Exploring how popular culture and social media/ mass media has influenced the rise in body dissatisfaction and eating disorders amongst a youthful (particularly female) population. This includes popular cultures part in fuelling the rise and housing a platform for these social impacts to spread. By investigating the facts it becomes clearer to see how pop culture could be used in the reverse, by promoting a more socially aware and filtered online presence.
Body Image
Body image refers
to the perceptions and attitudes that individuals hold about their own bodies
in relation to larger cultural expectations (Davison and McCabe, 2005). Our
fixation on body image following media representations is responsive to social
and cultural comparisons that feed a person’s sense of attractiveness and
self-esteem (Cash, 2002). The mass media are considered a particularly potent
and pervasive source of influence in projecting unrealistic body types
(Dittmar, 2009). Their portrayal of women being below average in weight,
airbrushed and retouched, enables an unrealistic standard. Young women are thus
comparing themselves against unattainable perceptions of physical beauty that
are fictional against societal norms (Bergstrom, et al., 2009). The focus
of this investigation on women as the victims lies with them being considered
to hold a more negative body image than men (Feingold & Mazzella, 1998).
The objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997) claims women are
more subjected to sexualisation and emphasis on their physical bodily
appearance. Accordingly, women are more likely to engage in self-objectification,
as the stigma is such that their social value is deduced from their exterior,
defining their self-worth (Wagner, 2016).
Body
dissatisfaction has been consistently associated with depressive moods and low
self-esteem, leading to a range of physical and mental health problems (cf.,
Cash & Pruzinsky, 2002; Polivy & Herman, 2002; Thompson, 2004).
Henceforth it becomes evident that sense of body image is closely linked to our
physical and mental wellbeing (Dittmar, 2009). Recent
studies over the last 10 years have only shown a rise in body image issues
amongst women. Defined by the Pew Research Centre, millennials are classified
as those born between 1981 and 1997 (Fry, 2016). Such individuals have grown in
a culture where the mass adoption of mobile media devices has created a
‘bedroom culture’ in which millennials partake in highly personalised and
private media worlds (Livingstone, 2002). As such their constant
exposure to ‘idealistic women’ through the populist celebrity culture and
fashion industry, feeds the distorted perceptions and own expectations. A
meta-analysis found that exposure to thin ideal media is linked to women’s body
image concerns covering areas of body dissatisfaction, eating behaviours and
beliefs (Grabe et al., 2008). Studies show the problem to be most forceful
amongst the younger population of females, with approximately half of American
girls aged 11-16 report being unhappy with their body image (White and
Halliwell, 2010). More recently in 2017, new data from the University of New
South Wales and Macquarie University, drawing results from Australian and
American women aged 18-25, has shown that as little as half an hour a day on
Instagram ‘can make women fixate negatively on their weight and appearance’.
The study found that comparing themselves to celebrities like Kendall Jenner
made them unhappier about their bodies. Primary research gathered responsive to
this investigation found that in a survey of 50 females aged 16-25, 81% agreed
to wanting 'the perfect body’.
Eating Disorders
Susan Bordo
investigates in ‘The Empire of Images’, westernisations impact on global body
image, through the mass media. She initially found in 1993 that eating
disorders were ‘virtually unknown in Asia’. Yet in 2004 discovered ‘dramatic
increases in eating disorders in China, South Korea and Japan’. Such countries
had a strong tradition of condemning any focus on appearance. Eunice Park
writes in Asia Week magazine; “as
many Asian countries become Westernised and infused with the Western aesthetic
of a tall, thin, lean body, a virtual tsunami of eating disorders has swamped
Asian counties”. Furthermore, a more shocking case study was the Fiji Islands,
whose cultural traditions celebrate ‘voluptuous bodies’. Anthropologist Anne
Becker found that before 1995 Fijian women were ‘comfortable with their
bodies’. Hereafter, a single station of television was introduced broadcasting
programs from the US, Great Britain and Australia. Becker found just three
years later in 1998, 11% of girls reported vomiting to control weight, and 62%
reported dieting. She justifies her findings as down to Fijians not
understanding enough about the media to acknowledge that the TV images were not
‘real’ (Bordo, 2004). Here we see the West’s impact on imbedded cultures in
promoting unrealistic ideals, and how cultural mergence as a result of pop
culture is hindering female mental health; “media-promoted ideas of femininity
and masculinity quickly and perniciously spread their influence over everyone
who owns a TV or can afford a junk magazine or is aware of billboards” (Bordo,
2004).
Still,
anti-reactionary campaigns from populist outlets have driven change amongst a
mass audience’s visual literacy. The 2006 Dove Evolution advertisement,
promoting their new Dove Self-Esteem Fund, was revolutionary of its time in
exploiting the unrealistic depictions of women in the mass media through
digital alterations and ‘Photoshopping’. Once uploaded, the advert was viewed
over 12 million times within its first year, and discussed by a number of
mainstream television programmes, including Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and news networks such as CNN, carrying
on its widespread coverage.
Branded Entertainment
This intrusion of
scrutinised self-image thus correlates with the evolution of the mass media.
The rise of Branded Entertainment,
which is the embedding of brand messages in entertainment oriented media
content (Wise et, al, 2008) and Branded
Content, a fusion of advertising an entertainment into one marketing
communications product (Horrigan, 2009) has brought about a new era of populist
commerciality. ‘Mass media culture increasingly has provided the dominant
“public education” in our children’s lives’ (Bordo 2004). Branded Events are planned affairs developed by a company around an
entertainment concept, and have been described as spatial-temporal phenomenon’s
(Getz, 2008). Best exemplified through the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion
Show, which is watched by 10s of millions on television. The event stages top
models and musical performances by top artists such as Rhianna and Taylor
Swift, in a flamboyant broadcasting promotion of the brand’s products. Such a
performance highlights consumerism and the power of celebrity endorsement over
its populist audience. Hence, if brands are now using pop culture and the mass
media to expand their advertisement, it can then be done so ethically, as seen
with Heineken’s 2017 ‘Worlds Apart’ campaign ad that tackled how to talk to
your political opposite. Praised and shared vastly on social media, it came at
a time of huge social division subsequent of President Trump’s legislation and
the snap election in the UK. Asking if there is “more that unites us than
divides us”, a feminist converses with a new right member, an environmental
activist with a climate change denier, and a transgender women with an
anti-trans believer.
No comments:
Post a Comment