Gramajo 1

Royer Gramajo
Professor Ditch
English 113A 3:30 pm
8 December 2014
Dont Believe the Media
The visual text Im going to describe can relate to many people in generation today. A
teenage girl is sitting down on the floor holding her teddy bear while watching television and
enjoying herself. As she is watching television she notices a female model posing with a red
dress. At that moment many thoughts come to her mind. When the girl notices the model, she
immediately looks away from the television and begins to feel negative feelings about herself.
What is the reason that the girl is feeling like this? She is comparing herself to the model and it
makes her feel uncomfortable about her own body and brings negative feelings about herself.
Because of media such as television, newspapers, and the Internet, many females are trying to
be like the person they are trying to be like. They are acting or behaving like a total different
person and acting like the person they are trying to act like. For that reason, the media have
been frequently using models and celebrities to work with them. Numerous females are
observing their body figures and comparing them to the ones the models/celebrities have. As a
result, females are not liking their own bodies and feeling like they need to change in order to
be acceptable to society.
Many people gain their knowledge about the world around them by accepting and
following the information they hear and see. It is mostly gained through media. People believe
what they hear and see and pass the information around to other people. Therefore, it creates
beliefs and allows multiple of people to get the new memo of whats new around them. For
example, a belief that is highly spread around in society today is the way females are expected

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to dress or how their body figures should be like. An example is, if a female doesnt have a fit
body, people wont see them as an attractive female and the most important way for a person to
see them as an attractive female is by being thin and fit. Stories like these cause the females to
believe in it, and not be themselves.
Gender performance come in play in this topic. They inscribe gender directly into
bodies (Lorber, 24). Gender performance affects the females in their appearance. The behavior
of a person can affect their own body image or affect them emotionally due to the way they end
up behaving towards themselves. For example, if the behavior isnt good, he/she will come to a
conclusion that he/she knows there has to be change with their body figure. He/she will then
think that other people will think about them the same way he/she thinks about their own body
figure.
Therefore, with a certain behavior, the person will development many ideas of how that
change has to be made. Perceptions of body image affect emotional life and ultimately change
behavior. Lets look at how this happens. When people look or think about themselves, we have
a personal body image. When someone else looks at us, that person forms a body image of us in
his own mind. So, for every encounter there are two body images for each person. It is from the
interaction of these two images that behavior develops (McGrath, Mukerji 107). In that case
the change that many females are now making is the use of plastic surgery. With this surgery, it
allows females to transform their face image or body image in a different way that they want it
to be. Teenage girls often want to fit in with other girls who perhaps have a better body figure
or face image than them. Plastic surgery is highly recommended for them, because it is the way
females believe they will meet their expectations of having a different look in their face or
bodies. People may think its not a good idea to use plastic surgery, but others think that that is

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the only solution. Society has taught many females that plastic surgery is the fastest way to
transform their face to the way they really want it to be, when in reality plastic surgery is very
dangerous and not healthy.
Another possible way that females believe they can make a change in their body image
is by changing their eating procedure. Number of females are starting to develop an eating
disorder to maintain a thin fit body and not have to worry anymore if they look thick or not fit.
Having thin bodies make a female feel more comfortable with themselves and make them feel
happier with the way they look, allowing them to feel closer to what they are expected to look
like. It is possible that women strive for the thin-ideal body type by associating thinness with
the possible life success, and it may be this life success that women strive to achieve via having
a thin-ideal body (Evans, 209). A female only cares about the outside looks and not about the
inside looks. With so much care about their body figure, females know that having a thin body
makes them feel happy with their bodies and feel proud about themselves.
The purpose of why females are strongly focusing on their body image is because
females know that males now a days are looking for that in their partners. Again beliefs come
into play here. In todays media, the media persuades the females to understand that the only
way they would find a partner or the only way people would find them attractive is by the way
they look. The media doesnt focus anymore on the personality of a person, instead they focus
more on the outside looks. The gender roles in society has changed many females mind through
the help of media. With the help of media, many females then feel that the way they would get
attention is by looking like a model or look like other females who are considered a standard of
beauty.

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Percentages have been figured out that media mainly focuses more on the importance of
the females body image and not focus on the personality of a person. Media variables
accounted for 15% of the variance for drive for thinness, 17% for body dissatisfaction, 16% for
bulimic behaviors, and 33% for thin idea endorsement. Results suggest that body image
processing is the way to understanding how television images affect adolescent girls body
image attitudes and behaviors (Botta, 22). This leads to females to forget about their
personality performance and believe that it doesnt matter anymore because males dont pay
attention in that any longer.
Men are also being taught by media. The media are making men think and believe their
women should look a certain way. In TV shows and commercials today, the women are mostly
thin and with fit body figures. When men watch shows or commercials with women like these
in them, they start to develop ideas that their women should look like the ones in the media.
Both genders are not being allowed to be true to themselves. Women and men are both being
controlled by the media and no longer have their own choice to make in how they want to be
like or look like, since the media is controlling their mind.
Those females who have doubt about not following what the media is encouraging them
to do will have negative thoughts. They perhaps will think this. If I dont follow what the media
is telling me to do, I wont fit in with society and I wont be accepted by men or society. I wont
be comfortable with men around me because of the way I look. Those are some ways females
will think and see the society around them if they dont follow what the media is telling them.
That is why later on they agree with the belief that the media is encouraging them. Why do we
care so much about fitting in? If all you need in life is yourself, then we shouldnt need to be
accepted by others. But in a society where people will starve, shave, and change themselves to

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be accepted, you cant help but to conform to fit into this society. Layers of makeup, pools of
mascara or pounds of plastic wont change who you are on the inside. (Allison, Teens feel too
much pressure to fit in, be accepted). A female has the necessity to feel that she is accepted by
society, and the only way she can achieve that is by performing the gender roles that are being
expected to in society.
Females who really dont care about what other people think or who dont care about
how they look are the people who will be against this argument. Those females are comfortable
with themselves and have no low self-esteem when it comes to people judging them. They are
people like that in this world, but what the media is mainly focusing is on are the ones who
arent comfortable with themselves. I dont need to worry about what people think, Im happy
with myself and about myself. I usually hear females say this when they hear that other
females are trying to be like their favorite celebrities/models.
Overall, todays media is the reason to why females are not being satisfied with their
own bodies. Instead females want to become a different person and have a different look to
them. As a result, they get plastic surgery, starve themselves, and try to look like want men
want. Media expect females to listen to them and follow them and so far it is working for them.
As more TV shows and commercials are being made, they are continuing using this method to
attract the female audience as well as the male audience, making them believe what they should
believe. Many females now feel insecure about their bodies, and feel like they arent worth
being accepted. The media have put false information into females minds by saying that the
only way they can be attractive or accepted by men is by following their beliefs and by looking
like models or todays female celebrities. Females are not being themselves, and men are being
taught to expect them not to be.

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Works Cited
Groner, Rachael, and Judith Lorber. Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991. Print.
McGrath, Mary H., and Sanjay Mukerji. "Plastic surgery and the teenage patient." Journal of
Pediatric and adolescent gynecology 13.3: 105-118. n.d. Web. 2000.
Allison, Keith. Teens feel too much pressure to fit in, be accepted. Idaho Press-Tribune. 28 May
2013. Web. 2014.
Botta, Renee A. "Television images and adolescent girls' body image disturbance." Journal of
Communication 49.2: 22-41. n.d. Web. 1999.
Evans, Peggy Chin. "If only I were thin like her, maybe I could be happy like her: The self
Implications of associating a thin female ideal with life success." Psychology of Women
Quarterly 27.3: 209-214. n.d. Web. 2003.