Urgh..I'm+So+Fat

Cultural Artefact
Media today plays a huge role in impacting young adults on how they should look, particularly teenage girls. The image portrayed, shows a young girl who clearly suffers from an eating disorder with her thin and fragile appearance as she looks in the mirror and perceives herself as overweight. The expression of her face looks as if she is disappointed at what she sees, not knowing that she has taken it too far.

Public Health Issue
From an early age, young kids are bombarded with pictures of skinny girls on the media, magazines and even social network sites, giving the idea that to be happy, look good and be successful, they need to look like that. Studies show that 70% of adolescent girls have body dissatisfaction (Eating Disorders in Australia, July 2014). With many models being way below healthy weight and females on magazine covers photo shopped to become smaller and unrealistic, teenage girls have unknowingly got themselves mixed up with the wrong idea of beauty.

Literature Review
Body image is the attitude towards one’s body - how they see themselves, how they think and feel about how they look and what others perceive of them. Body image can be influenced by one’s own beliefs and attitudes as well as those of society, the media and peer groups (What is Body Image?, Feb 2014). For young people growing up nowadays, when they go out, go online, read magazine and articles they are filled with images of perfect girls with slim bodies considered in the fashion industry as the “ideal” figure while realistically they are airbrushed to perfection. The average model weighs 23% less than the average woman (Society and Eating Disorders, 2014). At a young age, teenagers are faced with the issues of fitting in and being popular. Somehow their idea of doing so is to look thin so they feel accepted. This has resorted them to starving, vomiting and only eating diet foods (Society and Eating Disorders, 2014), which tend to lead to eating disorders.

The most well known eating disorder is anorexia nervosa, which is when young people believe they are fat, even when they are not and may have already lost a lot of weight. Another disorder is bulimia nervosa, where the young person eats very large amounts of food because they have been starving themself, and then vomits it out, takes laxatives to poo to excess or exercise to extreme (Eating Disorders, Sep 20140. It is sad knowing what the society has turned into that young people have resorted to such measures of extreme to become sizes that are just plain unhealthy and disturbing. Statistics show that 9 out of 10 of girls who are high school students diet while only 1 out of 10 of the girls are actually overweight (Media Influence, 2014). Another study showed that 75% of woman considers themselves overweight when, in reality, only 25% were (Media Influence, 2014).

In 1997, a study was done by Monteath and McCabe consisting of 101 female university students between the ages of 18 to 55. An image of a female body which was adjustable from underweight to normal to overweight was shown to each girl. The idea was for them to adjust the image to what they thought represented their own body size, their ideal body size and then society’s perception of the ideal body size. Results showed that 56% of the participants had underestimated their body size, 96% believed that they were bigger than society’s ideal and that 94% wanted to be smaller than their actual size. This experiment clearly shows the low self-esteem young girls have of themselves and how the society has such a great impact on them (McCabe, P., Ricciardelli, L, N/A).

One of the biggest risk factors that lead from eating disorders is suicide. Research showed that 1 in 5 individuals with anorexia nervosa who died prematurely had committed suicide (Eating Disorders in Australia, July 2014). The Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders also recorded an estimate of 2012 deaths in relation to eating disorder for Australian females aged 15-19 (Butterfly Foundation, 2012). According to the American Association of Suicidology, it has been indicated that the suicide mortality rate of people with anorexia is one of the highest of all psychiatric illness (Getz, L, 2014). Michael Rollin, MD, an attending psychiatrist at the Eating Disorder Centre of Denver stated that, “One of the biggest frustrations of people with eating disorders is that it’s what they spend their day thinking about, planning around, and essentially doing all day long. It hijacks their lives and in that way, they often feel like they have no respite” (Getz, L, 2014).

Individuals who suffer with disorders often experience intense suffering, and their need for help should be take more seriously. It seems that over years there has been very little positive change in how females are portrayed. There are advertisements every now and then promoting to eat healthy and exercise but still there is a tonne of other false advertisements selling diet products to lose weight quick and easy. Magazines still have covers with skinny, photo shopped models. So many young and innocent people are dying due to the impractical idea of being thin that they get to the point of un-healthiness, however, not much is done about it.

