Media contribution to Body Perception
Discuss about the Impacts Of Exposure To Images Of Ideal Bodies.
Though commonly more identified with women, men also face body image issues. This is due to societal influences and also individual thoughts from the men concerning their own bodies based on personality, their version of ideal bodies and also opinions of friends, family, colleagues or even perfect strangers and individual organizations. All these aspects influence how the men may see their hair, the length of their hair and the color of their hair as well. It also may influence their perception of the body fart, the way they look in clothes and, on the mirror, the muscles they may or may not have and what their think their bodies are versus what they believe they should be. There are many contributors towards perception and heavy on that is the media. There is a tendency for society to believe that the media presents facts that are the truth of what is accepted and also happening in the society. Therefore, the views presented by the media tend to be taken as the truth that the society need to be made aware of and this influences the actions that the audience takes and also the opinions they have and those that they interact with on a daily basis.
The media tends to draw a large audience and therefore they have the platform to influence their ideas through means such as advertisements, TV shows, movies and even through radio shows amongst others. This is through suggestive talks or even commonly more so the use of models who have a certain look that isn’t identifiable with the majority population of men. Thus, there is more pressure inflicted by society and self to work through all means to achieve the ideal body image and also there is a stigma held around those that cannot meet the ideal body type. Degrading those men that seemingly look a certain type of way that is taken as perfect holds the ones in those body mages to have a negative reflection of themselves and those of others and more to that, it affects many social aspects of their lives. Therefore, there is need to look into the role of the media in regards to their body perception and also type of effects it has and some of the proposed solutions that can be availed to resolve the issues.
Effects of poor Body perception
Men are presented of the roles they are to assume in the future and also what society expects of them in terms of behavior as well as mannerism in terms of individuality and also figurative soles. They are presented with expectations of their future and are availed the present individuals that represent their roles in future from their fathers, teachers at school, key figures in society like career fields and more so key figures in different fields around the world that have made an impact to society globally. Failure isn’t a social aspect that is accepted positively or even accepted when it comes to a man’s life. Its taken as a set back from life that one needs to bounce back from soonest and therefore, period of reflection and also time to learn from mistakes is also not a well taken opinion or perception of life (Agliata).
This makes the issue of body image as a point of sensitivity and also embarrassment for most men and hence those that are suffering from poor body perception tend to often than not shy away from their issues rather than discuss about them with parties that can help figure out a solution or even present other possibilities. More to that, from viewing the “preferred ideal men” in the movies, on TV, in magazine ads and other avenues amongst others, they can get discouraged as most men tend to be muscular, chiseled high cheek bones, strong physiques and also, they tend to be tall, successful and having a domineering aura. These are the type of men that mostly qualify for real acting roles, lead commercial and billboard models (Agliata).
Young boys are modelled to their future through societal opinions and pressures from their parents and also other influencers part of which media has a great contribution to. They grow into a fashion and custom made future where their voice is often than not silenced and more to that, the idea of who they need to be is constantly reinforced, and the key parties influence and encourage them to change and resemble what they may constantly view on the media. Additionally, the female gender is also equivalently exposed to the media and so their perception of men ought to be, influences the choices they make in terms of life partners they may wish to have in the future. Statistics have suggested that the most female members of the society especially with the 21st generation, tend to have a preference to model like boyfriends and friends over “normal” looking guys. Their version of perfection or closeness to perception is mostly influenced by the media. Hence, the media has a heavy influence on the perception that the male gender has on themselves and also the rest of the other male members of the society (Blond).
Research that has been conducted overtime seems to also support these claims quite strongly at that as well. There are many studies have suggested to the fact that the ads that are run of the men tend to influence the perception that they may have of themselves. Studies done by researchers such as Leit, Gray, and Pope showed that the advertisers preferred men who had a muscular built for one and more neutral look for the other. After the advertisements were run, the men who seemingly didn’t have the chiseled looks in terms of physique didn’t have a positive outlook about their body from the moment they viewed the advertisement (Leit, Grey, Pope). This research was greatly supported by more research studies that also showed similar research results (Blond)
Being that the body makes a person’s general look in terms of view and perception of one’s personality, it’s a major contributor to building one’s brand and also contributes greatly to a person’s personality. The negative contribution of the media has made it impossible for the men to be able to achieve their true desired dreams be it in career, relationships or also other aspects of life. More to that, the lack of satisfaction and the constant feel of judgement and skepticism in terms of relationships created overtime may contribute in a great way to societal health conditions such as depression. This comes from the place of feeling insufficient and not seemingly comfortable and okay with one’s current state of body image and how that may contribute to the place in life they mind find themselves either mentally, emotionally or even financially. The lack of that “perfect body” contributes more and more to the feeling of insufficiency, lacking and even more so the failure to be the expected or accepted. If the socially accepted truth is presented as the only truth that can be accepted, then it becomes hard for the male gender to assume individuality and acceptance to one’s self as they are and this contributes negatively into the choices that one may make in the future from the negative influence. A build of negative emotions may contribute to clinical depression in the future (Leit).
