Body image and media

How portrayal of women in magazines and television affects their self-perception

Sarah Elgohary

Hofstra University

There have been many studies on the negative portrayals of women in the media and the relationship between media and women’s body image. The media has portrayed the expectations of women with regard to body image, occupation, and gender roles through the interpretation of magazines and television. As a result of this, from the time we are in our mother’s womb, there are guidelines, rules, and expectations on a person’s appearance, behavior, and how they interact with others. These are expectations that every individual in society is trained to follow and obey. 

Engeln-Maddox’s (2005) study analyzed how the image of women portrayed in media has negative impact on women self-esteem. The hypothesis of the study is that seeing women featured in advertisements has a negative psychological effect on females in society. This study involved 202 undergraduate women, and the research was conducted in two parts. In one part, the participants wrote and talked about three advertisements taken from recent women’s magazines. In the second part, women completed a number of self-reported measurements, focusing on body image in addition to their own miscellaneous body measurements.  Engeln-Maddox used the scale from the 1984, study with 1 as the lowest rating of internalization and 5 as the highest. Regarding the body image their 5 measurements of internalization, 1 is internalization of the thin ideal (SATAQ) and 5 is Body Mass Index. With regards to media advertisements and women, the response of women to media portrayal of themselves is significantly correlated with greater internalization of ideals and decreased satisfaction with women’s own appearance and perception of themselves.  

 According to the Body Mass Index, women have many negative feelings about their body, which affects their self-esteem. The importance of this study is that it proves that women have poor self-esteem because of their body image. However, a limitation of this research is that it doesn’t explain why women have internalized these negative feelings. It would be beneficial if the study connected the body image survey to the ideal of beauty portrayed in the media based on the hypothesis that there is a negative correlation between women’s body image and the negative portrayal of women in media. 

A more recent study, Gurari, et al. (2006) explored the relationship between advertisements of women in media and their attitudes towards their own body image and self-worth.to prove that the women in this study were not influenced by the idealistic images of beauty in magazine advertisements. The hypothesis of the study is that women know their portrayal in media is derogatory, and they may feel bad but they do not show how they feel. They do not correct or protect themselves against the awfully inappropriate images, social comparisons, and other threats that the media gives society to young women.  In this study there were seventy-two participants from Washington University, who were undergraduates from the age of 18 to 22. The participants were asked to complete three different tasks. First they completed primary tasks at computers, and then left the room .The second task was an advertising exercise in which the participants were presented 20 magazine advertisements from popular outlets; the participants were asked to identify the products and rate the effectiveness of 20 magazine advertisements. The third and final task was a body image test. Body image was examined by the subjects that were taking a short series of practice trials.  

The results of the study show that the women in this study were able to recognize the differences in response to the media advertisement images.  They were able to recognize the difference between advertisements that have unrealistic expectations for a woman’s mind and body, and the ones that celebrate women’s identity and strengths. This is a very important point because it shows that the results supported the hypothesis.  

This study is proof of the way society has made so many rules and guidelines regarding the expectations of women’s appearance and behavior. This is because women are socialized to internalize the message of beauty ideals, and that appearance is more important than intellect or education. Society has guidelines that hinder women’s ability to be successful in professional careers. From childhood, she is forced to internalize the fact that her worth lies in beauty and not in intellect—she’s internalizing these things from media and from these advertisements. 

The study was weak in the sense that the experimenter spent too much time on complicated procedures that took away from how the women understood the advertisements in the study. One example of this would be how the participants had to stare at an asterisk on a screen for 750 milliseconds. This distracts them from what the study wants to accomplish. Because of the way the study was formatted, the results were affected.  If the study was more direct and focused on the advertisements right away, without tedious medial tasks in-between, then the participants would have been more focused on the advertisements and their psychological effects. 

Willgosh (2001) conducted a similar study that represents historical and social influences on expectations, occupations, and gender roles for women. The hypothesis of the study is that the media influences women and girls; in addition, the study also represents the negative effects of media on their educational achievement and their career choices.  There were 225 participants who were graduate students from NYU in the study. They had to watch a video of women from 1950, and then watch another video of women today and compare the differences. Then they had to complete a survey on the different expectations of women in the 1950s compared to today. The researchers discovered how quickly women are socialized to act a certain way.  The results of the study did not support the hypotheses. This is because the researchers discovered that the expectations, occupations, and gender roles for women were the same in the 1950s as they are today, with the exception of women having to work to make their living while they support their families; in addition, both in the 1950s and today, women are taught by society to maintain the role of traditional wives and do all cooking, cleaning, laundry, and child care. Today most people do not have traditional families any more like they did in the 1950s--a man and woman married with three or more children. There are many different types of families, like step families and like divorced families.

This study is important because it reflects the results of how children are socialized differently based on their gender. Boys learn to play with action figures like GI Joe army toys and play with Lego.  Society teaches boys to be strong, join the military, be good at math, build buildings, be engineers, and providers for women in society. On the other hand, young girls are trained by society and their parents to play with dolls, make up, easy bake ovens. Later on, in school girls learn that parents only want their sons to do better in math, so as a result girls’ attention in math decreases because they have internalized this message from their parents. In addition, society teaches young girls to be nurturing, to cook, clean, do laundry so they can learn to be good mothers and take care of children, while the men are only the providers in society. These expectations of women are realistic/and unrealistic for many reasons. First  of all, it is very realistic for society to want and need caregivers, nannies, mothers to watch over, nurture, care for and raise children in society that reason is realistic. There are no rules, laws in society that segregates the care giving, and raising children is specifically the responsibility of only to women. The study made women aware of the fact that society wants them to be what society thinks they’re supposed to be rather than what they want to be in order to be successful.  THIS study made women conscious of the fact that this was happening. This study shows how the media representation of women dictates what women are expected to be in society .As a result, of this media influences women to have a negative self-perception of themselves 