Cultural and Social Analysis
According to functionalist perspective of sociology, each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society’s stability and functioning as a whole. It is believed that society is held together by social consensus, in which members of the society agree upon, and work together to achieve, what is best for society as a whole (Sociology, 2014). Through this idea, Emily Durkheim theorised that people are completely made up products of the social environment in which they live in and that society shapes people in every way (Social Fact, 1895). Berger and Luckmann’s social theory on social constructionism also discusses how society’s perspective of reality is blinded by the beliefs and values that were social exchanged. A person’s social interpretation and views when interacting in a social system will ultimately become implanted into society (Berger, P., Luckmann, T, 1991).

Over the few decades, perception of female body shape has changed dramatically. In the 1950s, the well-known Marilyn Monroe’s hourglass body shape was what everyone wanted to be. She had a healthy size of 12 and having the whole hips and breasts were expected and seen as attractive. A few years after that in the 1960s, the popular model, Twiggy became what everyone longed to be. All the females wanted to be skinny, even to the point of rail thin. No one wanted body fat, muscles or a figure and there was no such thing as being “too skinny”. From then on all everyone wanted was to be thin. The 2000s then brought in the new idea of airbrushing models for magazines (Female Body Image, 2013). Up till today, the idea of photo shopping and manipulating female body shapes to look skinny is still going and ever increasing. With social network sites and the growing technological world, images and videos of unrealistic female body sizes can be seen everywhere.

Young females pursuing to have small, skinny and unhealthy frames is a really important issue that needs to be addressed more. As discussed in the literature review, many young females are dyeing due to eating disorders caused by society’s perception of woman. Positive body image should be promoted and educated to everyone at an early age. In addition, by educating media influences on disordered eating behaviour will hopefully see a positive change.

Analysis of Artefact and Reflection
Body image has been a big issue for a lot of people around me throughout my teenage years, with me included. Growing up you just go through a stage of not knowing where you belong and trying to learn how thinks work that it is so easy to get caught up in how the media illustrates a woman and thinking that’s what is perfect and what we long to be. Going to an all girls’ school, one of the issues was that being skinny was beautiful. There were girls who went through eating disorders who felt like they were fat even though they were already so skinny, similar to the artefact chosen.

Eating disorders were something I already knew about but after this assessment and all the research that was done, it gave me a bigger insight on the impact of how the media affects people. The mortality rate caused by eating disorders was a big shock for me after finding out how big the numbers were. Overall people of all ages just need to understand that they shouldn’t base what they look like according to the media, what is most important is having a healthy life and being happy with your body.

Reference List
Adolescent Boys and Girls. Retrieved from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30001199/mccabe-parentpeer-2001.pdf

Berger, P., Luckmann, T. (1991). Social Construction of Reality. Retrieved from http://perflensburg.se/Berger%20social-construction-of-reality.pdf

Butterfly Foundation. (2012). Foundation For Eating Disorders. Retrieved from http://thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Butterfly_Report.pdf

Eating Disorders in Australia. (July 2014). National Eating Disorders Collaboraton. Retrieved from http://www.nedc.com.au/eating-disorders-in-australia

Eating Disorders. (Sep 2014). Women’s and Children’s Health Network. Retrieved from http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetails.aspx?p=240&np=298&id=2110

Female Body Image. (2013). Lifting Revolution. Retrieved from http://www.liftingrevolution.com/top-10-thursday-the-evolution-of-the-ideal-female-body-image-over-the-past-10-decades/

Getz, L. (2014). Social Work Today. Retrieved from http://thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Butterfly_Report.pdf

McCabe, P., Ricciardelli, L. (N/A). Parent, Peer and Media Influences on Body Image and Strategies to Both Increase and Decrease Body Size Among

Media Influence. (2014). Rader Programs. Retrieved from http://www.raderprograms.com/causes-statistics/media-eating-disorders.html

Social Fact. (1895). Emile Durkheim. Retrieved from http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html

Society and Eating Disorders. (2014). Mirror Mirror. Retrieved from http://www.mirror-mirror.org/society.htm

Sociology. (2014). Cliffs Notes. Retrieved from http://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/sciences/what-is-the-functionalist-perspective-in-sociology

What is body image? (Feb 2014). Reachout. Retrieved from http://au.reachout.com/what-is-body-image

Learning Engagement and Reflecting Task
1. http://healthculturesociety.wikispaces.com/share/view/70043814 2. http://healthculturesociety.wikispaces.com/page/messages/%27Seriously%2C+R+U+OK%3F%27