When there are negative image opinions about a man’s boy image, it makes them shy to conversations and also makes them more and more reserved every day. The reservation creates a negative environment for growth and even more so makes them less productive. They are less resilient to making their dreams into reality and there are less concerned with the society as they feel the society is more judgmental tan it is supportive and accepting of all people. The feeling of isolation provides more comfort into a better future that is free of people and judgement and more acceptance. Driving themselves away from society is usually a common norm amongst people and even more so the men that feel judged by the society. They create a world of their won where they feel safer and less judged for who they are and even more so how they look.
The isolated solace presents them the space and opportunity to feed their negative notions and thoughts and therefore there is a tendency for the isolated men to engage in violence like armed robbery and other criminal behavior like rape amongst other social crimes. They may also take to cyber talking and cyber bullying a way of retaliation and revenge against the hurtful society. More to these, they may adapt self-destructive habits that may include binge eating, lack of exercise for sound mind and physical well-being. This often than not tend to result to bad health that brings about illnesses like cardio-vascular diseases among them hypertension and stroke. Other illnesses that a direct resultant of poor eating behavior and also stress related include asthma, diabetes and also obesity (Leit).
This makes one’s life quite uncomfortable and may become unlivable. Instead of offering a solution after escape, they tend to offer more problems to address in the future and offer threating data of death in the near future. There have been massive suicide cases reported by indecent survey institutions as well as the health institutions that have shown lack of self-acceptance for the male gender as being one of the lead causes of such deaths among the men in the society. These are some of the issues that the male gender has to face daily and they are laos social issues that threaten the future of the male gender in the societies and also risk a balance in terms of population for both the female gender as well as the male (Leit).
Statistics from a survey held by Mirror Mirror in 2018 allude to the fact that there over 3 million people globally that have lost weight in order to achieve that ideal and socially most preferred body type and due to that obsession to achieve ‘ perfection” they end up adapting unhealthy behaviors that lead to conditions such as anorexia, bulimia and even extreme obesity from binge eating due to lack of acceptance and frustration from not being what they considered socially right (MirrorMirror).
There is also the issue also the issue of excessive money on expensive cosmetic procedures to achieve sch looks like the liposuctions, gastric sleeves and other forms of body reductive and body build surgeries. They may also send the money on health supplements, gym memberships, medical procedures amongst other ways that may offer or suggest to offer a solution to their problems. This behavior may become an obsession with time and thus threatening to be a self-destructive path in life (MirrorMirror).
Being that there isn’t a solution that can present the best solution for the body perfection requirements, then some measures may be presented to solve one issue at a time. Therefore, they are a number of ways that can be presented to navigate through the negative effects that may build up on one’s mind over time concerning the ideal body type. Howver, to combat the issues effectively, support has to be the major binder to all the issues. Therefore, there is a contributive measure needed from people like teachers, parents, counselors and other parties that play key roles in providing positive opinions on body shape, seizes and the fact that every shape is an acceptable shape in the society and one needs to be happy with the body shape they are in and only make changes to it if they truly aren’t happy with the shape and size and not as a contribution of society towards the same (McCabe).
They also need to be reminded that the population represented in the media is significantly small to the population of men that make up the global male population. Therefore, they need to be more accepting of themselves and proud of their current personality. Similarly, they need to be continually educated on matters of general health in terms of how to maintain a healthy weight that is ideal to them as individuals through the right diets, work out sessions and also maintaining a positive mentality and outlook towards life. This will stop them from taking drastic negative measures in the future such as starvation, extreme medical and unhealthy medical procedures and even more so over exercising (McCabe).