Westerwick, Westerwick, Wills, & Gong, (2014) investigated how gender typed portrayals in magazine advertisements affect young women’s views of their future in an experiment that lasted for ten days.  The hypothesis for this study is a theory driven hypothesis taken from social cognitive theory and social comparison theory. There is no actual hypothesis for this study There were 215 subjects in this study .In the experimental group the people viewed magazine pages with females in either professional or caretaker roles as beauty ideals. In contrast the control group did not view these magazines. The control group viewed magazines with no gender typed portrayals of women. The results of the study show that the women were more focused on their future rather than on the ideal image of beauty portrayed in the magazines. The media emphasizes more beauty ideals than strong role models for women. This portrayal is despite the fact that there has been increased advocacy for strong role models in media.   Therefore, this situation proves that the perpetuation of traditional beauty ideals makes women feel more positively about their future. In addition, this study found that gender inequality has become a widely accepted goal (United Nations, 2000). This statistic is from the same study.  For example, women’s participation in the work force has stayed steady for the past two decades at much lower rates than men (52% vs. 77%) (United Nations, 2010). The study shows that in fact, in recent years more men are staying home to care for their children either because more men are unemployed or they have responsibility for the kids, while the wife or mothers are working all day.   The research indicates that women who have a baby and return to work have a stigma attached to them for having a baby because employers and coworkers think that women cannot perform their job the way that they did before having the baby and sometimes women are fired from their job for taking extra time on maternity leave. Society has so many different double standards for men and women. For example, if a father stays home to take care of his children while the mother is out working, society will look down on him because he is too nurturing.  The researchers provide another example of a double-standard between men and women in society which includes the fact that society expects women not to get an education or a degree, not work and stay home taking care of the children and the house. Society needs to understand that in order for women to raise their children and be good mothers all women need to have equality.

Lauren, et al (2006) performed a content analysis on six different broadcasting stations which revealed differences between scripted programs and reality TV shows. The hypothesis is the presence of women behind the scenes was negatively related to the on screen representation.   Furthermore the women behind the scenes were less effective at eliminating gender differences in the portrayal of conflict resolution. The method of the study involved the examination of character portrayals in comedies, dramas and reality shows that aired on six different broadcasting stations which were (ABC, CBS, NBC, WB, UPN,) during 2004 – 2005. One episode of every series was chosen for analysis there was a total of 129 TV shows and there was a random sample of TV shows. Whether it is from movies, radio, or internet the reaction of young adolescents to media violence is the same. The problem is that media messages that emphasize violence could induce violence in teens. This experiment proves that adolescents are very easily persuaded by media messages in society; racism, violence, sex, prejudice towards the elderly and many more negative ideals.  As a result, the messages are submerged into the minds of teenagers. The messages negatively influence the morals that have been taught to them by their parents, which may lead them to commit crimes. The limitation of this study is that it is a qualitative study, and it took too much time.

This study intends to expand upon the results of many past studies. The proposed study will examine the issue of the media sending the wrong messages in society that emphasize the wrong ideals for women such as supermodel ideals and impossible beauty expectations    As a result, society today has portrayed negative expectations of women with regard to body image, occupation, and gender roles; through the interpretation of television and magazines an-d television. From the time we are in our mother’s womb, there is a set of many  guidelines, rules expectations, images on how a person is supposed to look like, act, interact with other people that every individual in society is trained to follow and obey. It has been hypothesized that societal rules, guidelines, and expectations are based on a person’s gender, race, and socioeconomic standing which can inhibit forward progress for any marginalized group, especially for women. These guidelines are detrimental because they create an unrealistic expectation that women are forced to follow in order to be considered valuable or worthy of respect. By way of magazine advertisements and television shows, these forms of media project a negative image of woman in that they produce a stereotype of what a woman should be (instead of what a woman is) Based on my research findings it has been hypothesized that women who are exposed to media will have a negative perception of their image and self.  

Your literature review is much clearer now. Be sure to check apa style for citing author names. Also, try to limit the amount of text that is your own thoughts on the topic. You can write your own thoughts in a sentence or two when you are interpreting each study’s results but your thoughts should relate back specifically to the study you are describing. Overall, very nice job incorporating the comments from your original paper.

References

Guarari, I., Hetts, J. J., & Strube, M. J. (2006). Beauty in the "I of the beholder effects of ideals media portrayal on implicit self image. Journal of basic and applied Social Psychology, 28((3), 273--282. 

Lauren, M. M, Dozler, D. M., & Cleveland, E. (2006). Genre matters an examination of women working behind the Scenes and on Screen portrayal in reality and scripted Prime time programming. Journal of Springer Science, 1(23).445-464. 

Maddox, R. E. (nod.). Cognitive response to ideals media images of women; the relationship of social comparison and critical processing to the body image disturbance in college women. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 1114-11138. 

Westerwick, S. K., Westerwick, A. R., Wills, L., & Gong, Y. (2014). A Crack in the Crystal ball? prolonged exposure to media portrayal of Social roles affects possible future 

selves. Journal of Communication Research, 4(6), 739-759.

Wills, L. (2001). Enhancing girls and talents of women and Girls. Journal of High Ability    Studies, 12(1), 45-59.