisfied compared to 20% for males, was that they perceived themselves as overweight compared to their friends, family or models. As I administered the surveys, by no means did fifty percent of the girls qualified as overweight, yet they ardently believed this. Already, the female participants in the study were demonstrating that their notions of healthy body weight are distorted by outside influences.
As reiterated throughout the paper, the media plays a key role in molding body image ideals through the depiction of perfectly sized female models and muscularly-toned male models. Models stand as idealistic, unrealistic depictions of what constitutes a healthy weight. Hence, participants were asked whether they thought media images affected their own body perceptions and from where they primarily got their perceived notions of body image. In reference to the media image question, 60% of females and 30% of males thought the media did influence their own body image notions. Through a gendered lens, this means that twice as many women as men are affected by media portrayal of overtly skinny models; therefore, the media is partly at fault for women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies. These young girls feel that until their bodies closely resemble that of models they have not arrived at the ideal body size. As one respondent adequately put it, "Well, when I see women in t.v. that have nice bodies, I think to myself I wish I had that body." In essence, the bodies of these models become an outlet of veneration and a desirable goal.
The other strong source of influence that potentially has as a significant impact on both sexes’ body image ideals as the media is family and friends. Approximately 73% of females stated that their parents and friends were a major source of influence in reference to their bodies. Interestingly, this reveals that while the media may shape our body perceptions, our immediate acquaintances are the ones reinforcing false body image ideals. A female participant clearly embodied how important family was to her own body perception when she responded that "My mom tells me what my weight needs to be." Similarly, another participant responded that "My family and friends tell me I need to loose weight." Although parents may not be satisfied with their child’s weight or body, my telling them to loose weight, as the former quotations underline, they may be triggering their own children to engage in unhealthy dieting options to lose weight fast. Likewise, although men were not as affected by the media as women, 50% wrote down that their parents embodied their body image ideals. Survey after survey contained the phrase "I think my parents do." The implications of family and friends as a factor in body image perception reveal the complexity of the problem of unrealistic body image among teenagers.
Additionally, there is no doubt that Americans have become obsessed with the idea of dieting and arriving at that ideal body weight. Everywhere you look there are advertisements for diet pills, exercise programs and the infamous diet programs such as Atkins, Slim Fast, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. What is more liposuction television ads have had there part of reassuring fearful Americans that if they get too "fat," they can suck their fat away. In today’s age, there is no escaping the media flood of weight loss programs. But is the media in terms of diet pill programs really that influential? Thus, for their next question participants were asked if they had ever thought of or used diet pills as a weight loss solution.
Only seven out of twenty-three females and two out of ten males reported that they had thought of or used diet pills. Hence, the majority, 24/34 (over 70%), recognized the detrimental effects that diet pills can have on the body. Most participants labeled the use of diet pills as "dangerous, unsafe and unnatural." Nonetheless, interestingly enough the two females out of seven who reported using diet pills, not just thought of using them, actually got the suggestion from their parents. Hence, the parents acted as the spokesperson for the diet pills, not the children. The media was influential, but it was through the channel of the parents. Once again like in the sources of influence question, the family becomes a central unit in body image formation.
In terms of the sixteen picture survey, the majority of both males and females labeled the bodies of those they considered extremely overweight, overweight or extremely underweight as unattractive, revealing that there is a general consensus of labeling body types that are of healthy or underweight as attractive. As for the general respond to the last survey question of how important body image is the majority of both sexes (over 70%) agreed that it was highly important, encompassing a wide array of explanations for their respond from staying fit to impressing the opposite sex. Thus, in the end although more females than males are dissatisfied with their weight as the study showed, males are still as highly concerned as females about their body image.
ConclusionBody image is generally very important for teenagers and at times affects the emotional well-being of those who feel overweight or dissatisfied with their weight. Most importantly, though the media plays a key role in molding preconceived notions of body image ideals it is not the primary source of influence for everyone, especially for a group of inner-city high school teenagers as this study shows. Family and friends act as direct reinforcing tools and points of body comparison for many of these kids. Consequently, it would beneficial for future body research projects to concentrate on the family unit as the starting point for the development of body images. Already, there are numerous studies linking childhood obesity with unhealthy family eating habits; thus, it is likewise important to look at how the family affects children with starvation-type eating disorders or children who hold unrealistic views of what the ideal body should look like. Additionally, most research studies, including this one, is limited by the extent that it only explains the source of the problem but offers no clear remedy for it. Hence, more funds need to be re-directed to construct possible solutions for those who suffer from body image problems. Overall, for this group of inner-city teenagers, as is true for the majority of the general public, body image ideals have become pre-fabricated standards of others, not their own.
Works Cited
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2004). Teenages with Eating Disorders. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://aacap.org/page.ww?name =Teenagers +with+Eating+Disorders§ion=Facts+for+Families.
Haycock, Dean (2000). Men Suffer from Anorexia. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51034.
Lynn, Ann (2003, March 1). Curvaceously thin body the ideal, scholar finds. News Bureu. Retrieved March 3, 2007, from http://www.news.uiuc.edu/ gentips/ 03/ 03curves.html.
