In today’s society, a lot of emphasis is placed on how you look. Almost every woman wants the “perfect body” as exemplified by Victoria’s Secret model, but is that really the body we should want? Thousands of magazines, newspaper articles, TV shows, and movies bombard women with body types that are impossible for normal women to achieve without putting their health at risk Models starve themselves and pictures are edited to make all of their normal human “flaws” disappear. Social Media is filled with “flat abs in 6 days” or “lose weight in 1 week” and other posts that make women put their health in jeopardy just to be “thin”. As media continues to influence what is attractive and unattractive in today’s society, advertisements such as “Victoria’s Secret Perfect Body Line” can discourage women to look an unrealistic way, shame the overweight and idealize the sickly thing, and make women question why they do not look like the stereotypical supermodel. 

Today, as the United States becomes wealthier and shifts to a culture of overindulgence and abundance, rates of obesity are rising, but it is no longer a sign of success. Instead, in our society, which focuses on physical appearance, fatness is looked down upon, while thinness is idolized. And as a result, our society is now facing two problems: an epidemic of obesity as well as an increased rate of women who are unhappy with their bodies. Over the past 40 years, women’s average weight has increased and well over half being overweight. With the average weight increasing, the want to look “thin” increases as well. Victoria’s Secret continues to create new lines of lingerie that have titles such as “The Perfect Body Collection” that demoralizes women that aren’t the perfect supermodel size.  Although paradoxical, the relationship between obesity and eating disorders makes sense. In fact, they feed off of each other. The fact that more women are moving farther and farther away from the thin, airbrushed ideal that surrounds them in the media nearly every second of the day, is likely to be reflected in many women’s self-concept, in the form of discrepancies between how their body is and how they would ideally like it to be. Social media also adds to the discrepancies of how women feel they should look with the constant posts about weight loss and tips to be VS supermodel size.  The gap between the size of the average woman in real life and the average woman depicted in the media is widening, which can contribute to a higher prevalence of body dissatisfaction among females. 

The pervasive and disturbing growth of eating disorders has become more well- known in the last the fifteen years, but the issues surrounding body image, and the idealized way in which women have constantly been portrayed in the media have been pervasive in American society for decades. So, before discussing the influence of new and social media on female body image, we must trace and analyze the various depictions of beauty that have circulated throughout advertising and media history; as well as how those changing images have affected women in society. Additionally, the speculation that media consumption affects the way in which people feel about themselves is not a new concept. Even before the Internet and social media were so prominent in everyday life, traditional advertisements in newspapers and magazines or on billboards and TV have been extremely influential in shaping society’s perceptions. Even as a college student, the myth of the freshman fifteen weighs over college students. This is something that is prevalent in schools as well as everyday life. It will be helpful to analyze the way in which traditional media have portrayed women throughout the past century in order to understand how women today have learned to portray themselves both in real life and on their social media profiles – essentially, their own forms of personal advertising. Then, it will be easier to argue that social media, in fact, builds upon an already existing phenomena of media influence that, prior to the Internet, was largely only attributed to the advertising industry. 

If a woman is not satisfied with her body, she will typically internalize the thin ideal, compare it to her own body, and then try to change herself as a result of increased negative body image. The latter more closely aligns to what happens in objectification theory and suggests that a woman with already low self-esteem will be more influenced by a higher exposure to objectified images of women in the media. In “The Perfect Body” image, the women are all shapes and sizes, but they are wearing undergarments just like the Victoria’s Secret supermodels are, but just in realistic sizes. A woman will seek out a certain type of media as a way to feed her already negative self-concept, which Victoria’s Secret campaigns is a prime example of them.  She will choose to consume the Victoria’s Secret magazine that she gets in the mail monthly, and that will reinforce her already negative thoughts. A woman with high body dissatisfaction is likely to consume media with images of thin and perfect models, which will then adversely affect her already negative feelings. Women who already feel dissatisfied with their appearances and bodies are more likely to be negatively impacted by the images on social media, as well as traditional advertisements. 

Images of beautiful airbrushed models are only fueling the distribution of unhealthy messages. Instead, they can share other forms of positive media, such as the recent “Victoria’s Secret” remake that uses real, unedited women that are relatable, flawed, and average. Because social media provides a platform in which users can generate their own content, women must use this power for the spreading of awareness and knowledge, rather than only reiterating unrealistic and unhealthy social norms what media moguls do for a living. This photograph identifies that social media changes the way real women are supposed to look, increases body image issues in women across the nation, and idealizes sickly thin over the average looking woman that is not the stick legged model. 