Being that this is a contribute measure by not only the families and friends but also the larger population in the society, the government also needs to place in more effort towards the same. They need to place in policies that inhibit the wrong measures of weight loss from being conducted in the countries and more to that cancelling licenses and denying opportunities to advertisers that also share similar perceptions of the perfect body image. This would serve to reduce the pressure and also give chance to positive change in terms of body weight and more so body sizes. Some of the measures taken legislatively towards accepting women of all body shapes and sizes to model for products from body wear to even billboard adverts has taken of the social pressure in terms of acceptance of some of the body sizes that were accepted before. This has resulted towards more models of different sizes getting more jobs in the modeling industry and more people in the society accepting their body sizes and shapes. It has also contributed towards more and more people reducing the medical procedures and other avenues that they take towards in achieving the perfect bodies as so often refereed to (McCabe).
The media needs to place more concentration into covering how the society got to that point of accepting a certain type of body image, shape and size as what is acceptable. They need to analyze what contributed to wards sch statistics and how those ranges were created and from wat timeline they came to live, they also need to further investigate what market the “accepted” body image serves and how that contributes to the negative repercussions many men are facing in today’s society. They need to evaluate how they also contributed to the sad statistics and how efforts can be made to rectify the issue and save the presented generation and present more options of the future generation where acceptance is what is valued more than serving a particular market for the sake of a few members in the society that seek to create a certain type of image that serves to suit their needs. This has been what has been seen with many designers that lack creativity in terms of creating clothing for people of a different body shape and size. They have been presented by some of the research studies as being only concerned with the population they find suiting and more flattering to their creations as opposed to others. They create a problem to offer a solution that better suts them than the greater population and thus this creates loopholes into the cloth line industries that present more research areas for researchers and other independent parties that seek to create a world of equality for the male gender and even more so for all genders (Leit).
There need to be more studies conducted into body image and how negatively the current conception may affect the future for the male gender. This is due to the fact that the available research is quite shallow in regards to the male gender perception of one’s body image. There research is also quite limited and the options or varieties presented are also quite limited which means that there is more that needs to be done in terms of the academic requirements. There are more loop holes that exist in the current available research majorly due to the limitations that exist due to the amount of research available (men and Depression).
Due to the lack of attention that has been offered towards the area of subject, there is less presentation of quality in terms of the papers that are submitted and thus it affects the credibility and reliability of the research. This needs to be addressed so as to present success in the future for the research offered in the future and thus offering more reliable references towards some of the issues that affect the make gender especially in terms of the body image perception (Men and Depression).
The research needs to stretch far and wide to all ethnicities, and religions and how some of these aspects may affect the way that the men view their bodies. Making the research stretch across various demographics make the research more credible and reliable. This means that there would be more solutions adapted in addressing body image issue sin the present and the future (Men and Depression).
Conclusion
It would be much easier if the opinion of the society was ignored especially in matters of body acceptance. Howver, often than not, society dictates a lot of decisions that an individual, organization and groups may make concerning different issues especially in the matter of perception of the body image. Howver, global awareness of this social anomaly would make the issue more acceptable and solutions easily found as the issue would be combated by masses of people around the world and not just a few individuals or individual groups. The health institutions have recorded many health issues that relate to negative body image perception from drug abuse, depression and even more so suicides that could have been avoided earlier on if the issues were more publicly addressed (Men and Depression). This means that the issue is very much real as not constantly thought and therefore, the men are in need of support and help from many sects of people from professional trainers, families and the society in general. This is importance for the mental soundness and therefore the media would be of great help in advertising for men of all body types and not just one type and therefore, there needs to be change. Even more so, there is more room for the media to contribute towards a more accepting society for men of all body shapes and sizes to create a more realistic future for all parties.
References
Blond, A. (2008). Impacts of exposure to images of ideal bodies on male body dissatisfaction: a review. Pub Med, 5(3), 244-50.
Leit, R. A., Gray, J., & Pope, H. G. (2002). The media’s representation of the ideal male body: a cause for muscle dysmorphia? Pub Med, 31(3), 334-338.
Men and Depression. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/men-and-depression/index.shtml
MirrorMirror. (2018). Body Image Men. Retrieved from https://www.mirror-mirror.org/body-image-men.htm
Agliata, D., & Tantleff-Dunn, S. (2004). The Impact of Media Exposure on Males’ Body Image. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23(1), 7-22.
Blond, A. (2008). Impacts of exposure to images of ideal bodies on male body dissatisfaction: A review. Body Image, 5(3), 244-250.
Leit, R.A.., Gray, J. J., & Pope, H. G. (2002). The media’s representation of the ideal male body: A cause for muscle dysmorphia? International Journal of Eating Disorders, 31(3), 334-338.
McCabe, M. P., & Ricciardelli, L. A. (2001). Parent, peer, and media influences on body image and strategies to both increase and decrease body size among adolescent boys and girls. Adolescence, 36(142), 225-240.
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